Here Ends PST--08/17/15

            “I, Caleb LaRue, promise to serve alongside the people of Mongolia. I promise to share my culture with an open heart and open mind. I promise to foster an understanding of the people ofMongolia, with creativity, cultural sensitivity, and respect. I will face the challenges of service with patience, humility, and determination. I will embrace the mission of world peace and friendship for as long as I serve and beyond. In the proud tradition of Peace Corps’ legacy, and in the spirit of the Peace Corps family past, present, and future I am a Peace Corps Volunteer.”

            Eleven weeks of training have come to an end. On Saturday the 15^th of August, Sally and I attended our swearing-in ceremony and are officially PCVs. It has been a long hot summer, but not a bad one. We have made many friends, many of whom are on their way to sites on the other side of the country. Some people are as far as a 50 hour bus ride from Sally and I’s new site.

            We spent most of last week in Darkhan attending final center days/training. Since it was the third time that we stayed in New Darkhan, it was fun to visit various restaurants and enjoy some Mongolian-American food. We also were able to meet and dine with our site mates. There are 6 PCVs from our cohort that will be going to the same aimag. Four of us will be in in the aimag center (Chinggis Town).

            After a week of training we attended the swearing-in ceremony. It was surreal. I found myself often wanting to slap myself. There are moments in life where you can almost somatically feel chapters changing. Moments that enormous amount of time, effort, and planning are needed to achieve. And when you finally find yourself in that moment time seems to shift into hyper speed, and you find yourself on the other side forever in a different chapter.  Sally and I have wanted to do the Peace Corps together for almost 6 years, prior to that it was something that we each thought of often. Here we are.

            The swearing-in ceremony was pleasant with speeches and presentation of certificates. It was almost like a graduation into Peace Corps after months of training. The highlight of the ceremony was the cultural performances that were done by PCVs. Sally’s group performed a popular Mongolian song and meshed it with “When I am Gone.” The songs sounded really good together and the combination of Mongolian and American music was a neat symbolic moment. Two other groups performed: a Mongolian dance and a solo song. The solo singer did a really good job.

            After the ceremony we had a short reception and spent time with my host mother and sister who had come to see us swear in. They presented us with a nice house warming gift for our new apartment in the form of a small statue of two Mongolian horses standing side by side.

            We traveled by bus to UB where we dined on amazing Cuban food. (For reasons unknown to me or my fellow PCVs a Cuban chef has set up in Ulaanbaatar.) After one night in the dorms we loaded all of our stuff, ourselves, and our two supervisors into a taxi destined for Chinggis Hot.   

            PST is over, the real challenge and job begins now.

~ Caleb 

Site Placements! Drum roll please… (8/12/15)

Two days ago, the M26 cohort said goodbye to their host families and returned to Darkhan for the final week of training. That afternoon, after sitting through several sessions that no one remembers, we gathered in the school’s gym in front of a huge map of Mongolia that was hanging on the wall. One by one, aimag by aimag (province by province), names were called and given sites. They called it by sector: east, west, and central. So without any further ado, for the next two years, Caleb and I will be living in...

Chinggis Hot (hot means city) in the Khentii Aimag (aimag means province)

The dream that I had did not come true, but I’m not upset. This aimag (province) is in the east part of the country. It is a very historic aimag, as this is where they suspect Chinggis Khan to have been born. We don’t have the towering mountains of the west, but the Khentii (pronounced “HEN-tee”) mountain range runs through the north part of the aimag. In the south, there is steppe, and Herlen river runs through our city.

Highligted here is the Khentii Aimag.

 City is a relative term. Chinggis Hot is the aimag center of the Khentii Aimag, which means it is like the capitol of a state. This is where you can do the major shopping in your aimag and where the governor lives and where most of the stuff happens outside of farming and herding. Chinggis Hot has a population of just under 20,000 people. So it’s not a soum, but it’s not a huge aimag center either, thankfully.

Caleb and I will be living in a 2-bedroom apartment. We will have indoor plumbing with hot water and a toilet inside. This is not what I was expecting at all. I was hoping for a ger, but alas, we are back to apartment life. It will be super convenient, I’m sure, but I am a little disappointed we won’t experience ger life. I’m told that my school is just a two minute walk from the apartment. Unfortunately, Caleb and I will work at different schools. His school will be further, about 15-20 minutes to walk.

Both of us will work at a complex school. Complex schools are for grades 1-12. It looks like I will be teaching English to middle school aged students and facilitating English clubs for middle and high school aged students. I will have four Mongolian counterparts that I will work and co-teach with. I have heard that at least two of them are very excited about having a PCV and are very hardworking teachers. I will meet my counterparts when we get to site next week. Caleb will be primarily working with a social worker counterpart, who we’ve also heard great things about. Caleb will be expected to facilitate a variety of clubs and life skills classes.

Overall, this site seems like a great match for us. I am just ready to get there and start getting settled. Please feel free to google it. FYI, our site was changed to the name Chinggis in 2013. I don’t know what the name was before it was changed two years ago, but this may make it a little difficult to look up. I haven’t tried this website yet, but our paper lists www.khentii.mn as the site for the aimag. I haven’t visited because I don’t want to see any pictures of my site until after I see it first with my own eyes. J I’m excited!

~Sally

It’s August! (8/1/15)

It’s August and summer is still here! It’s not snowing yet. Yay! It’s been pretty hot this summer surprisingly. It rains pretty often, which cools it down for a few days. And then it gets really hot and then rains and then it’s cool etc. etc. All of the host families that I know of still serve steaming hot soup or heavy meat dishes during these hot days. Once, I was eating soup on one particularly hot day, and I look over at my host brother and his face is just pouring with sweat. Light, cold summer cuisine isn’t really a thing here.

August means I’ve been here for two months. In one week, everyone will be leaving their host families. We’ll have final center days where we find out our permanent site placements on August 10^th. We will leave for our sites on August 15^th. I had a dream about a week ago that Caleb and I ended up in the Gobi-Altai aimag, which is to the west and is quite mountainous. The same night, apparently one of Caleb’s fellow CYD trainees dreamt about all of the CYD site placements. He ALSO dreamt that we were going to the Gobi-Altai. Before this, I didn’t have a particular aimag in mind, but since those two dreams, I kinda want to be in the Gobi-Altai.

Last weekend, my sitemates and I went to Ulaanbaatar, the capitol city. We left on an overnight train at 10pm and arrived at 6am. We stayed in unofficial Peace Corps hostels. We visited the Peace Corps office, took pictures at Sukbaatar square (sp?), shopped at the State Department store and more.

The best part was the food. It was SO nice to have a choice in food. For breakfast, we went to Millie’s and I split a special with another trainee. It was eggs, toast, fried potatoes, and steak. As in beef steak. As in beef. As in cow meat. Wow, was that good. We ate German doners for lunch, which we as good as the doners I had in Berlin, if not better. For dinner, I ate a cheeseburger. As in cheese. Not cheese curds. But cheeeeessse! Oh how I’ve missed cheese. You’d think with all the cows, cheese would be a thing here, but alas, no. Cheese curds are a thing, but that’s a flavor that I’m not quite used to yet.

We stayed in UB for one night and left around noon the next day. We took a bus to Darkhan and then took the train the rest of the way back to our soum. I really liked our visit there. We had a nice time, and it was nice to become more familiar with the capitol city.

Last week, I had three practice teaching days. Two were with my partner Mikey, and one was solo teaching. My first time solo teaching went pretty well! I had a few issues, but overall I think I did well for my first time. Our trainers offered some good feedback, which is always helpful. Next week, I will solo teach on Tuesday and co-teach with Mikey on Thursday. Thursday is our last day of practice teaching! I’m looking forward to being finished with training.

On Friday last week, my sitemates and I took our LPI (language proficiency something). Peace Corps wants us to score at the novice-high level. I feel good about my LPI, so I’m positive I got novice-high. We will find out our scores at final center days next week.

In other news, Peace Corps called for applicants to perform at our swearing-in ceremony. The six of us at my site decided to go for it. It’s a mash-up of a Mongolian song we’ve been learning all summer and the Cups song from Pitch Perfect. For this, Marc plays guitar, I play ukulele, Alex plays the trash can, Mikey plays the cup, and Lexa, Jessica, and all of us sing. I think it’s a pretty cool song, and we’re hopeful to get chosen to perform. Again, I will share this when I have internet enough to share it.

PST is almost over. This summer has gone by very fast. I’m looking forward to living with my husband again and hopefully having better ways to be in touch with everyone back home on a more regular basis. One more week! I can’t believe it! I can only imagine how quickly the next two years will go by.