One Year In

(Our first vista in Mongolia on June 1st, 2015. Sally is taking it all in. )

May 30^th marks the anniversary of our arrival in Mongolia. It is amazing how fast this first year has gone by. It is equally amazing to think about who I was when I got off of the plane and who I am now. There is no doubt in my mind that this has been a life-changing, wisdom-growing, mind-altering experience. All in all, it has been a good year; a year full of lessons, frustrations, joys, and new unique experiences. This post shall be a retrospection of last year’s successes and lessons.

(On a Mountain outside of Darkhan Last Summer.)

What is Missed and What is Not Missed (In no particular order)

1.      Nature: I still find myself missing the green growth of Alabama. The wind in the trees, and the compelling power of spring and summer, but I covered this adequately in a post a few months ago titled “Springtime Blues.” Still there are moments when I wonder if the future for me should be in psychology or forestry, perhaps a combination of both.

(Sacred Mountain at CYD Camp last summer.)

2.      Driving: I miss the convenience of jumping into my car or Sally’s car and taking off across town to complete some errand and the joy of knowing that if we want to leave town for the weekend we have only to pack our bags and take off down the highway. I don’t miss the stress, worry, and frustration that comes with driving. My life and stress level has improved significantly without traffic and bad drivers. It is literally like a weight is lifted off of your shoulders during the first few months without a car.

(View from the Sacred Moutian. 

3.      Friends and Family: Sure, I do miss the folks back home, but PC has been a reality for Sally and me for a long time, so we were prepared for this. I have not felt any home sickness on this journey, but this is because I am sharing it with my beautiful wife who is my family and my home. This aspect of PC service is much easier for us, because we have each other. I think for some PCVs it is very hard to leave friends and family behind. I also rejoice in the fact that everyone state side is remaining healthy and alive. I hope you all continue to do that for many, many years to come. For me the only loss I have suffered while in service is that of my childhood dog, Merlyn, but I knew when I hugged him a year ago that the odds of us seeing each other again were not in our favor. He lived a long fulfilling life. 

(Countryside outside of Chinggis town: September, 2015)

4.      Language: Being understood in one’s native language all the time and the assurance that a conversation is not just one huge misunderstanding.

5.      Material Possessions: with the exception of some of my musical instruments that I feel I would have time to practice with now, I miss none of my material possessions. This is funny, because one of the biggest sources of stress prior to leaving was packing up our apartment and getting rid of stuff we didn’t need anymore. It is amazing how little one misses this stuff. That’s not to say that we wouldn’t enjoy getting it back when we return, but the material life we have led is not really a necessity. And one does truly feel a joy in leaving things behind.

(October, 2015 on "Warm" mountain 12 km outside of Chinggis.)

6.      Food and Convenience of Food: Wow, this is a big one, and I could spend a lot of time fantasizing about American food on this blog post, but I think I will just take one example. In Birmingham, some nights I would say to Sally, “I don’t feel like cooking tonight. Do you want to get some Taco Bell?” She would enthusiastically agree and the two of us would hop into a car, drive to Taco Bell, go through the drive through, park in the parking lot beside the large neon sign, and enjoy our feast. I miss this. The simplicity of this. Here when I don’t feel like cooking the question is “Do you want kimchi ramen, or chicken in a cup ramen?” It is just not the same thing. At all. I’ve often thought that I would be completely satisfied if a Taco Bell was built right outside our apartment, so that in the dead of winter I could throw on my parka and shuffle to the industrial heated building. I would enter with a broad smile of anticipation on my face and the cashier would say in perfect English, “Hello Mr. LaRue, What can we do for you? Would you like your usual?” After contemplating the menu for a second I would reply, “No, I think I will try something different this time…” And then I would order whatever was the latest creation that Taco Bell had produced with the same five ingredients. And it would be marvelous and simple, because I didn’t have to walk a couple miles to acquire the ingredients and then spend an hour or so creating something good from complete scratch.

(Park in Chinggis: December, 2015.)

Expectations meet Reality

1.      Peace Corps Moments: I think that when people think of service in a developing country with PC they imagine a volunteer dressed in light breezy clothing standing on a dirt road in a remote village in Africa. Surrounding the volunteer are a dozen children with the biggest smiles on their faces.  The picture conveys the message that this person is making a difference. That this volunteer is loved by his/her community. That the world is a better place because of what he/she has done… Service in general is not like this. Sure there are moments when you look up and feel like you could be on a PC calendar, but these moments are sometimes few and far between. The day-to-day life of service, is just that service. It is work. It is pushing against a variety of forces that constantly prevent projects from reaching conclusive ends. It is frustration and sacrifice. This is not to say the service is not rewarding, but those PC moments take a lot of work to achieve and are only a small part of the overall experience. Prior to communing to Mongolia, I thought that service would be full of these picturesque moments. This wasn’t a mindset that I articulated, merely an unconscious expectation of what service in a developing county might be like. It took me about six months to toss this image away and realize that the joy of PC service is not always a success that is immediately apparent; sometimes it takes years of reflection to realize how important your work is/was, and oftentimes a picture of a “PC moment” is just that: a picture.

(Өндөрхаан Mountain: Late February, 2016)

2.      Language Fluency: Prior to coming to Mongolia I was convinced that after two years we would be able to speak Mongolian perfectly or at least really well. I was sure that for the rest of our lives Sally and I would have a secret language that we could go to in the presence of annoying guests, bratty children, or other people you don’t want to understand you. The reality is that Mongolian is an incredibly difficult language. Sure it could be worse, but there are only a handful of languages that might be more difficult for a native English speaker. There are vowels that have minute differences, and consonants that seem alien to the English speaker’s mouth.  The other reality is that it takes more than two years to acquire fluency. One must settle instead with a sort of functional understanding of the language. Most of the time I can make myself understood now, but there are still moments when a taxi driver has absolutely no idea what I am saying because my pronunciation is just a little off.  It takes time and work.

(Windy Mountain: Late March,2016)

3.      Beautiful Mongolian Countryside: When Sally and I found out we were going to Mongolia, we google imaged the country and scroll through the mass of picturesque landscapes. A part of me had accepted that this would not be reality, that these images were just really good photography. I am happy to say I was wrong. Mongolia is amazingly beautiful with wide open landscapes in every direction. Right now in spring with the steppe turning green, the land takes on a collage of colors when the sun sets. Sally and I were disappointed that we didn’t get mountains that are closer to our site, but Khentii is still really amazing. We take every chance we get to go into the countryside to breathe the fresh air and immerse ourselves in the land. The immensity of this planet is conveyed here in ways that can only be compared to the ocean. Just the other night, I was in a small soum in north Khentii. The power was out, but I took the opportunity to look at the stars on a moonless night. It was awe-inspiring. The Milky Way was so clear, and the number of stars was so immense it was difficult to see the constellations.

(Turtle Rock, Tov Aimag: recently.)

What would I do differently?

1.      This list is small. Life is not what we could have done, but what we did do.

a.       Different techniques to learn the language better in the beginning.

b.      Not brought a ton of useless books that I could easily read on my kindle. The paper copies just aren’t worth it in this day and age.

c.       Would have brought that concertina, I’ve been meaning to learn for years now.

d.      Finally, to all future PCVs, if I could go back to the time prior to leaving and tell myself to chill, relax, all will be fine, I would do that. Pre-departure was unnecessarily stressful.

(Crossing the Ohon river outside Dadal soum, Khentii: recent, more to come in future post.)

As we come to a conclusion of the first year there is no doubt in my mind that this will continue to be a rewarding and life-changing experience. I recently completed my VRF report, which is a PC quarterly report. In it I was pleasantly surprised that I felt I could rate myself as integrated instead of somewhat integrated. Chinggis Town has become a home for Sally and me. It is strange to look up one day and realize that not only has a year of service passed, but one is also comfortable with one’s site. Sure there are still the stares and miscommunications, but there are also enormous amounts of “Hi!” from literally every student you pass in the city. The people seem happy to see you, and life is good. Sally and I recently watched the first season of Netflix’s Daredevil. In the last few episodes a character offered wisdom that really stuck me. “Growing to love a place is forgetting the things you don’t like about it.”

~Caleb  

Submit your questions!

                      


We will have been in Mongolia for one year on June 1st. We have been maintaining this blog since March of last year, and now, we would really love to hear from YOU and answer any questions you might have about Mongolia, Peace Corps, our work, our lives, etc.

We will gather your questions and post them in another blog post with our answers. Please send us your questions! You can comment with a question below or send an email to slarue19@gmail.com. The questions you send to this email will be read by both of us. If you are friends with us on Facebook, feel free to connect with us there as well.  Feel free to direct specific questions to either of us as you wish. We plan to post the questions anonymously, so no pressure!

Any feedback on the blog would also be appreciated, such as "Why don't you write more about Mongolian culture?" or "I want to know about the wildlife in Mongolia." or "Why aren't you posting videos of Caleb's advanced Mongolian throat singing performances?" We appreciate any and all ideas you might have, and we want to make this an interesting blog for you to read!

We look forward to hearing from you and answering your questions!
~Sally

We're in Hot Water

Photo credit: Kyra Lindstrom. This is Kyra's
water container that she keeps in her ger. She
uses a different, larger, sturdier container to
transport the water from the well.

I must preface this with the fact that I know Mongolia, for volunteers in apartments especially, is relatively nice in terms of living conditions compared to many other Peace Corps countries. We have electricity. We have refrigerators. We have running water and flushing toilets. We have heat in the winter. It is so easy to get internet access.

That being said, it wasn’t too difficult to get used to not having hot water, knowing that there are so many people out there who don’t have running water period, especially with so many of our fellow Mongolian PCVs living in gers. These real MVPs either have water delivered on a regular basis from someone in their haashaa family or school (if they’re lucky), or they must go to the nearest well to get water themselves. This means they either muscle it out and carry their water containers, or more commonly, they use some sort of wheeled cart.

Once they have the water in their ger, there is a lot of work involved. Most gers have a plastic device above their sink which holds water. From it extends a long spout. When you push up on the spout, it releases water. This is how ger dwellers wash their hands and brush their teeth and whatnot.

For drinking water, all PCVs are given a large water filter. Since we are not from Asia, our bodies aren’t used to the different enzymes. It’s not that the water is unclean or unfit for human consumption, but since we are from the other side of the world, we are used to different bacteria and whatnot in our water and our bodies aren’t used to the water here. Therefore, water filters. Using these filters isn’t so different between apartment and ger dwellers. We fill up a large bowl or pot with water from the sink and dump it into our filter. Ger dwellers do the same, but they get the water from one of their larger water containers usually.

Photo credit: Kyra. These are her tumpins she uses to bathe and
rinse clothing after washing them. 

Then there’s bathing. We might have written about this during PST, but ger dwellers bathe using a tumpin, which is a round plastic tub. Of course, it takes a while to get used to, with trying to keep all the water contained and not splashing water on the floor. During the summer, I would wash my hair, bathe, wash my clothing, then clean my floor with the same water. After bathing, ger dwellers have to carry the water outside and dump it out.

Photo credit: Kyra. This is Kyra rinsing her clothes in a tumpin.

And washing clothes. Kyra, our resident ger dweller, as well as all of us living in the aimag center are lucky enough to have washing machines. It is more common for ger dwellers to have to hand wash everything using their tumpins. Still, even with a washing machine, it is much more difficult to do this in a ger. We stick our shower head into the washer and turn it on until it fills up. Kyra has to do all the heavy water lifting without the help from running water.

With every trip to the capitol, I am always initially surprised when I turn on a facet and hot water comes out. Being able to adjust water temperature is truly a magical thing.

But now, thanks to our land lady, we have hot water!!!! Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

We don’t have hot water all the time, and it’s not unlimited. We have a 40 liter water heater in our bathroom. This means that we no longer have to heat up water using our stove for an hour before we want to bathe. We just have to plug in our water heater and give it about an hour to heat up. It’s much less work. It uses a lot of electricity, or else we would keep it plugged in all the time. It’s SO nice to have hot water coming out of the actual pipes. We are going to eventually rig up a shower curtain and figure out how to suspend the shower head so we can take showers. This will be a summer project.

However, whenever a good thing happens, it feels like there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Spring in Mongolia means rain and snow. The same day we got the great news of the new water heater (back in early May), there was a lot of snow which caused the ceiling in our bedroom to leak. It’s slowly falling apart. We told our landlady. Last weekend, I heard some people working on the roof right above out bedroom, so maybe they fixed something. We won’t be able to know until the next rain. Meanwhile, it doesn’t seem like a big concern to our landlady that our ceiling looks like it’s experienced an earthquake. Oh well.

In other news, I recently cut my hair. I decided to do it myself, since I didn’t want anything fancy. I just wanted to get rid of the split ends and add a little bit of layering. See for yourself! My first ever attempt at cutting my own hair. 

Before

Before

After

After - Not a big difference here, just a little shorter

~Sally