Posts from Mongolia (3 of 3)

In tribute to the way these posts have been flashbacks from the recent past, this last one goes old school. I mean original Nintendo style old school. The original title - Super Mario Bros. (2) Lied to Me:

For anyone who did not grow up with the original Nintendo game system, the Mario Brothers (Mario and Luigi) are the central characters in a series of side-scrolling games. Jumping on goombas and slamming their heads into mystery boxes, they made Nintendo famous, and a whole lot of coinage. When I left the States, they were still enjoying success and fame with Paper Mario, and are virtually Nintendo’s silent spokesmen. My favorite game for the longest time was Super Mario Bros. 3, which gave Mario and Luigi the ability to fly thanks to a leaf, a raccoon suit, and a complete disconnect in logic.

However, the nonsense in 3 was easily swallowed after the nightmare that was Super Mario Bros. 2. I say this completely without malice because anyone who finished the game found out that the entire episode actually was a nightmare that Mario wakes up from. It has everything from pyramids, to flying carpets, to potions that induce trips to an inverted dreamland that is even farther “down the rabbit hole” if you realize that it’s a dream within a dream. As an adult, though, my only real complaint is the mechanics of the whirling dust devils.

In the game, the twisters act like enthusiastic trampolines. You jump in, you bounce, and you can catapult yourself out. Turns out, in real life, they should only be admired from afar. The only similarity that the virtual dust devils bear to real ones is that inside of one, they really do spin you about.

This is my last weekend in Manlai before making the trip to Ulaanbaatar with absolutely all of my possessions, and yet I’m still learning new things about life in the Gobi. I was making the short walk from school to my ger when I saw the dust devil sweep over a nearby house. I also saw the little kids next to me scurry inside the nearest building which happened to be the dormitory for the herder children whose parents still subscribe to the nomadic lifestyle out of necessity. Instead of quickly following the kids inside, I kinda simply stared at the vortex. No lasting damage was done at all, but the second or two inside of the dust devil scared the hell out of me as I couldn’t breathe and airborne rocks scratched the face and the hands covering my mouth. As I stupidly spun, I couldn’t think rationally enough to simply step out, but flashed to the memory of my first real sandstorm. That time too, I did nothing but watch it approach, doing little more but idly speculate about how the brown dirt looked against the blue sky. Thankfully, my friend Bayaa was with me and after a little miscommunication got me to run to my ger (I really thought he was asking me if I enjoyed running, which for the record, I do not).

Lessoned learned: mimicry is a fantastic survival method,

- John

(Thus ends my recap, which also means my trip to Colorado is wrapping up. Let's see how that turned out. Writing this with 30 minutes before leaving, I am bouncing up and down with excitement. I won't get too personal here, but this lady is a special one.)

Posts from Mongolia (2 of 3)

In case you haven't guessed, these posts have been loaded on a schedule. Technology rules. This is the perfect excuse to take a step back from the current events and talk a little more about what I originally had in mind here. This post was originally titled - Rock Gardens and Gers:

For the last two years I have lived in a tent, the traditional style of home that Mongolians call a ger. It is round with a conical top that resembles the stereotypical picture of an igloo that I have in my head. However, where the Inuits use ice, Mongolians use a wooden lattice-work frame covered in felt or tarpaulin. In the western parts of the country the gers are almost entirely conical and could be easily mistaken for Native American teepees. Do not mistake a ger for a yurt, because while they are technically the same thing, hippies and Russians live in yurts. I am a returning Peace Corps volunteer and the difference is that hippies go into Peace Corps and cynics come out.

Every spring I grow a rock garden on top of my ger with the help of the seasonal sandstorms. After making it through my first winter, I thought that the hard part of the year had passed (which in fact it had, as the 2009-2010 winter was called a zud, a winter so cold that large portions of herds died, some livestock frozen while still standing) but then the rising temperatures in the Gobi brought wind and sandstorms. I have never seen a ger blow over, but I have watched as the double-sided outhouse I use was picked up and thrown in spite of the heavy corded rope and rocks tied to it. The refuse pit left uncovered looked like both a festering wound and a warning. Usually after the first big storm hits in the spring and I have spent a couple of days holding the shaking supports in my ger unsure if the trembling is due more to the wind or my own fear, my school’s director or maintenance workers drop by and pile anything heavy and at hand on my roof. This year, in addition to the sand and rocks that are typical parts of any rock garden, I have two brake drums (which eerily reminds me of my senior year in high school when I spent a semester sand-blasting and painting brake drums for a percussion piece), an iron I-beam, and two iron radiators which at one point were probably used in the hot-water boiler system that heats my school.

When I get back from Colorado, I will work on adding some pictures,

- John

Posts from Mongolia (1 of 3)

For the next 10 days I will be gleefully running Colorado and alternating between saying incredibly sappy and incredibly insensitive things to Cara. Here's to hoping that the sappy outweighs the insensitive.

In the meantime, here are the blog posts I wrote in Mongolia while dreaming up what I would do with internet access. The title of the first post:: Looking Back to Look Forward (hey, I was isolated).

It’s my last month of work as a Peace Corps Volunteer, so why start a blog now? A lot of reasons come to mind: because it appears that most PCV blogs crap out towards the end instead of finishing strong, when hopefully the lessons have actually been learned; because I have time to reflect on my experience while I get ready to go back to the States; because I want to detail the period that PCVs simultaneously look forward to and dread – readjustment. However, the most accurate reason is probably because I’ve spent the last two years in a small town in the Gobi desert that lacked indoor plumbing, to say nothing of the internet.

I am a TEFL volunteer (the government loves acronyms – TEFL is Teaching English as a Foreign Language, a lot like teaching ESL but in a country where English is the non-primary language) and my school year wraps up May 31^st . I finish my service June 24^th, so most of the last month will be spent moving all my possessions to the capital city, Ulaanbaatar, and finishing up CoS paperwork (that’s Close of Service). If you haven’t pieced it together, I’m an M-20, which means I’m a volunteer in Mongolia and part of the 20^th consecutive group to be sent to the country which opened to PC (no joke, it’s not “the Peace Corps,” but simply “Peace Corps” without an article, some people get indignant over the littlest things) in 1990. With that intro, you now know the key acronyms to tackle this blog.

Speaking of tackling, here is a glimpse of what I plan to tackle or include in my blog: serving in a former Soviet satellite, the stereotypical Peace Corps experience (weighing babies in Africa) and the atypical experience (life without fear of malaria), bureaucracy à l’America as opposed to à la Russia, what got me through two years of service, idealism versus cynicism, and a lot of half-remembered references to biographies of Sargent Shriver and John F. Kennedy. Oh yeah, and cowboys.

Get ready for ten days of glimpses into my head when I was alone in the desert,

- John 

Bleed the Good Out

I find that those whose hearts bleed for everything and everyone have no blood left to sacrifice when it counts. 

For example, the Peace Corps initiative: Live Like a Volunteer. Peace Corps has a lot of fantastic initiatives. These initiatives are problems that continue from one group of volunteers to the next. In Mongolia there’s an Alcohol Awareness Initiative to deal with the enormous problem of alcoholism in the country. Personally, one of my regrets in Mongolia is not finding a way to work with that initiative more. We also had an AIDS Awareness initiative that was useful, but I imagine much more useful in the Peace Corps countries that people typically associate with the organization, African and tropical countries. 

The Live Like a Volunteer initiative is unique with its more domestic focus. It encourages family and friends back home in the States to give up something (like using their fridge, taking showers, using a laundry machine) for a short while, maybe a week, maybe more. It is also a rather gross display of back-patting and largely pointless.

Friends and family back in the States have already given up something, they've given up easy access to, and even a certain amount of communication with, their loved one who is off trying to change the world. I am not trying to disparage the sacrifices made by volunteers, because those sacrifices are not negligible. Going without heat, or without air conditioning, without fast food, without electricity, the internet, yes those are big deals. But as volunteers, our rewards are plentiful as well. We get respect from people back home even if we don't always get it at site. We get a lot of our daily concerns taken care of (health insurance, rent paid for, etc). We choose to go overseas, to give luxury up and gain many tangible and intangible things in return. Our families and friends, however, give us up without really getting much of a say in it.

As usual, I'm also results-oriented, and when people give up something for a week of "Living Like a Volunteer," I want to know what is the result? Do they give up using air conditioning for a week and then someone who has never lived with A/C gets it for a week? No, nothing happens except that awareness is supposedly "raised." Our friends and families already were aware of how we live, we complain to them all about it! This is my effort at being productive instead of complaining (hey, I know I can use adjustment, I'm not perfect). Change "Live Like a Volunteer," to have better guidelines for what people should go without. Have your parents go without chicken for a month, and then donate chicken soup cans to shelters. Have your friends with big ass ... hearts, turn off the heating for a week and give the resulting savings to Country Funds (there's also another donation process to give to specific projects, but I apologize, I'm having difficulty finding the site).

So, go ahead, bleeding hearts, bleed the good out, but make your sacrifice mean something.

You only owe it to yourself.

- John

Obligatory Introductions

How exciting is a perfectly set up room? A living room, bedroom, or kitchen that you walk into and there's nothing that needs adjustment? Nothing in that room that actually needs you?

Perfection is cool, it's a nice idea, but really, is it interesting? Which is more fun to watch, a diver in the Olympics, executing a flawless jump (which you can't really distinguish from the last one that got a 9.5), or a handstand into an open pike that unintentionally goes further into a belly flop?

I want a room that needs me, people that need me. I'm interested in all those nouns out there that need adjustment, including myself. Hence, this blog: Discussing Adjusting.

I will argue that perfection is not an objective state, but a relationship between object and subject. The perfect woman (or man) is not the same for everyone. My perfect woman is flawed because I am flawed. She's perfect, though, because of those flaws and not in spite of them.

Are you having trouble following? Good, I hope so. I want to talk about what things need adjustment, and how we adjust to these imperfect objects and situations as human beings. I will not slow down for you. I might explain, but only if the explanation interests me. Since I start with a basic idea that nothing worthwhile is perfect, I am free to talk about anything worthwhile here, which happens to be most things. I'm not asking you to understand everything perfectly, just try to keep up. Actually I'm not even asking for that, I think really all I'm asking for is indulgence (in both the Catholic and secular senses).

The briefest of backgrounds before closing tonight: I recently returned from two years of service in the Peace Corps. I mention it only as it relates, and for tonight that is because one of the biggest subjects during and after your service is Adjustment. In fact, the little wad of cash you get paid for being a volunteer (ironic but volunteering is certainly not free) is even called your "Readjustment Allowance."

Let's see where this takes us,
- John

PS. I'm back! And I love it.