Ninety-four of us descended on the hotel last Thursday. For many, their first impressions of the city by the bay were determined by which side of the hotel block they arrived: nice, juicy Tenderloin to the west, the eccentric Market to the south and east, and the swank of Union Square to the north. It didn't help that I led a group down Sixth street for dinner. Our staging was the first time most of us had seen each other, and the Peace Corps-led meetings gave us time to discuss our ambitions and anxieties – items which ranged from successful communication and finding fresh produce to fiery planes crashing, foreign cuisine, and Mongolian death worms. There was one participant who feared the small animals (e.g. gerbils) more than the snow leopards, but that appeared to be the exception. Early the next morning, we overwhelmed the lobby with luggage and tired bodies, climbed into three buses, and made our way to the airport, prepared to wave goodbye to the country we called home. A delay or two later, we did.
30/31-May-14: Incheon/Энчион
Remarkably, our presence on the 747 wasn't nearly as dominating as I had imagined. There were a few who spent more time chatting while standing next to seats – or playing cards next to the lavatory – than in our seats, but I'm not aware of any complaints, though the inconvenience to the flight staff was evident. Five hours in the Incheon airport (Seoul) consisted of minor exploration, food, and free showers. Normally, the shower area was a well-organized department with a sign-up sheet to minimize chaos, but our numbers and the fact that the room attendant was on his last day made for a negotiable situation. Never fear, though, he had a smile on his face.
31-May-14: Ulaanbaatar/Улаанбаатар
We arrived in the capitol by night, but that didn't stop the current PC Mongolia volunteers from throwing us a welcome party at the airport that first resulted in them being thrown outside the building, then threatened to be arrested if they didn't quiet down...while I high-fived my way through the dance line. Great. Two minutes outside the airport, and I'm already in trouble. Exhausted and lost, we filed onto buses and learned first-hand what to expect from Mongolian driving and road design. Initially, the road was paved, but soon enough asphalt turned to earth, and headlights and warning lights danced through the dust clouds passing each other just long enough to find a hole or dip in the road and pull in front of someone else. The lack of lane markings allows for the navigators of dirt roads to perhaps be single-file, or perhaps three vehicles wide. This became more understandable a couple days later.
Ask any backpacker what it's like spending nights in the wilderness and you'll likely hear responses of the double-edged blade of Mother Nature. Though there is electricity to stay up late at night (fighting jet lag), your morning schedule is commanded by the rising sun. While there's nothing like pulling the blanket over your head – a practice that I am quickly becoming a master in with this 4:30am sunrise – the non-human wildlife doesn't quite follow our cues. The first morning I woke to a scratching sound. It was coming from the roof and it was at our front door. Not just one spot, though; there didn't appear to be a pattern that the noise followed. My head buried under blankets, I drew the conclusion that whatever it was obviously hadn't flown in the night before and could wait for me to discover it after another few hours. Nature wasn't going for this, however, and soon enough, the scratching was accompanied by weird, non-rodent squeaking and the tapping of the glass on the skylight above our heads. This was, in a way, good news, as I could see the glass and would eventually be able to observe my assailant from the comfort of my bed. Seconds later, a crow-like bird pulled the most incredible Alfred Hitchcock-like profile entrance from the side of the window, turned to the glass, and pecked it...before retreating back from whence it had come. After multiple instances of this rapping upon my ger window, my slumber was hopeless and – after shouting “Nevermore!” – I explored the valley outside. The next day, I took advantage of this wake-up call to climb the ridge behind the camp and watch the sunrise.
Ger life was a bit cushier than imagined, as we stayed in what functions as a tourist location part-time and a sanitarium the other part. The camp eased us in with predominantly Western cuisine and interpretations of it. For those gers that were fully-functional, there was running hot water to both the sink and shower and intricately carved wood furniture. This is also where we became aware that the standard in Mongolia for bathrooms is “if the toilet flushes, the paper goes in the bin.” The plumbing, when present, is fragile, and generally can't handle non-organic matter. Having said that, it's terribly awkward when you are somewhere that flushes toilet paper and you aren't aware of this fact. More on that later.
3-June-14: Darkhan/Дархан
Immigration photos and fingerprints processed, a quick barbeque was in order back at the ger camp. Here we met many of the faces that we would be working with during our stint in PC. This was also our first encounter with traditional Mongolian cuisine. Sounds like a wonderful experience, right? It would have been if not for the anxieties that many held wondering how a sudden change in diet that included fat chunks in soup would affect our 'gastric distress' on the five-hour bus ride immediately following the meal. The food itself was good, yet new; the concerns of the many, had naught to do with the chefs.
We had been advised that the road to Darkhan had been paved in the last year or two, but that the previous winter had been rough on the fresh asphalt. Because of this, the estimated journey time had a range of two to five hours. Not understanding how a few potholes could cause such uncertainty, I thought it best to discover the answer in real-time. The surface was smooth as our caravan of buses ventured north. Once out of the city, the highway narrowed to one lane in each direction. Traffic seemed not a concern in the open areas between urban settings. Suddenly, our bus decided to leave the pavement, choosing a dirt frontage “road” while another bus stayed true to the highway. This baffled me, for surely the paved portion would be a kinder choice. As we passed through our self-generated dust cloud, I could see our friends navigating lane to lane to avoid large craters in the highway. Eventually, our entire caravan was on dirt, as the pocked road proved impassible across both lanes. We were not the only ones taking these earthen lines: Multiple tracks were visible here, having been the popular choice for cars, buses, and trucks day after day. There didn't seem to be any rules on this frontier, however, and the only pattern for choosing which dusty lane to take seemed to be ensuring that another vehicle wasn't heading at you in that path. Sometimes, oncoming cars would pass on the left, sometimes they would pass between two northbound buses. Each traveled at his own pace – I remember an ice cream truck gunning it between the units of our caravan. The journey involved an unpredictable mix of paved and soil trails. At one point, we were all on dirt when I saw the front bus (a shorter one) stopped with the driver flagging us away from him. Water had carved a two meter deep gulley in our path and the short bus had barely made it through. A full-size bus would surely bottom out and get stuck in the open wilderness. And so, our northbound path took a westward side trip, seeking out the next possible crossing. As evident by your reading this note, we eventually made it.
To keep the Darkhan experience brief, I'll merely tell you that it was only a few days' worth of time, yet new experiences galore – some by our hand and some brought by the Mongolian winds of culture. The hotel beds consisted of a frame, a plywood sheet, a small “mattress” of hay, and a blanket. Fortunately, my time with the circus got me used to sleeping on floors, as this was quite similar. While traveling between the classroom and the hotel, we passed a playground multiple times a day, at which the children loved to practice saying “hello” to the English speakers. A female friend was measured by a man who walked up with his measuring tape: We now know that she's 170 centimeters. Another friend was saluted while we shopped in the nearby market: His appearance evokes Hemingway more than Kurtz. During our last meal in the city, I attempted to order the 'Nature Snack', which advertised horseflesh, onions, and other vegetables. My order was denied, however, and through the waitress' direction, I reluctantly ordered the 'horsey bowels [sic]'. A few at our table tried it, regretted it, and made that memory that you just can't wash down with Listerine. To remotely relate the experience to you, imagine something with such a strong odor that the metal fork took on a manure smell – Not recommended.
Throughout these days of orientation and trainings, we had all three sectors (TEFL, CYD, and Health) intermixed. However, it was in Darkhan that we had brief times of group segregation, during which we saw the thirteen other faces with which we would spend the next three months training, immersed with host families and intense lessons in Sükhbaatar. Friday morning, we said goodbye to the other sectors that we had befriended. Fourteen of us, a teacher, and our driver shoehorned into a microbus and headed north.
And so the CYD band was formed.
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