Cyclones, hearts, kittens, and camels...

7/21/09 11:00 PM here, 8:00 AM California time

Whew. Things are pretty wild. We had a hail storm today that we were not quite sure we would survive. I have some great pictures of a cyclone forming about a mile away. Unfortunately, I was driven inside for what must have been the best part. The term “golf ball sized” is thrown around too often these days (I guess) but these hellish ice balls were literally of that stature and velocity. There are pretty big holes in my family’s shop’s ceiling, which is a little bit thinner than those of the houses. My host father had to run out to put the dogs away, and he has 10-15 welts on his back that look like he got shot with a paintball gun at point-blank range. And all this after it was in the mid 80’s F for most of the day. I have a lot of video from out my window, but I’m not sure that it’s postable… I’m sitting in my little cottage, the storm having subsided, trying to reconstruct what has happened this month from my pictures. I’m sipping tea (Akbar Gold is glorious,) listening to Radiohead’s “Reckoner,” and waiting for the iodine to finish cleaning my water purifier, which doubled as a catcher of soupy attic-water today. Hm, there is much to tell…

DSCN0237 DSCN0249 DSCN0252 DSCN0254 DSCN0258 DSCN0261 DSCN0262 DSCN0264 DSCN0267 DSCN0268 DSCN0270 DSCN0274 DSCN0283 DSCN0285 DSCN0288

Before Naadam: The larger of my family’s two khasha dogs still tries to break through my window every night or two. There’s nothing quite like turning over in your sleep, only to inadvertently incur his wrath and suddenly come to with a Batman-like silhouette trying to bash through the glass nose-first. He’s a beautiful dog, at least half German Shepherd, but it is only due to my rock-throwing coaching from the locals that he has not feasted upon my manflesh. Mongolians are much like hobbits, and Mongolian dogs much like the Uruk-hai in this regard.

On the subject of flesh: no preparation for a “festival of manly sports” would be complete without some bloody, gutty carnage. Every one of these organs becomes part of the meal. I discovered that liver is actually pretty good, and heart is palatable.

DSCN0240 DSCN0243 DSCN0245 DSCN0246

Naadam: Nalaikh’s little Naadam on Friday was a bucolic bash. There were a lot of dances with cultural heritages ranging from Mongolian to Russian to Indian. Ogie was pretty much the runaway star of the show, with his atonal “Naadam, Naadam” song piercing every eardrum and every heart. My Russian mine-collapse-rescue-specializing-type-guy firefighter friend from the Red Cross received some important honorifics. Little kids could pay money to ride around a corral on an ATV, while horses, camels, and even goats looked on in despondency.

If the apocalypse were to start with the sky gushing watercolors (before the flames, blood, and toads,) then Mongolia would be Ground Zero.

DSCN0342 DSCN0344 DSCN0351 DSCN0352 DSCN0354 DSCN0359 DSCN0361

Kathleen has a tiny kitten named Tom. Her family finds this hilarious, because Tom means “big” in Mongolian. BREAKING NEWS: As of yesterday, (at this writing) her adorable dog Janey had six puppies, all of whom are as of yet in good health. This is shocking, as she is a tiny, malnourished animal and nobody even knew she was pregnant. We’re REALLY hoping they all do all right. Pictures to come soon.

DSCN0275 DSCN0277 DSCN0280

The Naadam Stadium in Ulaan Bataar was not as crowded as one might think due to sporadic rain showers. Watching giant men wrestle on a wet field is about as much fun as you’d imagine, particularly when they call on the strength of eagles before and after each bout by running around and flapping their arms in slow motion.

DSCN0417 DSCN0418 DSCN0419 DSCN0420 DSCN0429 DSCN0430 DSCN0432 DSCN0433 DSCN0436 DSCN0442 DSCN0443 DSCN0444 DSCN0446

All right, easily the best part of the weekend: We had to wrestle a furious goat into the trunk of my host sister’s Hyundai sedan and then deliver it to Kathleen’s house (her host mom is my host brother’s and host sister’s older sibling. Kathleen takes great joy in being able to say, in all truth, “Bob’s my uncle.”) In any case, the goat was none too pleased at being taken to what it clearly sensed was its death, and decided to be a butt-head about it. I apologize for that one. It managed to pop the rear-right tire with a near-miss at our shins, but we didn’t realize it at the time. We finally bound it and got it in the trunk. When we discovered the tire was ruptured, we found ourselves in a predicament, as the spare was in the trunk with the enraged goat. We managed to limp to the house, drop off the goat, change the tire, and make it to the highway a few hours later than we’d intended.

DSCN0289 DSCN0290 DSCN0292 DSCN0296 DSCN0297 DSCN0302 DSCN0304 DSCN0307 DSCN0309 DSCN0310 DSCN0313 DSCN0315 DSCN0318 DSCN0320 DSCN0322 DSCN0326 DSCN0329 DSCN0332 DSCN0334 DSCN0338 DSCN0340 DSCN0341

Of course there was still time for a detour that involved a camel ride with Ogie and some Golden Eagle photo-ops. The drive out was amazingly green. As you can see in 320, what the Mongolians lack in infrastructure they make up for with invisible horses. Wrestling is a huge part of Naadam, and I was not able to escape it. I went 0, 2, and 1, but that was still enough to land me third place in the family contest with all the pomp, circumstance, and fermented mare’s milk, (airag,) that such an accomplishment affords. These were some of the last pictures I took with my broken camera, and a few came out very blurry because of it. In the shirtless flexing pictures, I am the whiter blur than the other ones, as you might have guessed. Lots of soccer, singing, and sloshing with the extended family ensued. A sudden downpour necessitated running outside to retrieve a gigantic mound of drying firewood, which, after a few rounds of singing Mongolian anthems and drinking Mongolian vodka, was quite an ordeal. I could not believe the degree to which I was considered part of the family for this holiday. I held two newborn babies, got to watch the hilarious, highly bowlegged dance of a two-year-old cousin (I am assured that she will be braced so as to have straight legs when she grows up,) and had to sing a few songs myself. We’ll just leave how that part went out of this.

The storm appears to have started up again. It was a perfectly clear, starry night just an hour ago. Speaking of which, the night sky here is ridiculous. The Milky Way stretches across the sky like a glass of spilled Airag. Whoa, the lightening is REALLY close. The thunder shakes the windows in their panes, and me in my boots.

DSCN0366 DSCN0369 DSCN0370 DSCN0372 DSCN0374 DSCN0377 DSCN0383 DSCN0384 DSCN0386 DSCN0391 DSCN0393 DSCN0395 DSCN0396 DSCN0398 DSCN0400 DSCN0401 DSCN0402 DSCN0403 DSCN0406 DSCN0407 DSCN0408 DSCN0410 DSCN0413

Way post-Naadam: Just this past Sunday, I got to help raise a ger for my host brother and his new family. I brought Wally, Cara, Kathleen, Ryan, and Tim along for the ordeal. It was extremely hot and sunny, so handling giant sheets of felt (which smell precisely like a barn filled with sheep) wasn’t the most fun of activities, but it was a really good experience.

DSCN0447 DSCN0449 DSCN0450 DSCN0452 DSCN0454

Last night, we had a ger-warming party for Irka (my host brother.) If you take the party from Naadam, above, and cross it with an American house-warming party, but subtract electricity, so the entire gathering is lit by only my flashlight dangling from the rafters and the hazy beams of a car that’s left running and pointed into the ger, you pretty much get the idea. Also, multiply however much vodka you imagined by three. It was a LOT of fun. Kathleen and I had to sing when the communal vodka bowl came our way, so we broke out with “Hey Jude,” and “Let it Be.” They actually knew the songs, and we were a hit. Everyone you see (except the fellow PC volunteers) in the Naadam party pictures, the ger raising pictures, and the gerwarming pictures are extended Mongolian family of mine who I see several times a week. I love it.

DSCN0414 DSCN0415

This week we started teaching in earnest. No more micro-teaching with classes of 15, yesterday we had 68 to the two of us teachers. Lesson planning and execution is proving to be a lot of fun, and my teaching partner, Anna, is superb. The only pictures I have of this are from a demonstration we did of professions yesterday. Anna was a movie star, so I popped out my camera and pranced around her, snapping photos and asking for an autograph. Other notable demonstrations included me pulling out a real matchbox, nearly setting myself aflame, passing out, and getting bodily dragged out of the room by her. Needless to say, the students adore our doing this. I brought a kid up to the front to be a doctor, and when I feigned a heart attack, he started doing real compressions on my chest. This was obviously not the most comfortable of student-to-teacher chest groping interactions, but then, when are they ever? He gets an A for effort, I guess.

DSCN0456 DSCN0457 DSCN0458 DSCN0459

The very last pictures you see in this update are of the near-tornado that almost touched down in my district. I guess that brings you up to date. The roof’s leaking again, and the worst part is that the water, usually a precious commodity, isn’t even usable as it’s trickled through a pretty gross attic. Who needs bathing anyway? I haven’t showered in over a month now. It keeps the khasha dogs away.