Berlin-->Nice-->Barcelona-->Paris

Guten tag (again)!

I’m back in Berlin! Once again my blogging consistency has failed and it’s been three some weeks since I’ve posted. To catch you up, if you’re interested, this is what I’ve done so far.

Berlin, Germany

I spent three days in Berlin recovering from tonsillitis, waiting for my ears to pop from the airplane’s descent (took four very painful days of waiting), waiting for my bank to understand that I would be withdrawing money from strange places and waiting for a train to Nice, France. I tried to spend as little as possible and just walked around the city for the duration of my stay.

I met up with an old friend (from pre-school) who accompanied me to Nice and on to Barcelona. We visited the Holocaust Memorial, which was more striking and eerie that I had anticipated; snacked on some currywurst at a little indoor market waiting for the rain to pass; and visited Soluna Brot und Öl, to see if the New York Times really knew what they were talking about. We bought a two kilo loaf of Rundling bread and some raspberry-ginger jam and snacked on a picnic bench outside a nearby church (and for days after…the loaf lasted us about a week).

Nice, France

We finally boarded a night train from Berlin to Nice the following day to arrive in a torrential downpour. We planned to stay three nights at the Villa Saint Exupery Hostel up on the hill waiting in anticipation of Barcelona where we were going to meet Claire, yet another friend from grade school. We spent two days wandering the beach, harbors and markets, especially admiring the fake-snow covered conifers displayed at the ubiquitous Christmas markets.

Barcelona, Spain

We met Jacob, a student from Stanford who was traveling to Barcelona day ahead of us. With no set itinerary, we cancelled our last night in the Villa and followed Jacob to Barcelona a day early. Together we took a free walking tour around Las Ramblas, the main road through Barcelona, and otherwise just wandered the city taking in sights like Gaudi’s Sangrada Familia.

The next day when Jacob had left, we met up with Claire and spent the next five nights in Kabul hostel off of the Placa Reial. Experiencing the night life in Barcelona requires one to sleep half the day if not more, as things don’t really get started until 2am and last until 6am. We still managed to be awake in daylight hours to see the Barcelona Zoo, the magic fountain and catch a movie at the Verdi Cinema. And lots of paella, tapas and sangria were consumed in those five days.

Paris, France

Claire returned to the States from Barcelona on the 21st. We said our good-byes and Owen and I set off North. We went as far as Montpellier then parted ways, he back to Nice, I to Paris. I hadn’t anticipated visiting the bank-draining metropolis, but it had the cheapest flights out to Dublin, my next stop, so made a pit stop in the interim.

I stayed at a 20 Euro a night hostel, the cheapest I could find, for three nights. I spent the following two days leisurely (and cheaply) seeing the city. In an attempt to travel cheaply I ate mostly out of a grocery marts (with the exception of some compulsory éclairs and crepes), enjoying some Muenster, camembert and bries on bread.

My first site was the Notre Dame Cathedral. I had intended to find an English bookstore, but the metro stop I got off at was coincidentally kitty-corner to the magnanimous church. Shakespeare & Co., the bookstore I was trying to find, ended up being right across the street and rather than finding a guide book as I had hoped, I walked out with a new Chuck Palahniuk novel and read several chapters at a neighboring café with an espresso and crepe. I perused the Jardin du Luxumbourg, the Pantheon perimeter (it was 11 Euro to go inside) and wandered the streets en route to the Tour Eiffel.

That night I visited the Eiffel Tower. I showed up before sunset to see it in daylight. I found another café around the corner and read and consumed copious amounts of espresso until twilight when the lights turned on. I retired to my hostel with a round of brie, a loaf of bread and an orange for a quiet evening.
The next day I circled the Arc du Triomphe (9 Euro to see the center) and the Musee du Louvre exterior. I stopped at yet another café for an espresso and éclair and read. A friend had recommended that I scale the Eiffel Tower at night so I returned for another go. I spent sunset perusing a Christmas market across just across the Seine. I enjoyed some warm Christmas wine and a chocolate crepe in the waiting. At twilight I paid 3.50 Euro to scale the 800 some stairs to viewing level one and two. I waited for over an hour and was on my way down when the delightfully tacky twinkle show started. When it was all said and done I descended the tower, headed back to the hostel and enjoyed some Muenster and rye and prepared for my early morning flight.

Dublin is another story. I'll update soon (this time I promise!).

Epic Blog Fail

I’m writing this post (or at least the start of it) in a quiet morning lounge in Frankfurt, Germany’s airport. There’s complimentary tea and coffee, free newspapers and the people greet me in German because they can’t tell I’m foreign (!). If you’re not a Facebook enthusiast or haven’t been in direct contact with me, you’re probably wondering why I’m in Germany… Well, I’ll tell you a little story.

Once upon a time, there was a young girl who was traveling abroad in Mongolia. “Mongolia?!” They all said, “Where is that?!”

“It’s a rather large country above China and below Russia and I’m ecstatic to go,” I said. “And I’ll keep a blog of all my happenings so that you can learn a little about what (and where) Mongolia is.”

FAIL.

I think I quit after Khuvsgul. I hope that you all have been following Glimpse as my weekly deadline kept me posting. As for the incentive-less blog-spot, well check my last post date. In any case I told many of you that I would be traveling the Trans-Siberian Rail from Ulaanbaatar to Moscow, experiencing the frigid temperatures of December Russia and seeing the Urals. I was going to depart Moscow to Helsinki and travel the Euro-Rail wherever my heart desired this winter’s break. I planned to meet a dear friend in Barcelona for a week or so, but other than that I was itinerary-less. In fact I never bought a ticket home, date TBD.

So what happened to the Trans-Siberian you might ask? Talk to the Russian Embassy. I unfortunately never got a Russian visa before leaving the States, hearing through the wireless grapevine that I could easily obtain one in country. I had three months, no problem. I acquired my visa application form in the cold concrete building in UB and even found a Russian speaking friend who wanted to accompany me (at least to St. Petersburg).

As you might know, Russians can be sticklers about who they let in their precious borders. We needed an invitation. No problem, we thought. My friend knew a friend in Moscow that we could register with and avoid the invitation fees. Some conflict of interest or limited amount of time (one of the two) meant that she couldn’t invite us, but was pleased to offer a residency for registry. We went to the Mongolian Russian Embassy website, clicked the red-white-and-blue link to an “official invitation” site and paid 56USD each for a little slip of paper to arrive by fax. Yes!

Harry, the man we were corresponding with, didn’t fax but emailed a PDF copy of our invitation. “Sounds good. Thanks a lot, Harry.” We drop by a little photo studio in the back of a clothing store in downtown UB, have some horrid portraits taken and photoshopped to oblivion and head to the Embassy.

When we dropped by the Embassy last they said, since we were registered for over 90 days in Mongolia we could obtain a visa no problem. We show up with our appropriate documents and you guessed it, get denied.

“Do you have the original copy of your invitation?” the woman asks.
“Um, no. We used the promotional site on your website, to which the protocol is fax, although we got a PDF.”

“No, I’m sorry we need the original in order to get your visa. Oh and you’ll also need three weeks for processing.” Harry!! Peeved, running out of time and visa-less I immediately contacted Harry asking him if there was any way we could have the original copy shipped to us. ASAP.

Being in country for about two months at that point, I had discovered the reason we call it ‘snail mail.’ Mongolian mail is incredibly slow and rather unreliable and as far as the students and I were concerned a big basket of envelopes en route to the U.S. sit around until the basket is full and only then are they shipped to China and then to the U.S. Parcels have been averaging three weeks or more and at a $100 DHL charge, the short time constraint wasn’t worth the price. So we gave up. On to Plan B.

My dear friend would still be waiting for me Barcelona and tickets across the Pacific were far too over-priced. So on November 14th after much deliberation I booked a flight from Ulaanbaatar to Berlin. I would leave on December 8th from UB, fly to Beijing, take a red-eye to Frankfurt and arrive in Berlin at 8am on the 9th.
So here I am. In Frankfurt, ten minutes from boarding and less than two hours from setting foot on European soil for the first time. I’ve booked a hostel for a night in Berlin and then the continent is mine to explore. I’ll be in Barcelona on the 15th, as promised, but otherwise I am still itinerary-less. Since I failed at updating you on my Mongolian ventures, I’ll do my best to keep tabs on my Euro-trip.

Wish me luck, pray that my tonsillitis will go away and stay tuned. And if I’ve disappointed you in blogging, call me when I’m back in the States and I’ll make time to grab coffee and re-tell all my Mongolian stories in person.

Khuvsgul Catch Up

I’m alive, I promise. My apologies for not updating the ‘mingle’ for some time. I meant to give you all the scoop on the rest of Khuvsgul before I left for Khentii and then when I got back from Khentii I meant to give you two scoops on both Khuvsgul and Khentii, but I failed and I’ve returned from Sainshand without giving you anything. Please forgive. To make up for lost time I’ll start by giving you the breakdown of my Khuvsgul homestay day by day. Here goes:

September 12:
Today was the first full day of my homestay. My father had arrived late the night before so I woke up hazy eyed to his greeting. My host mother gave me a hot bowl of milk tea and some fresh bread with orom. Orom is the foam ladled off the top of boiling yak or cow’s milk. When the foam is cooled you’re left with a rich and creamy spread that is absolutely delicious. I helped my sister shovel the poop out of our goat and sheep pen. It was an octagonal fence with made from several Siberian larch logs. I glamorously pushed thousands of little goat terds with the flat, tarnished shovel into a big pile in the corner of the pen. Then my ten year old sister, Hulan and I shoveled the pile onto a torn synthetic burlap sack and in several trips moved the pile to a larger dung heap about ten meters away. My host mother was so proud of my poop-scooping abilities that she invited me back into the ger for another cup of milk tea and a hard candy. About an hour later I was sitting inside the ger watching my mother mend a shirt. Hulan was running back and forth from behind the ger to the door bringing my mother new cuts of meat. I asked my mother if I could help her at all and she took my hand and led me outside. My father, Tsogtbayar, my oldest sister, Ariuntogs, and Hulan were busy slaughtering a sheep and my mother sat me down with them. My father had already skinned it and removed its organs and was now separating the cuts of meat. Ariuntogs handed me a knife and one end of the large intestine. We squeezed out the rest of its dung onto the grass and then slit the small intestine along the top. Then we scraped the inside out. After we had finished, we went inside to prepare dinner. We rinsed out the stomach and then poured a mixture of blood and salt until it inflated ten times its size. We cut strips of fat, the small intestine, and some unidentified rubbery thing to stuff the large intestines for a ‘sausage.’ The stuffing was topped off with some more blood and salt and the end was sewed shut with a splinter of wood. All our concoctions and the liver and kidney were tossed into a pot of boiling water and left to simmer for an hour. I had already determined that I didn’t like the boiled blood the day before and I was hoping I could skirt that portion of the feast. But they generously gave me a piece of everything, extra blood and I had to choke it down. After several offered helpings I was finally able to convince them I was full.

September 13:
I helped my mother make aaruul today. Aaruul is the traditional Mongolian cheese curd that’s rock hard and rather sour. It’s made from yogurt that’s boiled for an hour over the fire. It’s thickened and cooled and poured into silk fabrics, placed into a tray and put outside to harden in a rectangular shape. Once it’s hard enough to remove from the fabric, it’s broken into smaller blocks and dried for several days. When it rains we have to run it inside before it gets wet. A storm rolled in today and I made several emergency runs with my mother. Our ger had a solar panel which powered our single energy-saving lightbulb and black and white satellite television. That evening we watched sumo wrestling. Boiled mutton and flour noodle soup for dinner.

September 14:
My little sisters departed for school today. Countryside kids spend the week in dormitories at the Soum center and come home on the weekends. After an hour of preparation, packing clothing, food, and books, the family loaded all their supplies to the back of the motorcycle and my father, mother and two younger sisters set off for school. I spent a large part of the day examining our ger and landscape today. My family has two gers side by side. One housed Ariuntogs and my sister-in-law, Bolormaa (I had two older brothers, only one of whom I met) the other housed my mother, father, two younger sisters and myself. Ours was a relatively large ger with five walls. The stove in the center was tarnished and black. There were two beds on the east and west sides. The north end traditionally holds an altar. The altar can house anything that the family cherishes or finds sacred: photos, buddhas, figurines, offering plates, etc. The Darkhaad Depression was an open, grassy valley nestled between a majestic mountain range and a river in front of rolling hills. My family’s camp sat a few hundred meters from the river in a field of boulders, something that I still don’t quite understand. Boiled mutton and flour noodles for dinner.

September 15:
This morning Ariuntogs and I rode our pair of horses to the Bag center (local ‘town’ center) to purchase some items at the store. We rode through several ger camps and as my blonde head stuck out, were approached by several locals to share their greetings. The store we visited was a short larch log shack too short to house me. The store’s owner was an adorable little eight year old boy with Down syndrome who shook my hand and then proceeded to sneak candy out of the baskets. I later found out that he was the son of every family in the bag center and known as the happy child. We bought a package of baaw (cookies), a block of black tea, a package of raspberry gum and a bottle of lotion. On our way back we were approached by a young, drunk man on his galloping horse. He tried to sweet talk my sister, but his attempts failed and when we gave up and galloped away my sister raised her pinky finger at him and said he was gross (an upturned pinky finger is akin to a downturned thumb). In the afternoon my father took me out for another ride to herd our sheep and goat herd. We rode to the highest point in the middle of the valley, dismounted our horses and looked over the landscape through his tarnished binoculars. He took me a few kilometers further and taught me the names of each mountain in sight. We met two of his friends and dismounted again to take a break. Laying on one shoulder, I chewed a piece of grass and watched the three of them roll cigarettes in old newspaper and smoke them in the afternoon sun. We stayed out several hours and when we cantered back I was (surprisingly) eagerly awaiting our dinner of boiled mutton and flour noodle soup.

September 16
Today was a very, very bad day. I had thought a month into my stay in Mongolia I had outsmarted my body and skipped the usual twenty-four hour sickness. Not true. I woke up at 4am violently ill. I spent the five hours running in and out of the ger. I spent the afternoon with an empty body, trying to sleep off the pain. This was the day our class was supposed to visit the local shaman and ranger and I was extremely disappointed that I slept the entire day. At 7pm my family drew me a bath (filled the little metal tub with boiling water and let me crouch in the tub with a ladle. Needless to say I was happy for that day to end and for my sickness to be over. The family had boiled mutton and flour noodle soup for dinner, but I opted out of dinner.

September 17:
I watched my host father kill fifty flies with a rubberband in our ger today. He held one side back like a slingshot and nailed them every time. I helped shovel poop out of the goat pen again this morning. The afternoon was devoted to scraping moldy aaruul. Aaruul is an extremely important food in the winter and helps sustain the family in the toughest of times. My family stocks up on aaruul in the spring, summer and fall months in preparation, storing bags and bags of the hardened curds on the periphery of the ger. We had a bag that had gotten wet at some point and was covered in mold. Rather than dispose of the supply we spent hours scraping the spores with a knife (the same knives used for preparing dinner after a quick wipe of a rag). To spice things up, we had buudz for dinner tonight, one of my favorite Mongolian dishes, steamed lamb dumplings.

September 18:
One of my last days with my host family we spent a large part of the day taking family portraits. We saddled up the horses with the traditional, decorative saddles, dressed up in deels and started snapping away. In the afternoon I visited my peer’s ger for our language class. She lived fifteen kilometers away and my father and I took our motorcycle across the valley to get there. She lived by a series of healing springs and after our lesson the students and I drank to our head, stomach, eyes, heart and ears. This evening I helped my sister weave rope from the hair of a yak’s tail. First we separated the hairs and laid them out in large squares. The squares were rolled up and twisted with two hands to make tighter strands. Two of the tighter strands are then twisted and rolled into a longer rope. For the saddle straps we were making, three of the twisted ropes were then braided and leather bound hooks were sewn to the ends. Boiled mutton and flour noodle soup.

September 19:
Today was the last full day of my homestay. I spent most of the day scraping mold again. By the afternoon I had developed arthritis. I tried to explain to my family the probability of my graduate school path. They told me I study too much, but said it was a good thing. They gave me their address to mail them my photos and told me I should visit them again. A heavy snowstorm had hit UB much of southern Mongolia. As a result our drivers were delayed getting to us in the isolated Darkhaad valley and we fortunately got to stay with our host families a little longer. Boiled mutton and flour noodle soup.

September 20:
We were supposed to depart at 8am, but the storm delayed our departure until 3pm. It was a slow and bittersweet morning. My family gave me a wooden necklace and a vest my sister had made me as departing gifts. In the afternoon a surprise entrepreneur stopped by our house. My host mother teared up as I left and kissed me on the cheek. It was sad to say good-bye. We drove into Ulaan Uul, the Soum center, for the night and had soup for dinner again.

In the interim...

I've got more stories from my trip to the countryside that I will be posting in the next day or two, but in the interim I'll tell you about the picnic I had with my family yesterday.

I had originally wanted to visit the Museum of Mongolian Traditional Medicine this Sunday and my host family in UB said they would be happy to accompany me (my host father is a doctor of traditional medicine...I watched him do acupuncture in our living room.) but when I woke up that morning my mother said that her brother was going to a monastery and asked if I wanted to come. Of course I did, so I postponed the museum outing for the time being. After a fresh breakfast of eggs, 'sausage,' cucumbers and yellow rice tea (like milk tea, but with sauteed yellow rice kernels added into the mix) my uncle, aunt, and two cousins arrived at our house with a Chinngis Khaan hot water thermos and a bag full of apples.

We piled nine people into their low-rolling van and set out. I thought we were driving to the Gandon Monastery in town, but as it turned out we started driving to the next aimag over, Tuv. Forty five minutes and a flat tire later we arrived at the gates of Manzhir monastery park. At most parks or famous sites foreigners have to pay two to sometimes five times the entrance fee, but my host mother successfully told the fare collector that I was her daughter and I got in Mongol price.

We pulled into the parking lot filled with tourist buses and minivans, poured all nine people out of the van and started up the hill. Manzhir is one of many monasteries that were destroyed during the religious oppression under Soviet control. All that stood was the clay bricks of a foundation, a partially reconstructed wooden building turned museum and the modest wooden roofs scattered across the mountains face protecting large paintings of Guatama Buddha on the largest of outcropped boulders. My host father and mother are both practicing Buddhists, so the summit to each hut yielded whispered prayers and bowed heads.

I was es tactic to have an opportunity for climbing. Being in a crowded district and just coming out of a cold front the air quality in UB is horrendous and will only get worse, inhibiting my runs or any form of exercise out of doors. My mother called me a mountain goat as I hopped up the rocks to the peak where an ovoo had been erected overlooking the valley. After circling it three times in solitude, my family finally caught up to me and we decided to descend back down to our van.

At the base, my father and uncle went down to the car while the rest of us staked out our picnic spot for our late afternoon meal. When we found a few square meters of stone free grass my uncle and father returned with a rolled up carpet on one shoulder and bags and bags of food and drinks. We rolled out the floor rug, removed our shoes and began the feast and I mean feast.

My mother feeds me like there's no tomorrow. Even when my hands were full with an apple and half a sandwich she reached out to me with a cookie and yet another sandwich and said, 'Eat Lindsay, eat.' We had three loaves of bread, apples, grapes, oranges, chocolate cookies and wafers, pickles, salami and the holy grail of Mongolian picnics, an entire pig's head. My uncle whipped out the cutting board and started slicing pieces of fat from it's neck and ears. Shortly followed by my mother making me another sandwich. I tried to explain to them that I prefer the leaner meats, but my attempts were lost in translation and my ability to reiterate my preferences obstructed by the two other sandwiches I was being forced to eat.

When the sun set over Tuv aimag and our family had finished eating we packed up the leftovers, rolled up the carpet and piled back into the van to drive into the early evening lights of UB. What I had expected to be a three hour tour (a three hour tour) of Gandon Monastary turned out to be a whole day of climbing and chewing the fat. It didn't work out so well for the paper I had to write that evening, but I must admit it was one of the most interesting picnics I've had in a while. And that beats the watermelon and three spoons party I had on the Ithaca Commons late this August.

Russian Hummers and Boiled Blood

Sain baina uu!

I’m back from the countryside! We spent the last two weeks traveling to Khuvsgul Aimag (the northernmost province in Mongolia) for our countryside homestay in the Darkhaad Depression. We flew from UB on EZNis Airlines into the small rustic town of Murun, the aimag center, surrounded by vast plains and low rocky mountains. From Murun it was some 300 kilometers to our homestay site, so we stopped at a ger camp for the night.

On our way to the ger camp we stopped at Uushgiin Hondii to see the largest known deerstone site in Mongolia. We were able to hike around the valley below our camp before our dinner: spaghetti and meat (sans sauce). I shared a cozy ger with two of my peers for the night and woke up to a light dusting of snow across the plains.

The second day’s drive took about nine hours. Our group rode in three grey Russian vans which are virtually indestructible. The dirt road from Murun to Ulaan Uul, the Soum center (regional town) closest to our homestay site, was beaten and undefined. Years of wear in the sloppiest of conditions have beaten the road into a lumpy mess. New paths are created whenever the mud gets too thick, so our drivers were constantly jerkily swerving to pick the “smoothest” route. If there’s one thing I’m thrilled I didn’t inherit from my mother, it’s her car sickness. In the bumpiest parts we drove 5 km an hour and to make up for such slow moments of travel the smooth parts became a race track for our three drivers, often slamming the brakes when we approached a dip too large to handle. I was surprised our car didn’t roll at some points or float away as we drove straight through a river. The Russian Hummers, as one of my teachers called them, are fearless.

Lunch was at a canteen ger along the road and the family that lived there invited us in for soup and tea. We stopped for directions at a snowy spot and broke the travel monotony with an impromptu snowball fight (we were all excited to see snow). We descended into the Darkhaad Depression, a valley of grassy pasture paralleled by a snowcapped mountain range and entirely Siberian Larch forests, after passing a line of ovoos or shrines. I was given a handful of seed and gradually tossed the grains onto the shrine while circling it three times. The ritual supposedly brings good luck so we all obliged. When we arrived in Ulaan Uul around 6 pm we were sick of driving (some more literally than others). We wandered the ghostly streets along broken wooden fences and worn down alley roads to find the last remaining open shop. We bought a jar of peaches and a bottle of Khuvsgul’s own vodka and spent the evening sharing stories and chasing the bottle of rubbing alcohol with peach syrup.

The next day was a short drive to our homestay sight. At the base camp we a lunch of bread with orom (the foam from boiled milk cooled into a delicious cream), khuushuur (meat filled fried dumplings), and the organs of a recent sheep slaughter; stomach, liver, kidney, sausage (intestines stuffed with strips of stomach and liver), and the notorious boiled blood. I ate all but the kidney. The stomach was like chewing gum, the liver wasn’t bad (I had been eating liver paste for breakfast with my UB family two weeks prior), the sausage had a good taste, but a…diverse texture, and the boiled blood was….not my favorite. It’s served in slices like discs. The texture is smooth, but it falls into pieces as soon as you take a bite. I found taking it in one bite was the best way to consume it. It tasted….like blood. I later found out they often season it with lots of salt and some diced onion, the only flavorings in the countryside. It was salty, rich and though I didn’t gag like Bear Grylls, I was not about to have seconds.

We had a brief horse riding lesson after lunch where we got to try the Mongolian saddles. They’re wooden and seem more decorative than practical. The saddle itself is so narrow one can’t sit inside of it. In a walk, you sit on the back and anything above canter you just stand. SIT provided us with combination Mongol-Western saddles which allowed us to sit, but were no more comfortable. Mongolian horses also come in a size small, so my time riding that week was quite humorous.

My host mother and sister were kneeling in the group of parents when we were all introduced. She raised her thin, short body to greet me; my sister stayed kneeling behind her. I used up my arsenal of Mongolian dialogue in a few minutes and so we sat silently, my sister still watching me intently, waiting for the van to drive us to our ger. The rest of the day was spent spitting out my limited vocabulary, flipping through my translation dictionary and dancing out my life story to my new family. I showed them pictures of my family and tried to explain the professions of my parents. I tried to explain that my mother is an orthodontic technician, but all I could get out was “dentist.” Hope you like the change in profession, Mom (or should I say doctor). A number of my explanations were similarly simplified and falsified. If ever find yourself in the Darkhaad Depression, my new major at Cornell is ‘grass’ and I no longer hail from the evergreen state rather our nation’s capital.

I got better at communicating as the week went on, but the first day was rough. As evening settled in my host mother poured me a cup of warm milk tea and at 9 pm when the stars were drifting across the Darkhaad valley I settled into my bed of folded blankets and deels.

Sain uu!

I'm posting to say that I won't be posting for a while. We'll be departing tomorrow for the countryside, Hovsgol aimag, where we'll be with our rural homestay family for two weeks. I'll have much to say when I return and many photos to share. Don't worry if you don't hear from me for a while. I'll be out of internet entire contact for the two weeks. I'll respond to emails when I return.

In the meantime, check out my first blog post on Glimpse!

Khaans, picked pockets and the new fam.

Bonding over Chinggis, becoming a pick-pocket victim, getting lost on the UB bus system and meeting the former Prime Minister of Mongolia. Much has happened since I arrived in UB a week and a half ago and I apologize for my poor correspondence as of late. The first week was action packed with orientation, over the weekend we moved in with our UB host families and this week was our first section of classes. SIT has kept me busy, busy, busy.

There are five other students in my program: Sam, Brandon, Nathan, Kara and Britt. All of us are from the States and I think all of us are juniors. We started out in Anuujin Hotel in central UB about a half hour walk from our school. It was nice all being together and there was a nice pub across the street (they like to call bars pubs here) which meant for some lovely evenings testing out Mongolia's brews. I think the general consensus lays with Khar Khorin. We had a number of informative introductions to the city and the program which unfortunately has kept us too busy to explore on our own. A lot of us are antsy to get out and about.

We visited Narantuul, literally the black market, last week as part of our orientation. It's a few acres of endless stalls and tents selling everything from Cucci bags and Adidoos shoes to sofas, chainsaws, Changhong satellite dishes, fabrics, bike parts, kitchen supplies, meat, dairy in addition to some hairstyling and nail painting service shops. It's a pick-pocketer's dream with crowded aisles, lots of money coming in and out and quite a few foreigners. I had put a pack of cards in my back pocket to see if anyone would take it, but no luck. I'm going to keep trying though. Our visit was not without purpose. We were given 1000 Tugrik (about 75 cents), an hour and a half and asked to buy something that would be useful in our countryside visit. A lot harder than sounds. I spent and hour and fifteen minutes perusing all the sections and getting lost. I finally ended up with a MacGyver-esque needle and thread which was well-received. We're going back later in the week to get riding boots for our trip to the countryside next Wednesday for our first rural homestay.

Last week we all ventured through central UB to Mobicom to buy some cell phones for our stay. When we got to Mobicom I took off my pack to find my bag open and wallet gone. I may have escaped Narantuul, but I was a target on the streets and they outsmarted me. Needless to say, I didn't get my phone that day and rushed home to start calling my bank and canceling accounts. B of A said they could express ship me a new ATM card, but when I gave them my address here in Mongolia they rejected it. Street names here are obsolete. Mongolian directions are by proximity: next the Laos Embassy, near Sukhbaatar Square, etc. Thus, the postal system has to rely entirely on P.O. Boxes. Well B of A doesn't approve of P.O. Boxes, so I had them send it to my house in WA and my parents will send it here. I'm eagerly and frugally awaiting it's arrival.

Our UB hometay started Saturday. I'm living with a family in the fourth district about 10 kilometers from my school. My father, Tomorbaatar, is a doctor of traditional medicine. My mother, Ariuna, works has his assistant in his clinic. My sister, Odko, is 17 and will be studying international business in Australia come October. Very friendly, very helpful and they feed me well! I may be missing those leafy greens, but what Mongolia lacks in vegetative variety they make up in quantity!

I take a bus to and from school everyday. The UB bus system is rather ridiculous as far as I can tell. Market economy ideologies have carried over to the bus system and they really enforce efficiency. Forget the word bus, I ride to school in a clown car. I can take the five or the thirteen route, but the only confirmed stops are where I get on and where I get off. If the bus gets stuck in traffic or it can't turn left it will spontaneously take a detour. Yesterday the driver literally jumped the curb, did a number of three point turns and went back to the main road skipping three stops. My first day riding the bus I ended up taking the wrong one home. I was rushing out of the UB Hotel (the best wireless in UB) and jumped the first bus with the number five pasted to its window. But apparently there's more than one five route and I got on the wrong one. When we were approaching my neighborhood and it was supposed to turn left it kept on trucking. I got off about 3 kilometers from where I wanted to be and had to flag a taxi for the rest of my ride.

Today we visited the government building in UB and met with the former Prime Minister R. Amarjargal. We talked with him about Mongolia's economy, the effects of the global economic crisis on Mongolia and mining interests. Then we got a tour of the government building. We got to see the Parliament room and a number of works of art. I'll elaborate later.

A week from today we'll be heading up to Hosvgol Aimag (province) for our first country-side homestay. We'll be there for two weeks and will be back mid-September. I've been restraining my typically snap-happy habits to try and adjust this week. When I go to a knew place everything seems worthy of a picture and my snap-happy habit takes on plague-like symptoms. I've desensitized myself a little to my new environment and have learned a little about keeping my beloved Nikon out of some particularly eager hands. I'm hoping for my first real photo outing this weekend and will post some pictures soon. I'll also be taking my camera to Hovsgol for as long as my batteries last, so expect some new photos after that. I've taken a lot of video, but I've only uploaded a few so far. I'll get working on that as well.

Mongolia is incredible so far! Despite the bumpy landing, this semester is taking off. I'll keep posting.

Bayaritai!

I'm here!

From DFW to LAX to PEK to ULN, I arrived on time (for once) in Ulaanbaatar Monday morning. Twenty-two hours of flight time and a red-eye from Los Angeles to Beijing meant the jet-lag crept up on me halfway into our program’s first academic lecture on Sino-Mongolian relations, but I’ve managed to adjust to the 12 hour time difference pretty quickly. The LAX-PEK flight was twelve and some hours. A few rounds of single serving Air Chinese, half of a This American Life podcast, and nine hours of sleep made the flight go by quickly. I was lucky enough to have an empty seat next to me, which made for a relatively comfortable economy ride. I met Sam, Kara and Britt, three of my five peers, in Beijing at the boarding gate for ULN. We cracked the ice over some tea and edimame one of the terminal’s cafes then scurried off to catch our last leg.

The descent into ULN was surreal. The juxtaposition of gers (yurts), energy stacks, open fields and city bustle was like nothing I’ve ever seen. When we first touched down I saw the airport’s terminal with the city’s skyline in the background and by the time the plane had pulled its brakes there was nothing but open land. One of our program directors picked us up and drove us to the Anuujin Hotel where we’ll be staying for our orientation week. Driving through the exit gates at the airport a herd of goats and several horses crossed in front of our black land rover escort, which I quickly became desensitized to. The whole drive into UB was a bizarre juxtaposition of rural and urban landscapes. In America, the two are separated by a fence or a distinguished border. In the countryside and the outskirts of UB there are no fences.

My first Mongolian dinner dish was unee hel or cattle tongue. Not much flavor but it tastes a little like roast beef and the texture is very similar. In Mongolian, hel also means language. Mongol hel is Mongolian, anglo hel is English. My reading has significantly improved since I’ve arrived, acting like a four year old reading every word I see. I’m starting to pick up speaking too and we start our first formal language class today. I’m really determined to become proficient by the time I leave. I didn’t have much background before I left, but I’m determined.

Genghis Grill

Speak of the devil, tonight in celebration of my bon voyage, I had Mongolian BBQ and a "Khan Mojito."

I also made the strawberry-rhubarb pie, as promised.

I am NOT a parfait

I leave for Mongolia on Saturday. So I wrote a poem today:

My sweet leafy greens

My dearest nectarines

You are loved

You will be missed

By thine taste bud

I have kissed

You good-bye.

To all the fruits and vegetables out there, this blog entry pays tribute to you, the herbaceous wonders of the world. Arugula, you were dear to me. Kale, too kind. Cabbage, so sweet. I will miss you. Mongolia is not necessarily known for its elaborate cuisine, partly because in America it’s been degraded to “Authentic Mongolian B-B-Q” and partly because it has none (so far as I know). While my vegetarian and part-time vegan habits were inspired and maintained by the atrocities of the American meat industry (e.g. Food, Inc.) I’ve grown accustomed to the lifestyle and have since maintained it partially out of preference. It’s become clear to me that with the exception of artichokes my dietary inclination is to all things autotrophic. But to each his own and to Mongolia it is mutton.

In Mongolia, meat and dairy aren’t just the staples of the diet, they’re the staples, the paper, the ink and the essay. In Ulaanbaatar and a few other urban areas some fruits and vegetables will be available, but for the most part I will soon accustom myself to the diet that strengthened the Mongol army centuries ago. Since I’ve gone meatless for some time, this summer I tried to reintroduce meat to my digestive system and so far the interactions have been civil. I started buying lamb and mutton from the Ithaca Farmer’s Market and since arriving in Dallas have been consuming meat at least once a day. As for dairy, I was graciously gifted with a gigantic cheese platter after the E.L. Rose Conservancy’s photo contest ceremony and spent my last week in Ithaca nibbling on the lactose medley. It’s no comparison to my upcoming diet, but it’s a start and I think my digestive system is ready.

One of the books we were assigned prior to our program’s start is Clifford Geertz’s “Interpretations of Cultures.” In the second chapter, he explains the “stratigraphic” conception of human life. He says, “man is a composite of ‘levels,’ each superimposed upon those beneath it and underpinning those above it.” There are certain ‘universal’ biological traits each Homo sapien has which in turn govern certain psychological functions which in turn influence certain social behaviors which in turn manifest themselves in the anthropologist’s Holy Grail of conceptions: the said Homo sapien’s culture. So in the deepest corners of our biological construction there is a single layer, a biological layer to which we almost all share. As you emerge from those cellular crevices and arrive at the brain, there lay another layer that is less common, a psychological layer. Above that, a social layer. And above that, a cultural layer. New experiences or living environments add more layers to each person’s unique collection. The further a layer is from the biological core, the more contextual variability there is within it. So while these layers can overlap among many they also provide the means for infinite diversity.

Though I almost immediately reverted back to the genius that is Shrek (thank you, Pixar, for my juvenile mind), this analogy made me think about my own layers. I started to think about my childhood and the psychological layers that were developing as a result of my biological layers. The way my brain learned to perceive a lump of brass as a candlestick and not a pair of faces or how it learned to differentiate shapes, colors, sounds, smells and then proceeded to label them. And the development of those layers were undoubtedly influenced by the social and cultural environments that I was brought up in. As a result of all that, the day-to-day phenomena that I experience have been assigned specific meanings and they will retain those meanings in perpetuity. I also thought about those angsty, emotional, frustrating adolescent years and how that was probably an acquisitional transition period where I went from having a meager collection of widely-shared inner layers to having my own diverse collection. The pair of rainbow knee-socks that I sported for two years in middle school wasn’t just the fashion faux paus of my Lincoln Spartan days, it was the manifestation of my stratigraphic self taking shape; my struggle to superimpose each layer into the one, cohesive ball of layers that everyone else calls Lindsay. Kind of like a cabbage (or an onion, but they have a certain...odor about them.).

I’ve come to realize that each new adventure, each new social or cultural experience that I have is my acquisition of a new layer or a new leaf. The more layers I have, the more well-rounded I become and I like being round, I always have. Rather than being the deformed cabbage that grew phototropically in one direction and turned out flat on one side, I’m hopefully maturing into the lush and robust Brassica that I’m proud to be. Moreover, each new experience that I have, each new layer that I develop can bring me closer to all the other Brassicas or all the other Captitatas or even all the other Brassicaceaes in the world. The more layers that I have, the more I share with others, the more I can relate with others and the more I can learn with others no matter how different we may be. Since I have those layers I have the means to mindfully share my knowledge, my philosophies and my culture. And because I've encouraged my adventurous side (for better or worse) I am no longer a mere biennial cluster subject to various tropisms rather I am an infinite learner. Forever growing round.

I live in the moment and by my senses. I love to see new places. I love to meet new people. I love to smell new things. I love to hear new music. And I really do love to try new foods (vegetable or otherwise). I think I love to do all these things because I love acquiring new layers. I am so excited to see what layers I gain this semester.

Who knows, I might come back to the States with an insatiable appetite for mutton. But all I know is that at the end of the day I can always go for some good, well-rounded cabbage.

Moreover, Cabbage, I’ll miss you.

Genghis Khan was the newt to my world

Saying goodbye to Susquehanna County for the season I returned to Ithaca in a "vista blue" Ford Focus equipped with Sirius satellite radio, a real fleet treat. It took me a while to figure out how to even work the radio, but when I did I came across Deepak Chopra's radio show and imediately became enthralled. He had Michio Kaku, the mind behind string theory and author of Physics of the Impossible. They devoted a full hour to discussing the theory of the "impossible."

Kaku depicted his first experience with the complex subject as a young child. He was peering into a goldfish pond and wondering what the societal structure of a goldfish community was like. Was there government? Were there teachers or scientists among them? As a goldfish scientist, he thought, the world above the water line must seem impossible. They know left, right, forwards and backwards, but above the surface was an unthinkable world sans gills or fins. To enter into the world as we humans know it was the impossible for the goldfish community and yet to us, it is commonplace and trivial. Kaku thought that the modern unthinkable things like alternate universes were the dry-land impossibilities of the human mind.

The two brilliant and soothing radio voices went on to describe the contents of Kaku's book in which he deliniates three classes of civilization. The first is a planetary civilization in which humans or the dominant population can harnass the power of the planetary systems. The second class is a stellar civilization in which the population can control the stars. The third, galactic. He said that we, the dominant population of the third rock from our sun, don't even qualify on this scale. We are essentially a class zero civilization as we are dependent on the energy of other organisms, be they live or fossilized. However, we are slowly approaching the transition and the internet is just one example of our strides of progress. The internet has begun to connect the world, share information and transform our kind into a unified, planetary, cooperative species. But to the tech-savvy be warned, Kaku said that the transition to a class one civilization is the most dangerous of all, nuclear weapon threats being an example.

A prominent glitch in our current civilization is the default to human emotion: anger, fear, passion, jealousy. In order to become a cooperative planetary civilization we need to adapt and mature mentally into the new global consciousness. While the modern world is full of borders and limits, the planetary world is unified. Until we can attain that paradigmatic view, our stuggle to globalize will be full of conflict, thus the dangerous transition.

I haven't read Kaku's book yet, but I hope to soon. In preparation for Mongolia, I've been coming up with questions I want to explore and Kaku's insight into the struggles of globalization have peaked my interest. Gaining independence and entering the global market both within the last century, Mongolia is experiencing the effects of rapid development and growth on its small, pastoral culture. What other nations have done over centuries, Mongolia has done in decades.

After answering the geographic inquiries of people I've told my upcoming travels to, I've realized that Mongolia has received very, very little attention. Despite the low frequency in national borders within Eastern Asia, Mongolia's presence has been somewhat ignored. Which is funny to me, because without Genghis Khan, our world would be totally different. Genghis Khan built more bridges, both literally and figuratively, than any other leader in history. He introduced the world at large to societies who thought their region was all there was. He connected the Eastern most points of Asia to the depths of Europe and the Middle East. His empire was the size of Africa. In my opinion, at a time when having a global consciouness was truly impossible, Genghis Khan had a stronger grasp than many current leaders today and we've mapped the sphere. And yet, he has been dismissed as a malicious conquerer who cared little for intercultural relations.

I think that this semester I'd really like to study the Mongolian mentality towards globalization and the development that's been sweeping through the country. The nomadic culture that has maintained its presence for centuries sees few borders. They read and listen to the land. To Genghis Khan Eternal Blue Sky was God. The Sky is not compressed into a single building or book, it is omnipresent and transcendent. It has no borders or limits. It is ever-present and watches over the planet. I think this sort of consciousness is critical for globalization and if still dominant, would be of great benefit to the nation's shift into the world economy.

A week from today, I'll be starting my journey from the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. I have much to do between now and then, but I really cannot wait. What a world Mongolia must be without gills.

Catching up on what hasn't begun

And the countdown begins...

On August 24th I'll be starting my semester abroad in Mongolia with the School for International Training (SIT). I've been wanting to write a pre-departure post for some time now, but it's been a bumpy and busy summer. Better late than never though, eh?

I had originally planned on a semester in Vietnam with SIT studying the ecology of the Mekong River Delta. Come early June, I had applied, been accepted and been busy preparing for the coming semester. Then I received a heartbreaking email: "We regret to inform you that your program has been canceled." Only two other people had been accepted into the Mekong program and I guess the semester wasn't worth it for just the three of us. My options were to apply to a different university independently, switch to another program within SIT or cancel my semester abroad altogether and spend another fall in Ithaca. As much as I love a Northeastern autumn, my housing, anticipated coursework and overall mentality were set on a semester abroad.

After a day of woe I decided I would find another SIT program. None seemed as good as Vietnam, but after eliminating programs with language prerequisites and less than thrilling program topics I found what I wanted--Mongolia: Culture and Development. Copious amounts of phone calls, emails and paperwork secured my spot in the program's fall semester and since then I've been busy re-preparing.

I'm freshly inoculated with five immunizations, my passport is now home to a Mongolian student visa, my 22-hour airline travel itinerary has been set and I'm now busy packing and reading. Our program director, Ulzii Bagsch, made her first contact with us students sending a tentative schedule of the program in addition to an intimidating reading assignment for the time allotted. I'll spend my first days with my urban host family in Ulaanbaatar acquainting myself with the city and learning the language (anticipating Vietnamese as my new language study, I admit that I know very little Mongolian right now, but this summer I taught myself to read Cyrillic and have learned a few key phrases).

This week I finish up my summer internship with the E.L. Rose Conservancy of Susquehanna County, stuff my belongings into the basement of my spring semester abode and say goodbye to Cornell (for awhile). On the 16th, I'll be departing for Dallas where I'll spend my last six days with my dad, stepmother and grandmother. The action-packed week will consist of last minute packing, strawberry-rhubarb pie baking (as per request by my father), reading, reading, reading and some nice family time. I'll depart the 22nd on a red-eye out of Dallas and my semester abroad will officially begin when my Air China International flight touches down in Ulaanbaatar two "days" later.

You can follow my travels on this blog and catch some other highlights from the links at left. Here's to my last two weeks.