Gobi Weekend

Two weeks ago, the foreigners of Arvaiheer (4 PCVs and 2 VSOs) decided to visit our PCV friend Erin in her soum (about 100 km from Arvaiheer) for her birthday. It was a surprise—she was only expecting Jo and I, and we basically kidnapped her and took her to another town, Baruun Bayan Ulaan (lit. “West Rich Red”), for the weekend. We took the Australian VSOs’ (Andrew and Leah) jeep, piled all 7 of us into it, and headed south for a trip across the desert. Luckily, I had no idea what I was getting into, or I might not have agreed to go. Especially when we were getting into the car and Andrew, our driver, said, “I have no idea how to get to Erin’s soum. I’m just going to go southwest. So I’ve factored in getting-lost time.”
As soon as we got out of Arvaiheer (about 3 minutes of driving), it became obvious why it would be difficult to find another town. We are very lucky to have a paved road between Arvaiheer and UB (we’re one of the few cities that do), but other than that, “roads” are a set of tire tracks in the sand that appear and disappear at different points in the desert (see Fig. 1 below). Right off the bat, we spotted a wolf (by himself for some reason), which according to Mongolians is very good luck. Despite this good omen, after an hour or so we lost sight of the road (and there is really nothing at all in between our towns), but fortunately we saw a ger and some sheep in the distance and drove over to ask for directions. The man who lived there was really helpful and kept inviting us to go into his ger for some tea and food, but we decided to just keep going. Good thing we have Babila and Leah to take care of communication! Anything more complicated than “go straight” or “turn right/left” and I would be lost as far as Mongolian goes. So off we went again and soon enough we arrived in Erin’s soum (population 2,200).
She gave us the grand tour (which took about 30 seconds), pointing out her hashaa, the school, the brand new monastery, and the 10 stores. Then we stuffed her in the car (it was not comfortable in the back seat—I immediately started regretting my potato- and candy-filled diet) and started driving in the general direction of Baruun Bayan Ulaan. On the way, we spotted camels in the distance and of course became very excited and ran over to take pictures (one of which I’ve included in this post). We also stopped to play in some sand dunes and have a photo shoot. Before this trip, I had no idea that there could be so much snow on the ground in a desert! It was very surreal. The car overheated a few times and we had to get out and tinker with the engine (I say “we,” but I would have no idea what to do with a car engine). There is of course no cell phone service out there in the desert and no people for hundreds of kilometers, so I tried not to think about what would happen if we couldn’t get the car going again. But there was nothing to worry about—though we had to stop and fix it a number of times throughout the trip, it never gave up on us.
We eventually got to Baruun Bayan Ulaan (I honestly don’t know how Andrew was navigating, because it just looked like a bunch of sand and ice to me), and met up with Andrew and Leah’s landlord who lives there. All the Mongolians I’ve met have been hospitable, but this family was really too nice! They brought us in and fed us buuz (when I told them I didn’t eat meat, they gave me a whole box of choco-pies—snack cakes with marshmallow and chocolate. A pretty solid dinner in my opinion), tea, and vodka. When I said I worked at Merged, our host even shook my hand and congratulated me on winning Best School this year. I’m happy to take credit for that even though I only arrived in September. Then they took us to the school dormitory where we’d be staying the night. We all stayed in one room with four beds and it was pretty comfortable (or maybe I just thought so because I took one of the beds). We were a HUGE hit with the kids who lived there. 7 strange-looking people showing up all at once is almost too much excitement. We left the door open most of the evening so kids could pop their heads in and check us out periodically. The latrines were the only part I didn’t care for—4 of them connected and very messy, with no doors. I wouldn’t want to be a student there- I like my privacy! That evening we went to the school gym to watch a wrestling competition. I didn’t catch what the occasion was, but maybe they just have wrestling competitions periodically (I think Arvaiheer does, too, but I’ve never attended one). Once again, we were celebrities, and children continuously ran up to take pictures with us. It was good entertainment. As Andrew said, “How many places can you go where men will wrestle each other in speedos and boots and nomads will ride over on their camels to watch?”
Andrew and Leah’s landlord owns a bunch of camels, so the next day we got to go out and ride them. I now have about 3000 pictures of camels on facebook. It was SO COLD but so much fun. First, we got to take pictures with the baby camels, then we got to ride on the official racing camels. The town had just had their annual camel competitions a few weeks before. According to Enkhjargal, the town’s English teacher (who didn’t speak much English—soum teachers are generally experts at grammar but can’t speak at all, because who would they practice with?), there are 2 competitions: one for fastest camel, and one for most beautiful. They have to do the beauty pageant in the winter because camels are seriously hideous in the summer (they shed a lot of their coats). We had a lot of fun with the camels, even though they scare me because they’re very tall, awkward creatures, and you don’t use reins—you just grab onto their hair as hard as you can. After we’d all had turns riding, we went further out of town to play in some more sand dunes with our host’s family. This involved racing up a sand dune (not an easy task). After you got to the top, he would push you off. So we rolled around in sand and snow for a while before going to back to town to have tea at Enkhjargal’s house (we were in a hurry to get home before dark, but you can’t just meet someone and not have tea at their house. It would be really rude if she didn’t feed us something before we left.) Something I learned from this trip was that if you’re outside for a few hours in the winter, milk tea is actually really refreshing. Over the summer I could not understand why anyone would want to drink it. I don’t know if this means I’m going to start craving mutton, though.
On the way back to Arvaiheer, we had to stop a few times to fix the car. And the driver’s side door wouldn’t close. The only problem with that was that it was really cold! And of course we got lost a few more times. The weirdest part was the 2 or 3 times we saw another vehicle coming towards us. It made me realize there really was a “road,” even if most of the time I couldn’t make it out in the sand. I can’t believe we made it. It was such a fun weekend and the Australians of Arvaiheer are now my favorite people (they even let me try their Vegemite!).
Besides our weekend getaway, there isn’t much other news. Our Arvaiheer foreigners’ community is growing. Though we lost 3 VSOs last month, we just got 2 newbies (Dutch women) and we’re due for 3 more next month. These days my life is pretty much consumed by Olympics preparation activities. I’m teaching my students the easy way to write short essays under time constraints. Even though I think they (and we, for that matter) shouldn’t put so much emphasis on them, if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s take standardized tests. Thanks, Pine Crest! The Educational Center just decided to scrap the preliminaries, which means each school can only send one 9th-grader and one 11th-grader. And my CPs are kind of leaving it up to me to be the bad guy and choose the best student (and reject everyone else). It’s a little dramatic and stressful, so I can’t wait until the whole thing is over. Although apparently it’s not stressing me out too much. A Russian teacher at my school said something about me in the teachers’ room the other day and I asked my CP to translate: “You are always happy! No stress, never sad. Always smiling and always happy!” I guess that’s true. What would I have to be sad about?
Happy International Women’s Day, by the way! It’s a national holiday here, which means I got the day off today. My school’s teachers had a celebration for it on Friday, but I missed it to meet the new VSOs. Apparently the male teachers gave the female ones gifts and the women (you guessed it!) competed in several events. Oh well, maybe I’ll make it to the Men’s Day party. Yesterday I had my 7th-graders write cards for their moms in English. Most of them decided to go ahead and fill it out with English, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, and Mongolian script. What mom wouldn’t be impressed by that?
Thanks to Andrew and Leah for some of these photos!