Ploofle

…was super awesome (in case you didn’t realize it would be).   Thanks to her burst of inspiration (and photo-taking) there’s a good 30-odd new photos I’ve uploaded of our adventures.  She got a very authentic dose of Mongolia PC-style, so if you want to ask someone what it’s like here, try her in addition to me now

She arrived on the 3rd, right before my training time was over and just in time for the mid-training center days 4th of July BBQ/Dodgeball steel cage elimination royal rumble-a-thon.  In other words, a trainers vs. trainees dodgeball sort-of tournament. Good food and I got to play a bit of pickup basketball too. Regardless we didn’t do too much in Darkhan except this, visit a temple, and clean (a theme to be repeated throughout this trip).  Oh, and she got to meet lots of PCVs and PCTs – it was fun to introduce her, as they would say “hello”, then double-take slightly and then say “oh, it’s *you*! why, hello!”  I did a somewhat poor job of getting her to Darkhan, though – as in, about 3 different people tried to go get her from the airport to Darkhan via various transportation methods.

We then hitched a ride with some people (PCVs, Australians) who rented a microbus (here pronounced like “meeker”) to go to Amarbayasgalant temple.  I’ve been there before during training, but it’s a nice temple and I thought she’d like it.  Plus, there was company and the highlight of a stuck car that the boys attempted to extricate toward the end.

We then made our way to Ulaanbaatar, where we mostly ate food and walked around too much.  We spent a couple hours with one of my departing sitemates, Stacey, who’s going to move to Seattle – just lots of talking.  We went to a neat cultural festival with a great traditional music concert – amazing to see these performances with the really bright blue sky and rolling grasslands as the backdrop – and Bonnie was scrutinized and filmed excessively making felt in one of the craft tents.  We also attempted to shoot arrows and play various anklebone games.  Overall a super cool experience…

We then trekked down to Zuunmod, which is about an hour outside UB, to visit some PCVs and go to their Naadam.  Actually, we went down to Zuunmod for the Naadam, then back up to UB, then back to Zuunmod, but that’s confusing.  The Naadam was cool, I think- at least I hope it was for Bonnie…it was quite a bit cooler in Zuunmod, and I was woefully underdressed, and I bought a feather blanket for about $10 to keep us warm at night.

The second pass at Zuunmod we went to a nearby national park/monastery and hiked/swatted at 10 million flies/peed on the ground.  The monastery had these really cool shrines up the side of the small mountain with small painted/carved images – but were really difficult to get up and down from due to very poor gravelly trails.  Bonnie put a hole in her pants sliding down on her butt We also stayed at a ger camp – essentially like a KOA but with felt tents – where I worked at keeping a fire going as the ger was rather poorly sealed.  At this point I am transitioning from pasty to red…

Finally, we tried to get to Khovd.  Flights are all sorts of full and generally screwed up, so we decided to take a bus there, then about 4 days later fly back on the next-to-closest flight to Bonnie’s international one in case it got cancelled.  I’ve decided that the bus-riding was a poor decision on my part – and while it was somewhat interesting, it was also super painful.  Thank god for benadryl – as we broke the PCV record for longest trip.   Typically it’s about 48-56 hours, and we wrapped it up in about 72.  Our bus broke down 4-6 hours daily every day of the trip, and I swear at one point they rebuilt the engine.  Nothing says Mongolia like such a ride – where all the luggage is crammed in the bus aisle, there’s a motorcycle tire crowding you into the remaining 2/3 of your seat, which is falling apart, and then you get scolded by some random lady for doing something, and then one of the bus drivers stands on the roof of the bus while the other drives around trying to get a cell signal, and you bounce out of your seat about 2 feet in the air as this bus is seriously off-roading and you just bounced over a foot-wide ditch.  Woohoo!  And then there’s the one older man in front of you who sneaks smoking inside the bus and at every stop fills up his 2-liter with liquid happiness…So I was just glad Bonnie still liked me after all this.  The next day we still felt like we were bouncing along on a bus…

A quick tour of Khovd, a frantic cleaning of my house – and I at least temporarily got a fridge! And then we were out the door again to UB.  More eating, visited a cool museum, then just spent time with each other as much as possible.  Sigh.

It was really good to see her, and I think she got a good picture of what it’s like here.  Pictures show it better – so you all should check it out.

And now – there’s Mongolian baby sumo on TV.