Ploofle

This is the starting of the home stretch, the long haul, the nailbiting nights. In short, the end of host site-based training. Monday I have my language test, Wednesday is our community picnic, and Thursday morning at 8am we haul ass outta Dodge to go to a larger city with all trainees. There we find out our sites and continue to have administrative and technical sessions as well as orientation until the 19th or so in the capital.

Today, however, has been an interesting day. First off, it’s the first day post-antibiotics for my stomach woes (which are now entering Day 7). I woke up feeling better than I have in a long time - no gurgles, no cramps, nothing weird at all. It was odd, how free I felt, when not feeling ill. I suspect I’ll be a crabby chronic illness kind of person.

Secondly, today was our community project - we held a sports and games day/morning at the local school. I got to help out with the kid’s games and it was quite a refresher. We played things like duck duck goose, red rover, freeze tag, red light/green light, and my personal favorite, tug of war! With a close second of the Mongolian introduction to the carribbean (passion!) pasttime of limbo.

Tug of war was awesome because I got to shout things loudly in Mongolian, and when you did boy versus girl teams, the girls would all squeal as they began tugging. The highlight was the last round, when the rope snapped. It sounded something like this: “snap! thumpthumpthumpthumpthump” as 2 dozen kids, mostly under the age of 10, fell over in unison. I couldn’t stop laughing - it was great! I don’t think anyone else found it as funny as I did, though. But man…even now, imagining them all falling over…it makes me very amused.

Perhaps I shall eat (or drink, as they say here) yogurt tonight…

Next post will be post-site announcements, so stay tuned. I’ll also be posting new contact info as that’ll be happening too.

Tags: fun, funny, games, mongolia

What with a new computer and all, I’ve been looking for some nifty new games to, erm, test if it works. I’ve been fond of RPGs in the past, and so I figured I’d look for some. Now, where have they all gone?

If I search for new titles that are RPGs, 95% of them are online, and I’d say all of them are diablo-style, meaning there’s lots of clicking, killing, and levelling. I’m a bit of a fan for storyline, character development, final fantasy III for snes-type games…and there were some good ones for the PC (Planescape: Torment comes to mind). I don’t want to pay for a subscription, I don’t want to have to complete “scenarios” or “levels”, and I don’t want to click quite so much. Does this mean I have to go to a platform for it? That I can’t afford. For now, looks like I have to stick to other standbys - downloading old RPGs from www.the-underdogs.org and playing more tactical/strategy games, like rise of nations.

Speaking of RPGs I’ve liked on consoles, I liked Skies of Arcadia, Grandia II, Final Fantasy (SNES ones), Secret of Mana (ok, not quite rpg), Chrono Trigger…anything like that out for PCs?

Tags: computers, games