The Long Awaited...

Oh wow. There's so much to talk about.

I know I'll forget most of everything that I need to say in this blog.  It's just crazy right now.  I still don't have internet in my town. 

Tsagaan Sar is the Mongolian lunar new year.  It was on Feb. 25th this year.  That so happens to also be my birthday.  It also so happened to be Ash Wednesday.  It's difficult to explain exactly what Tsagaan Sar is and how big is is.  My friend Travis said it well when he described it as a mix of New Year's, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and everybody's birthday all at the same time.  People put in an enormous amount of time and money preparing for this 5 day feast.  Beyond the 5 days, there's a sort of Tsagaan Sar Eve that they celebrate and the ongoing party that lasts as long as it lasts.  People who haven't seen each other and meet, no matter how long after the new year, will greet one another with Tsagaan Sar greetings.

I had a wild time to say the least.  I was dreading it a little, but now I can't wait for next year.  The traditional food is a Mongolian dumpling called buuz.  My family made 2000 of them in the few days before.  We also made 70 hard pastries called boov.

So spring is coming.  Glorious Spring.  The weather is already picking up.  The winds are blowing harder as we prepare for the Duststorm season.  But the wonderful news is that soon we will rise above the freezing mark for good.  Right now even the nights are only -10C or so. -10C is no problem.  But soon the days will be warm and the nights will be cool, and I'll leave my ger door open and open my ger's roof flap.  The Sun will come out earlier and earlier while setting later and later.  I saw some rather terrible duststorms in the summer, but the season is really an April/May thing.  I'll let you know how that goes.

I've really been surprising myself with my language skills.  It's really turned conversational lately.  I still don't understand most men...at all, but the ones I do have much thinner accents.  Women, I can get all the time.  It's insane some days.  I don't know where it comes from.  Yet there are still days when my brain shuts off and I can't understand anyone or say even the simplest of sentences.  It's in such a grand fluctuation.  I don't really know what to do with it.  I suppose I'll just keep studying and doing what I do.  I haven't found a tutor yet, no one who is willing to meet with me on a regular basis.  I might start learning ASL from this deaf woman who I'm working with currently.  She offered to teach me anyway, and I'd really like to learn.

Everything's great though. I can't believe it's been over 9 months and I'll be saying farewell to my first year of service soon.  Really.  The longer I'm at site, the more I feel at peace with my work.  Yes, I struggle all the time with very simple parts of my job.  Yes, I can talk another PCVs ear off about things I'm frustrated about.  Yes, I have days when I don't know if I can go on for one reason or another.  But the things that keep me going are the little ways I know I'm helping, a building desire to see the whole term through, and the realization that the difficulties I face ARE my job just as much if not more than seeing tangible results.  This last one was the most difficult for me to get.  I'll never be able to put my work results into a pir chart or bar graph.  I'll never be able to give stats about the condition of my work agency: before and after.  I have to accept that most of what I do is neither qualitative or quantitatively measurable, and I can't go about my work in that mindset either.  A lot of what I do, I have to rely on faith to believe it is making any difference.  Sure, there are the kids I tutor and the visible improvement in their skills.  There are test grades and communication barriers that come down, but most of my time feels like it is spent smashing my fist into a wall (More accurately, knocking on the wall and asking it to move for me, but I liked the imagery and the subtle allusion to the Berlin wall).

I hope I'm communicating this well.  It's hard to describe really.  The point is that I'm more and more realizing my purpose here, and for the purpose I'm here, I really think I'll do what I can do and do it well.

Sorry to anyone who was worried about me recently.  I was staying in a place with no cell phone coverage for my phone for a couple days.  I'll remember to let you know that I'm not gonna be available,

Love y'all.
Peace