Sunday, August 26th, 2007
So I’m alive. And in Mongolia.
Yeah, I’m in Mongolia… still hasn’t quite hit home. I mean, I’m getting used to the idea, but walking down the street and looking around feels more like a vivid dream than reality.
The group I’m here with consists of five other students, 5 guys (including me) and one girl. All are complete losers. Just kidding. By far the most positive aspect of the trip so far has been the incredible group dynamic. As Kevin said the other day, he feels like we’re all old friends from school (after only a week), a sentiment I can echo wholeheartedly. We’ll see if things are still so rosy after a few months of close contact… but I have high hopes. A quick run-through of the group: Kevin is the red-head, and one of two from Carleton. He’s a religion major, has a girl waiting for him at home, and is completely obsessed with frisbee. Oh, and he’s from Salt Lake City, so we look to him when we need tips on fending off raucous mormons (just kidding). The other Carletonite is Adam, a chemistry major, also with girlfriend, who hails from the bourbon-soaked land of Kentucky. Andrew is a Swarthmore linguistics major who will hopefully provide us with his throat-singing debut during the ISP presentations at the end of the semester. He is also the resident hilarious-quote-generator. More of those to come later (if you’re lucky). Ethan is the quietest of the group, but when he speaks his dry sense of humor usually sets the rest of us into hysterics. He, also, has a girlfriend. (3/6?! Yikes). Last, but most important is Allison, the lady of the group, a biology major from UC Boulder. She keeps the rest of us from misbehaving too badly, and tolerates our juvenile humor.
We arrived on the first leg of the plane trip to Beijing, at around 5 am on the 21st. We decided we’d try to get into the city itself since we had 12 hours to kill until our flight to Mongol-land. I’m running short on time so I’ll make this short… and add more in later posts. Basically we scurried around the airport trying to find Kevin’s laptop, which he left while filling out a customs form. I tried to dredge some Chinese from the dregs of my memory, with a small degree of success, but our efforts at computer-finding were fruitless. Then we had to figure out a) where to go in the city, b) how to get there, and c) how much it would cost (so we could change some money). After meeting some random people who helped us find the right bus, we made our way into Beijing. First stop was the mighty Tianamen Square, which was cool. Not mind-boggling, but definitely worth the effort we put in to get there. We walked around and enjoyed a 50cent 1L Tsing-Tao at 10:30am. Which was fun. Then we went on a quest for food, as I was about to eat my arm. I managed to ask a security guard where we could find restaurants, and he directed us into the heart of a smaller neighborhood. Tianamen Square lies on a busy 4 pseudo-highway, which is sort of odd for somewhere that the bus calls “city center”. I was imagining a densely packed, bustling network of streets and shops and life. Instead it was open, expansive and completely lacking in food (at least along the street). Which at the time was high on my list of concerns. Once on the back streets we passed more than a few restaurants, and ended up deciding on one with nice lions and latticework outside. The ordering of food is a story in itself, one that I’ll save for another time, but once the food came, it was amazing. We had a whole roast Peking duck, a cold beef dish, some “cakes made with fish” (tasty, but we have no idea what they were), and some other stuff I don’t quite recall. After eating we walked back to the bus-stop and caught the airport shuttle back to… yep, the airport. We checked the lost and found one more time, then headed to our gate. Five hours later we were in Mongolia!
Mongolia has been pretty cool so far. Administratively, I’ve been less than pleased with certain parts of the program, namely the language classes. I was hoping that taking two weeks of lessons, for two hours a day (and $25/hour) would allow me to get a head start on things, and hit the ground running. Instead it seems either a) they don’t have a clue what they’re doing, and have no ability to assess what I already know (even though I took a placement test), or b) I learned much less than I thought, and wasted lots of money on lessons. Neither option is heartening. But we’ll see what happens, I’ll have faith in… oh, who are we kidding… I’ll continue to sing doom and gloom and hope events prove me wrong.
Otherwise we’ve spent most our time getting aquainted with the city, and preparing for our first homestay in Delgerkhaan, out on the steppe. We’ve been to Narantuul Market, a dance and music performance, several dinners, and had a tour of the city from our language teachers, a group of young students from the area. I’ll be sure to add more about UB and related happenings when I have more time.
And I’m posting the latest 100 or so photos to my flickr, so head here to admire them!
Monday, August 20th, 2007
Alright, first, I’d like to welcome everyone (at least those already getting the emails, or following via RSS or the web) to my blog, Chinggis Khan Moves to the City. The title will make more sense as the blog progresses, but for now I’ll leave it a bit mysterious. And hope you like the absurdly sexy header graphics I slaved over (hours I should have spent packing and getting ready…) More info on the trip can be found at the About Page
which I will continue to update throughout the trip. For starters, there is a letter from the Academic Director of my trip, explaining a bit how this thing will work, and why someone might actually be crazy enough to undertake it. But enough about that.
I leave in… 39 minutes 22 minutes for Logan International Airport, in East Boston, MA. I have a 5:30pm flight to Los Angeles (LAX) which should arrive around 8:30pm… then I hang out in LA for 5 hours or so, and meet the rest of my SIT group at the Air China check-in desk for our flight to Beijing. We leave LAX on August 21 at 1:40 AM, and arrive at Beijing Capital Airport at 5:20 AM on August 22nd. Then, we catch a 4:55pm flight to Buyant Uhaa airport in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, which arrives about 7:25pm local time. Which will be 7:25am EST (12 hour difference). Then we have a week-or-so long orientation, begin language classes, and then head off to our first homestay out on the steppe. I’ll post my itinerary on here as a page of its own (or on the about page).
About the blog
For those on email… this is actually a blog, set to export posts via email. You should all take a moment to click on the title of this post and leave a comment here at the blog so I know who’s out there reading… it’s nice to know who I’m writing to! Also, if you don’t comment I might get lonely and resentful, and never come home. Not really. So, you should all take advantage of the interactivity and leave some comments whenever you feel inspired. You can interact with each other, or just respond to the posts. Or even tell me what’s going on in your lives so I can stay somewhat connected. These blog posts are also being syndicated via Facebook as notes (imported via RSS! So cool!), so people can also comment on those, but using the blog itself is the preferred mode.
A special welcome to Barbara’s first-year seminar on Creative Non-fiction, which I am DYING of jealousy over, since it sounds like pretty much the best class ever. Cherish it! Hopefully my writings won’t dissapoint, and if they do, you can always get value by making fun of me. I mean, making fun of my writing… And welcome to Midd! Don’t do drugs! (haha)
Info about Subscriptions
Welcome to those of you savvy enough, or taking classes with people savvy enough (lucky!) to work the RSS thang. For the rest of yas, the feedburner notifications, which you can sign up for on the right sidebar of the blog, will come once daily, only on days I post. For those who really want to hear about the trip, but want less frequent notifications, email me or leave a comment and I can re-enable a fresh version of the plugin fairly easily, and people can just register here at the blog, and configure their own email settings (daily, weekly, per post, txt excerpts, full text, full html, etc…) as well as be a VIP reader of this amazing blog. Which is nothing to scoff at. Seriously. Nevermind, not gonna happen. Just deal. I’ll only be on the web a couple times every few weeks anyways.
For the enthusiasts: I was hoping to customize the subscribe2 plugin for wordpress (http://subscribe2.wordpress.com) but after much fiddling with the code, I got everything to work except the sexy html formatting, which is sort-of essential. So I’ve resorted to using feedburner’s email service which is basically non-configurable, but is simple to use. I guess the two days weren’t completely wasted though, now I’ve got a decent feel for PHP and even a little SQL… Anyways for those who are signed up, you’ll be getting one email each day, but only on days when I post.
Sunday, August 19th, 2007
So I’m leaving tomorrow. For Mongolia.
We had a nice tea this afternoon with my mongolian tutor Jama, her youngest daughter, and her mother, who will actually be back in Mongolia in October and promised to take me to the black markets…
I spent the whole day frantically packing, and I’m pretty sure I have everything–at least everything critical. The rest I can buy there if I have to. I have one big 75L pack, and one biggish duffel-bag, neither of which are full, so I’ll even have some room to bring stuff home.
Craziness! 
Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
For those who are curious about the voyage on which I am soon to depart, here is a selection from a letter sent to me by the program’s Academic Director.
Our program focuses on ‘culture and development’ in Mongolia. Through this guiding theme we will investigate the process by which traditional and historical culture adjusts and manages the problems and trends of contemporary fast-track development. Mongolia is a relatively small developing country, which has been thrust onto the world stage politically, economically and socially. This is crucial during a time when the U.S., World Bank, UN, etc. are becoming ever more effective in domestic workings of countries and when cultural and bio-diversity is threatened by commercial investment.
Mongolia’s belated entrance on the global scene means both that its development process is fairly young and that the country as a whole is unusually self-conscious about which trends it sets into action. Mongolia’s efforts are to develop balanced policies wide-open to Western involvement with strong nationalism rooted in a still pastoral culture spreading over a vast countryside.
Among the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, few nations compare to Mongolia in the size, diversity, and health of its natural ecosystems. Covering 1.564 million square kilometers, Mongolia encompasses an area larger than Britain, France, Germany and Italy combined. It is the seventh largest country in Asia and one of the largest land-locked countries in the world. With only 2.7 million inhabitants, its population density, 1.7 persons per sq. kilometer, is the lowest in Asia.
Although threatened by commercial exploitation, Mongolia still contains relatively intact examples of Asia’s deserts, steppe forests, mountains, and rare species of wild creatures and plants that inhabit them. The traditional culture of the semi-nomadic herder still thrives, as one-third of the country’s people still move by horse and camel, herding their sheep, cattle, and goats through an annual cycle of pastures, governed by the limits of natural systems. To consider culture within Mongolia, one must consider the natural surrounding environment. The two are interdependent, continually needing to adapt to the needs and demands of each other.
Our program will explore the degree to which local cultures have been shaped by the geographic and environmental features of their surrounding landscapes, as well as how the ever-increasing demands of a developing country and growing population have put pressure on the abundance and availability of natural resources. The country now faces the challenge of developing the nation’s infrastructure and economy while at the same time protecting the natural environment.
It is critically important for you to understand that this is an academic program, with an experiential component. The education you will receive in the classroom through lectures, course materials and discussions will provide a framework of information that will enhance the education you receive from direct, active, intimate involvement with your surroundings. The various components of our program are designed to expose, and subsequently immerse, you in many diverse elements of Mongolian culture, while the assignments are designed to help assimilate the academic with the experiential.
