I’ll be studying animal skin and meat changers (mongolian: chenjuud), they’re raw material traders who travel around buying stuff from herders or other changers, then selling to other changers or factories or whomever. My plans right now are to hang out in UB for the next few days, spending some time at these two huge raw materials markets on the East and West outskirts of the city (1hr drive with bad traffic); Emeelt is on the West, and is where all the traders from Western aimags come to do biznizz; vice-versa for Nalaikh on the east side, which trades with the Eastern aimags. I’m hoping to get some contacts with changers in UB that I can meet with and chat, get an idea how things work. Then I leave on Monday for Darkhan, the third largest city in Mongolia (not saying much, 76,000). I’ll spend a couple days there (staying with the uncle of one of our language teachers, along with another student and her translator) visiting a sheepskin coat factory, and hopefully talking to some changers while I’m there. Then back to UB, and onwards to Kharkhorin, the ancient capital of the Great Mongolian Empire (known in the West as Kharakhorum). In Kharkhorin I have a homestay with a changer! Which is gonna be awesome. So he’s super busy right now because all the farmers are slaughtering their animals, since there’s been predictions of a harsh winter coming up. So there’ll be plenty of activity for me to tag along and watch. I’ll spend a week or so there, then onwards to Tsetserleg  where I’m staying with the family of one of our teacher’s wife. Their whole extended fam lives there, so they know pretty much everyone, and can hook me up with contacts and such. Then on the 18th its back to UB to write, and visit some factories here since I prolly won’t have time before I leave.

Phew. Well I gotta run since its 1am and I still have to walk home (or is it worth 50 cents for a taxi…). Anyways, sorry about not getting any recent photos up, but its super slow where I have wireless, and when I don’t its just too confusing putting photos on my flash drive, then only getting some uploaded, but not being sure which ones… blah blah. So y’all will have to wait until I get back to UB… or maybe the states. heh…

Hope all’s well. And by all means, send emails or drop comments here! And I’d be happy to respond to questions and stuff too…

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.

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!