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.
