Rivers and Wrestlers

When a road converts itself into a river during a downpour, it's never a good thing in a small van packed with 13 people. Forging that river in the van packed with 13 people is probably a horrible idea, but not in Mongolia. After dancing with a dog who had a bloody paw (in retrospect an obvious omen) and having the same dog follow the van for a good while, the river began to flow. The skies were lit with dancing electricity and there we were, four hours from nothing. We had just seen a beautiful Buddhist monastery, one of the few the soviets left, and pulling a trick from the Oregon Trail book (Chris was also bitten by a snake earlier), we managed to cross at a few points. A PC jeep had to pull us halfway, something out of Jurassic Park. So that's just a brief overview of one of the many adventures I've had in the last month.

I wrestled in the Mongolian summer festival Nadaam. I lasted ten glorious seconds. Of course I somehow was given the honor of battling the largest champion out of the four Americans that wrestled. He was easily five inches taller and had a good hundred pounds on me. Weight class is a foreign concept. The world's tallest man watched me wrestle though. I shook his hand (more of an over-sized glove) and hung out with him later. Only three other Americans can say those two sentences without lying. A video exists and as soon as I get my hands on it I will post it. There's also some great pictures, I'll get those up within the next couple of months or so. The Mongolians in our Soum were very proud of us "This is a great Nadaam, the Americans wrestled and respected our traditions". A buddy PCT snapped his arm wrestling, he was sent to Thailand, we're all hoping he'll be able to come back but it's all up in the air right now, sucks big time.

I have enjoyed cow stomach on several occasions. It's odd and partially ironic that my stomach would be breaking down the stomach of another animal. It is actually fairly good and very rich in taste. It's been insanely hot the last week or so. Mongolians do not drink cold liquids, only hot ones that remind you of the large amount of nerve endings present in the mouth. Jenna you would love it. It takes twenty minutes of patience to down a milk tea. This ritual occurs five times a day at least. The river is as stupendous and refreshing as ever. I cannot say "meh" anymore, in Mongolian it means, "Here take this", so I have seen a lot of confused faces when trying to convey the idea that I do not care about something.

There's five weeks of PST training left with our host families, then it's down to UB for a week and finally off to the the ever-lonely countryside and two years of TEFL. Boredom is a topic that keeps coming up from presently serving PCVs so it looks like I'll be able to write that double disc unplugged album I have always wanted to. Now, I just need my finger to heal and a guitar and my life will be a little more complete, though I'm still missing a few vital things.

Peace Corps says: this is not the opinion of Peace Corps, but only Kevin's cute little opinions and anecdotes. Therefore they do not represent Peace Corps' official stance on anything, only Kevin's. That is all.