Oh my god I can't believe it

I've never been this far away from home


June 29:
I am back in America, and have been for almost exactly one week. Here is what was most notably different from Mongo-town: 1) It is very green, and the grass in my front yard is almost excessively thick and verdant. I also felt a little guilty mowing it the other day. Think of how many goats I could have fed instead! 2) Pillows 3) The smoothest roads ever. All the highways in the well-funded Northern Virginia road system looked brand-new to me as I was driven home from the airport by my loving family

I left Mongolia on June 20 by train to China and flew out of Beijing on the 22, and the last bit was a definite whirlwind of packing and ridiculous traveling. I meant to make nice little updates during my last few weeks in Mongolia but never really felt like pausing from the whole thing and taking the time to write - plus I was in the countryside for three of those weeks and did not have the chance to say hi to you from there. But here's a wrap-up of how things went since I last wrote . . .

Spent eighteen days in Ikh Tamir soum, Arkhangai aimag doing field research on fence-building in the countryside for my final project. This picture is of three of my small friends who lived in the five-ger spring camp that I stayed at. Mostly this is the Best Place Ever and I was lucky enough to get to go back to Ikh Tamir after my program ended and play with these guys and their many friends for another week.

One of my seventy five thousand pictures of fences that I took. I also attended a Fence Party, helped build a fence, and went on a fun tour of the neighborhood to watch my host father talk about fences with the rest of the folks in the area. This picture is from the neighborhood tour day, when the fences were plentiful and the clouds were spectacular. The fences I was studying were being built as a small part of the Green Gold project, and my research was a look at the social and environmental effects of building these fences. I mostly learned a lot about the strength of the community and immense practicality of the fences, and then wrote a forty page paper about these things.
Had legit Mongolian Barbecue (none of this stir fry RPU nonsense - if it has vegetables that aren't potatoes, it cannot be authentic Mongo). This involves a goat that was slaughtered that day, hot rocks that you have to toss because this is good for your health (on the same day Hannah and I were advised also to eat yellow flowers and drink very sulfurous spring water for our respective healths as well), and organs cooked on the side (Heart and lung are what I recommend if you ever find yourself having to select goat organs to consume).Oh, here is a very beautiful little lake called Singing Lake because of the many sounds it makes. There's a song for this lake (how fitting) that our friend from Gobi Cashmere sang for us as we left these peaceful waters, which were marred only by the path of two well-photographed swans and the reflections of a drowsy herd headed back to the ger (Still in Ikh Tamir) (Hannah, do you like my descriptive imagery, I think it might be able to Transcend Cultures)

So Hannah and I bopped around Ikh Tamir for a week without a translator (and, consequently, without doing any research besides occasionally looking very hard at a fence) which was glorious. Then we went back to the city where it was cold and rainy when we got to the train station and nothing was green any longer and of course I wanted to go back. I wrote my paper, presented it at the UB Hotel (I said it during orientation and I'll say it again - SIT likes us to be fancy like this), saw Altan Urag live at a really fun and huge brewpub called Ikh Mongol, went and built a ger with the rest of the students out in the east, bid adieu to my comrades who flew back on the 13th, then promptly headed back to Ikh Tamir.
It was beautiful.

Well, of course there is more, but I think this is the end or very near of my accounts.

July 15
Ithaca, NY
I've been putting off posting this for many reasons, one of which is was that I took a brief jaunt outside the States again but more importantly am reluctant to end the story. I was ready to come home when I did, but I was also itching to stay (and at this point, kind of wish I had for the World Pastureland Congress and Naadam). Home isn't as much a location as it is a state of mind, and I found it in many places these past few months. One day on my second trip to Ikh Tamir I went on a sulky hike after 3 of my friends rode off on an overnight rabbit-hunting adventure (I was sulking because I couldn't go with them) and after a while found myself at the top of a wee mountain that overlooked the valley as well as the spring camps. And I sat and decided to come back to this place sometime, somehow. So until then . . .