The Necessity of Integration...

This week has been so miserably hot. It's our second to last week of training, so we are all getting a little antsy and unfocused... add that to the unbearable heat and we are like a bunch of 5th graders who don't want to pay attention. The heat wouldn't be so bad if it would at least cool off at night, but the past few nights it has stayed hot and still, which makes it almost impossible to sleep. Mongolians wear wet towels on their heads when it is hot like this, and our LCFs keep telling us that if you don't wear a wet towel on your head, your head will get hot and then your stomach will hurt and you will be miserable, which pretty much sums up how we have all been feeling lately. So yesterday Cady and I went to the market and bought some 100 Tugrik towels, and today we have been wearing them on our heads. It actually does help quite a bit. Even though all the Mongolians are doing the same thing, they laugh at us. I don't really blame them because it does look quite ridiculous, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I am actually quite amazed at how effective a wet towel on your head is. It's almost like a little personal AC system around your face, because it catches any bit of breeze and cools down the air. It's delightful.
Hopefully it will cool down next week, I don't know if I can take the heat much longer. My family doesn't even own a fan, which I find a bit absurd. We have a toilet and a shower and a GIANT flat screen TV, but no fan. A few nights ago, at 4 in the morning when I could not sleep because I was lying in a pool of my own sweat, I opened the door to my room and then the door to this little balcony thing upstairs, so I could get some cross breeze. It was actually working quite well until Undarmaa came upstairs and closed the balcony door.
My parents have been gone all this week, they went to the Hudoo last Sunday and won't be back until this Sunday (maybe, who knows when they will really come back...) It's been interesting having just me and Undarmaa in the house. The first night the parents were gone she had a friend over until about 4:30 a.m. and was outside in the Hashaa laughing and carrying on and woke me up. I had to go outside and tell her to be quite so I could sleep. The next day I was giving her a hard time about it, she seemed really worried that I would tell her parents. I told her that I wouldn't, and I'm pretty sure she gave me a bribe, just to be sure... We were out of sugar, and I told her that I was going over to the market anyway after class because I had to go to the bank (the PC didn't pay us on time last week, which was really annoying because I walked to the bank 3 different days before I got my money...) So I told her that I would buy sugar if she gave me money. So she gave me the money for a kilo of sugar, and then she gave me 500 extra Tugriks. I asked her what it was for, and she just said "you take." It felt a bit like a bribe...
Tomorrow we are going to Amerbaysalon (not sure of the spelling..) It's one of the Buddhist Monasteries that the Soviets didn't destroy back in the 20's. I'm really excited to go, even though it will be a 3 hour Mikr ride there. I think the PC is trying to get us used to the "Mongolian Way" of travel, which basically means cramming as many people as possible into the vehicle. We get one Mikr for 17 people, not including the driver... I think that means we will have 5 people on each bench seat and two up front. In America the seats would hold 2 or 3 people. So that should be interesting. And we will probably have to have the windows closed for at least part of the trip, because it is a dirt road.
I'm really excited that training is so close to being over. I hope next week goes by quickly! I'm also excited to go to UB. We are the first training class in a long time to swear in in UB. All the PCVs are worried about us, because UB is really crazy, there is a lot of crime and the drunk Mongolians are even more prevalent there apparently. I'm a little worried about some of us too... some of us don't always practice the best judgement... Hopefully we will all make it through though. I think we may be one of the first classes in awhile not to have any ETs (early termination) before swearing in. Unless something happens between now and August 18th, we will make it through with everyone!