Day Five Hundred & Sixty-five

I came across this picture while reading the news, & something about it touched me. I can't quite describe why, but it embodies something about America that is very meaningful to me right now. Highways. Street signs. Perhaps it somewhat reminds me of the drive home from Alpine Valley that I used to take with my Dad years & years ago. This photograph looks almost exactly like the underpass where we would turn. Almost inexplicably, this is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

Day Five Hundred & Sixty-five
Thursday, December 22nd 2011

I received a wonderful package in the mail from my family back in America. It contained a plethora of incredible things, including but not limited to: Bath & Body Works lotion, Yankee candles, paper towels (of which I have not seen so much as a roll anywhere in Mongolia), soup mixes, cookie mixes, frosting, Christmas-shaped cookie cutters, food coloring, Andes mints, Ghiradelli dark chocolate, Extra gum (in amazing flavors like mint chocolate chip, strawberry shortcake, apple pie, & even orange creamsicle –this gum is perfect for Peace Corps Volunteers because we can't often get the real thing), a lovely zip-up Danskin fleece pullover (Danskin is one of my favorite companies for fitness attire, good job Mom!), a black button-down knit sweater (another ten points to my mother), & a plethora of other little do-dads.

I couldn't help myself & I opened it. I know Christmas isn't for a few days, & I could make the excuse that today is the winter solstice, but to be fair, this has been a pretty rough week. The power outages (for three days consecutively several days ago, & we've been consistently without power for about twenty hours per day or more for the past month) weigh on me like a constant headache. It's hard to describe how draining it is to live cringe by cringe at each outage. Luckily, I purchased a gas burning stove in the aimag last month, & my friend Lauren was so kind as to name it Gabby for me. This means that I can cook. However, I can't bake, because I never know when the power might go out or how long it will disappear for.

In other news, I received a very encouraging email from one of my former professors at ISU who has been helping me with my Statement of Purpose for graduate school to revise, revise, revise, & revise it again. I have easily put in over twenty hours (twenty-five, thirty perhaps) on what would otherwise seem to be a simple two-pages requiring me to write about myself. It is somewhat more complex than that. However, I know that Dr. Gill has really high standards, & I have been extremely blessed to have her as a resource. I think that with her suggestions, I stand the best chance possible of getting accepted. My fingers are crossed irregardless.

Some of the little things my parents sent me really make me feel human again. One simple thing is the hand soap, which came in a little pump bottle shaped like a snowman (wearing a hat). I haven't had hand soap in eighteen months. Such a seemingly inconsequential thing makes all the difference to me right now. I'm allowing myself a little luxury & am currently burning one of the candles. I haven't had such an expensive candle since before I left America. I admit, a lot of the things I have been sent, I've hoarded. I have a cupboard filled with little treasures from home: Jiffy muffin mix, Rice-a-Roni, Jell-O pudding mixes, packets of gum, cake mixes, frosting, the list goes on.

My COS (Closure of Service) date is officially six months from now. I have exactly six months left as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mongolia serving in my little town of six hundred people in the Gobi desert. I've been spending a lot of time with Darhuu lately. She taught me how to sew a del, has taught me how to make various Mongolian foods, has been kind enough to allow me to follow her with my camera, & who has been providing me with the patience & understanding it takes to understand another human being with a language barrier. With her deep sense of intuitive comprehension (perhaps from her forty years as a teacher –she started teaching at age fourteen!), I feel more fluent in Mongolian than I ever have. I feel understood.

After this year, I don't think I want to go another holiday season without my family. Things have been trying, but in unexpected ways. The way time moves here is strange, serpentine. It jerks & leaps, slows, pirouettes, jumps forward, stumbles as though it were a living entity, it dances to a macabre & unheard melody. It tempts me. I miss the things that few else would think to cherish. The thought of someday seeing a leftward-pointing arrow illuminate as I'm waiting in the turn lane is a faraway dream. I had almost forgotten about the ballet that shoppers enact in the supermarket whereby they instinctively choose the shortest check-out aisle. I forget sometimes that there are people in the world who can simply put their dirty clothes & dirty dishes into respective machines, that plastic is a form of currency, that cars can be driven containing only a single individual. Someday, I can drink water straight from the tap, because I will have a tap from which to drink.