Darkhan Days

7/9/07 Darkhan Days
I just got back from a week outside of Sukhbaatar. This was my first venture out of my training community and was possibly my best week so far.
It started out with “Darkhan Days” or “Mid-PST”, as the peace corps refers to it. This is a time that is designated in the middle of my preservice training for all the people of my group (M18) to come together in Darkhan and do some of the administrative parts of training. It is also used as a sanity maintainer and is a good time to socialize with other Americans who have been going through all the same things. This group of people is my training group and we will continue to come together throughout the next 2 years. They are the people I came with, the people I will swear-in with, and the people I will close my service with. We got to Darkhan on July 4th and everyone was ready to be “patriotic” once night time rolled around. There was a ‘trainer vs. trainee’ basketball game, and the peace corps arranged pizza and hot dogs for dinner. Keep in mind that these were Mongolia pizza and hot dogs, and the better things to eat were the Monglian food. There were a few current volunteers that were passing through Darkhan and participated in our training and came to hang out for 4th of July. It was a good time, and it is always nice to talk to the current volunteers and hear what they have to say. It’s also nice to see different faces, other than the ones of the people I am training with in Sukhbaatar.
During these days in Darkhan, I had to give a presentation to a group of ‘at-risk’ youth. They were supposed to be involved in the Juvenile Justice system, but that didn’t work out. Instead they were from an orphanage in Darkhan. I was kind of nervous for my presentation, but I had planned it so I would have to do minimal speaking. Until I get more of the language down, this is going to be the way I do things. It’s fine by me, I’d rather do things more activity based anyway. After all the presentations, we walked the kids back to the orphanage, and got a tour of their home. This really was a nice orphanage and I was quite impressed. The kids were amazing and put on a show for us. Traditional singing and dancing is such a significant part of Mongolian culture that literally every child has a list of songs and dances that they can do off the top of their head. As it turns out, these were the kids that had performed at our opening ceremonies. After a full-on performance, we went outside to hang out with the kids. On the way to the orphanage, we had each made special friends in the group of kids and it was so much fun to play with them. I played soccer for like an hour in the scorching hot sun, until our trainers decided we had to go. They really had to pull us away from these kids! After all the classroom work and training that we do, it was soooo nice to actually get some time with the kids. Mongolian kids are AMAZING and really well behaved! These kids were so happy to have us there and we were so happy to be there. After this time with the kids, I declared this day the best day of training. It continued to be the best day, as I went back to the hotel and to a long, hot shower! The feeling of taking a shower after such a long time without one is something that can not be put into words!!! I was exhausted that night and had my roommate lock me in my room while everyone else continued to celebrate 4th of July…again. The days in Darkhan were nice, but by the end, I was not sad to leave. The people in my sector stayed an extra day because we were going to be heading out to the khudoo (countryside) to work at a summer camp. On this extra night, we saw fireworks….which was really exciting!