safety....dont' worry i'm safe

Before coming here I had heard about the female peace corps volunteer in the phillipines who went hiking by herself and was kidnapped and killed. I used to think to myself how stupid this girl was for going by herself. I now realize why she went by herself. In the peace corps there are times when you want to just go off on your own and be in your head and there are other times when you want to be with people…but who will you go with? I went hiking by myself today, and this girls story popped into my head, and I ended my hike earlier than I wanted. I was hiking in a safe area that was completely visible to the whole town, but where I wanted to go would have been much higher and not as visible. I was bummed that I didn’t go, but I felt like it was worth it. I don’t think anything would have happened, but I need to start adjusting my actions to being in a place that I do not know. One of the hardest parts about being here is reading people. When I’m in California, I usually feel relatively safe and when walking around long beach at night, I do not feel threatened. This is due to my ability to feel out situations and read people. Here it is a different story. Because I do not know the language and am still learning the customs and cultures, I can not read situations the way that I can at home. I can not understand most of the language that I hear when walking the streets of Sukhbaatar. It has been an awkward adjustment to go from my hardass long beach self to this vulnerable American in Mongolia. I feel like I can manage myself a lot better at home because I am accustomed to the way things work and can use my intuition to feel out a situation. Here, it is simply guesses. When I go out at night with my friends, I won’t go home unless a strong male walks me home. Luckily, I have one who lives right near me. Even when I am with someone walking home, it is a nervous walk every time we pass by a group of guys or any drunk guy. We are obviously foreigners and everyone around here knows there is a group of Americans around. People automatically assume that Americans have money and want to talk to us or mess with us. Luckily, I haven’t had too many scary encounters, but it is just a weird feeling to always have your guard up. If something is going down in long beach, I know how to remove myself from the situation or how to avoid it all together. Here, I have to rely on watching the people around me. I am probably making Sukhbaatar seem to be more dangerous than it is, and I don’t mean to freak anybody out at home about my safety. I assure you, I am safe.
Another interesting observation from Mongolia is the way they view people of different races. Mongolians are not racist, they just don’t have the knowledge. As a group of Americans, we are made up of people of all different backgrounds and ethnicities. Any black male volunteer is expected to be Michael Jordan, a few of the Indian volunteers have been mistaken for African, anybody from America without white skin is misunderstood. A Vietnamese volunteer is told over and over again that she is Mongolian. I was talking to a Mongolian yesterday (who knew excellent English) and he was telling me about when he was rejected for his US Visa. He said, “maybe it’s because I’m Asian,” I assured him that it has nothing to do with the fact that he’s Asian, as there are many people of Asian origin in the states. People around here say they know what it means to be Jewish, but I have heard from other volunteers that they really have no clue. I really feel lucky to have grown up in a place of such diversity. America is a beautiful place with all the people of different backgrounds coexisting and sharing their knowledge and culture with others. I am not going to claim America to be perfect, but I am grateful for the opportunity to have my eyes open to all different things at one time.
We are really fortunate to have access to the American way of life. I have now visited met people in Israel, Costa Rica, and Mongolia who have wanted to get visas to the US and have been denied. I do not know anything about how to get a US visa or the selection process, but it seems to be difficult.