Things have slowed down a bit here. I am doing more planning and plotting than running around the city like a madwoman.
I start work with my second (money earning) job this Saturday, and am am not happy about it. Thus far this job has already messed up my plans for at least two holidays and a possible trip out of the country. And, I will only be working there for two months. Eff. I start working at a summer camp this Saturday, July 3. So, I will be missing the July 4th celebrations at the US Embassy. And, I am working at this happy fun time camp all of the week of July 12-16 so I get to miss Nadaam as well. This one I'm particularly irritated by. Mongolia has, maybe, three or four recognizable holidays. The biggest (and soonest) of which is Nadaam. It is a three day festival in which people come from all over to compete in the "three manly sports", wrestling, horseback racing, and archery. I will be in UB for Sunday the 11th, so I will get to see the opening ceremonies. But, I get to miss the rest of it, thank you camp. If I were teaching here in UB at that time, the school in UB doesn't have class during Nadaam, but of course the camp does. And, then I get an email from Gina this morning about a conference opportunity in Russia that @Mn really should be sending someone to. Who wants to go? Me! Who can't go because she has class? ME! B is displeased. At least this job is only until August 20th. Then, hopefully I can find something a little less irritating. I know this sounds spoiled. I have to miss celebrations and conferences because I'm teaching Mongolian children to speak English which may or may not improve their chance to eek a more profitable living in globalizing Mongolia. Part of me is okay with missing the festivals and whatnot because I fully plan on doing it next year either on my own as I circumnavigate Mongolia hunting down any and all animal-based festivals (yak festival: July 14-16 at Khatgal sum, Mongolian horses: August 15, Golden Eagle Festival: September 18-19 Bayan-Ulgii province, Tsaatan Festival (which involves reindeer polo): July 1-4 Khuvsgul province - you get the idea. They like to celebrate their critters...) or with whoever can make it to visit Mongolia next June and July. But, on the other hand, I have still seen very little Mongolia. I know this is a byproduct of living here and not making a whole lot of money. I don't get to do the tourist thing. I get to do the living here thing. Which would be okay by me if I got to see more than the walk between my flat and my destination and do more than sit around and make plans. This is supposed to be the adventure-travel location extraordinaire, and all I'm doing is sitting around waiting for something to happen. And, when I finally have to chance to get out and seeing the things I read about before coming here or the opportunity to travel to Russian, I'm stuck doing a job I don't care about. This isn't why I came to Mongolia. I came for the country, for the people, for the opportunity to travel, and for AIESEC - and so far this second job is getting in the way of all of that (except maybe the people aspect). And, I haven't even started.
Now that I'm settling in I have a little more time to be homesick. It's not bad, but it comes in waves of missing certain people or places. I was listening to Corey Smith yesterday and started miss Athens like crazy. For those of you who don't know Corey Smith, he is a singer/songwriter from Athens and most of his songs deal with Athens. So, if you aren't from there or haven't lived there his songs probably will mean very little to you. But, having lived there they remind me so much of my time in Athens it's scary. So, I figured I'll probably stop listening to him for a while at least until I'm more settled and less prone to waves of homesickness.
I have started scoping out places that will probably become my usual haunts. There is a cafe here called Cafe Amsterdam. It's most expats, but I do really like the atmosphere and they have a little in-house library. It's close to the city location of the second job, so I will probably end up killing time there in between classes. There's also a little French bookstore that I visited yesterday. I has some English language books, they mostly have the Classics, and they are pretty expensive. So, I'll probably just end up sitting in the store and reading them there. But, it's not far from the flat and it's pretty cute. There's another cafe that I will try today. I forget the name but it's run by a German woman named Bridget. :) There's also a little bakery right next door, so I don't really see where I can go wrong with this.
Anyway, I've killed enough time lying around the flat this morning and I actually do have quite a bit of work to plow through today so I should put on actual clothes and get my butt off the couch.
Acronym for today: OGX or outgoing exchange the facet of AIESEC that is responsible for sending people abroad.
