The Plan

I'm not sure I can call this a Master Plan...Journeyman Plan, perhaps?  But now that I have gotten most of my pre-trip details figured out, it is time to share an account of how I will be spending these next few months.

I fly out of MSP on August 22, which is approaching a bit fast for comfort.  I'll be arriving in Moscow on the 23rd, and I'll stick around for a few days to see a bit of the city.  I'm an avid CouchSurfer, so I'll be staying with someone from that site in Moscow.  I'm still waiting to hear back from the girl who seems like the best fit, but surely one of the thousands of hosts in Moscow will be able to take me in for a couple of nights.

Late on August 25, I board the Trans-Mongolian train (one of the branches of the Trans-Siberian).  The journey to Mongolia's capital city of Ulaanbaatar takes about 101 hours, so I'll arrive in UB bright and early on August 30.  I initially decided to take the train simply to save money, but I'm becoming increasingly excited about this leg of the trip.  Although 5 days straight on a train may not be everyone's cup of tea, I can hardly wait to watch Siberia roll by, broken by brief stops at various towns and villages scattered along the route.  When I get to UB, I'll have a day or two to get re-acclimated to Mongolia before starting my internship on September 1. 

Now for the internship: The meat and potatoes (maybe make that the sheep viscera and flour-and-water noodles) of my Mongol experience this time around.  Interestingly, this will be my first completely full-time, 9-5 type of job, and I'm not even getting paid for it.  I'll be working at the Equal Step Centre, which is also known more verbosely as The Children and Young People's Protection and Development NGO. Their overarching mission is to improve the lives of vulnerable youth in Mongolia. They seek to do this through a wide variety of programs, from teaching marketable skills to the parents of child laborers to reduce the burden placed on the youngsters' shoulders, to maintaining a drop-in center where kids can come to socialize and escape their stressful home situations. The project I am working most closely with to deals with preventing internet exploitation and human trafficking of young people. The NGO I’m working with seems to be a fairly small organization, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if I wind up working on other projects as well.

Tuya (left) and Ochiroo (right)

     While I'm working at the ESC, I will be  
     staying with a host family there in
     Ulaanbaatar. Their names are Ochiroo
     and Tuya; he is an accountant and she is
     a housewife, and I am told she speaks a
     bit of English. They have a 9-year-old
     daughter at home and an older girl who
     is away studying in Germany

     I'll also be taking 60 hours of Mongolian
     language lessons.  Hopefully this time
     around I will be able to get beyond the
     few random phrases I was able to learn
     last time.  After all, saying "this yak is large"
     and "hold your dog!" can only get you so far when it comes to communicating with locals.  (Those particular phrases, however, will get one farther in Mongolia than they might in other countries.)

My internship wraps up on November 30, and I've booked myself some free time in the country after I finish up my work.  After all, it's much cheaper to exist in Mongolia than it is to get to Mongolia in the first place.  I'll plan my free time as I see fit when I get to that point, but one of my hopes is to find a nice nomadic family to stay with for a week or so.  One of the highlights of my last Mongolian experience was time spent with nomads far from the hustle and bustle of the city, so I would love to replicate that situation this time around.  I would also love to visit the far Western region of Mongolia, which is dominated by ethnic Kazaks and is rarely seen by tourists.  Eventually, I will have to wind up in Moscow again, and I'll be flying home from there on December 19.

I can hardly believe I will be back in Mongolia in just over a month!  As the time for departure draws nearer my feelings of excitement and apprehension are both growing.  I can't wait to get back to the country where I learned so much about myself and the world, but that enthusiasm does not erase that freaked-out little inner voice that keeps telling me that 4 months is an entire third of a year.