Progress!

Hi all! So, last Thursday I got the walking boot but not much more change at that time because I also had a surface skin infection on part of the incision from surgery. That set my physical therapy back a week. They couldn't start stretching exercises until the infection healed. Good news--the infection has healed, and I started new PT today! I am so excited. The doctor thinks I am still on track to make it back to Mongolia within 45 days. He says I should be walking with the boot and no crutches by the end of next week. I'm a little doubtful of that, and so is the physiotherapist. But I am going to give it the ol' college try. I now have daily PT appointments and I have stretching exercises to do on my own 4 times a day. I have 2 weeks til the 45 day mark. I am now alone in Bangkok. My mom went home Oct. 14 (the day I got the boot), and my fellow Mongolia PCV who was here went back to Mongolia yesterday. There was also another PCV from Ukraine here (gall bladder surgery) and we were hanging out with her too. But she went back to the Ukraine on Tuesday this week. I think it's actually probably better that I'm by myself for the last 2 weeks. I really need to work hard on my pt and walking. So I'll be going to my pt appointments, going back to the hotel to do my stretching exercises, and practicing walking around the long halls in the hospital. I was a little down this week when I couldn't get started on the stretching exercises, but now I'm excited and focused. The pt is really kind of interesting. The therapist puts a heating pad on my calf and tendon to warm it up, then she stretches it gently by hand. There are also some stretching exercises I do on my own. On Tuesday, the surgeon says I can get the incision wet (yay! showers!), and then at pt they will also put my leg in a warm whirlpool to loosen the tendon. The tendon is very tight right now. They also use electro-therapy on my leg. They attach these electrode things that send an intermittent 5-second shock which makes my calf muscle contract. It kind of feels like little needles stabbing you but it doesn't really hurt. This is supposed to get the muscle used to being used again. My calf muscle has turned to mush since I haven't used it in 4 weeks. It's kind of amazing. Today at pt I walked with the crutches and no boot,putting 25 % weight on my repaired leg. How do you figure out 25% weight, you ask. I stand on two scales with one foot on each scale. First, I put all my weight on my good foot to see how much I weigh. Then I figure 25% of my total weight, and I shift my weight to my bad foot so that I hit the 25% of my total weight on the right scale. I didn't know how I was going to figure that out. In a few more days, hopefully I'll move up to 50% weight. Well, this entry is probably way more information about my leg and physical therapy than you all want to know. It's still hot and humid and raining frequently here (the height of the rainy season). I was able to do a few things when Mom and my fellow PCVs were here but I'm through trying to sightsee now that I've been given the go ahead on the pt and walking. Hopefully, I'll be writing an entry from Mongolia in the near future. Thanks for all your well wishes and prayers! Keep 'em coming.

Surgery Day plus 11

Hi all! I had my 10-day follow-up appointment with the doctor yesterday. They took off the giant cast, took out the stitches, and put on a lighter, sleeker cast. It turns out the giant cast was yards of cotton wrapped around my foot. The nurse tore it off by layers so that it looked like the cast blew up. I wasn't sure she was ever going to find my foot in that mound. I am glad to have a lighter cast on, but a little disappointed I didn't go straight to the boot. I have 10 more days of non-weight bearing. I meet with the doctor again, and then I get the boot. Once I have the boot I can start walking on my foot a little boot. I'm still going to pt everyday, but I meet with the physiotherapist doctor tomorrow to find out my progress and whether I need to go everyday. It may be that I can do pt on my own. I'm a little torn about pt. If it's stuff I can do on my own, then that means I'm that much closer to being able to going back to Mongolia. On the other hand, I'm stuck in a non-crutch friendly city with my main source of entertainment is going to pt and getting starbucks afterwards. Having mom here has been great. I would really be stuck if she weren't here. Another PCV from Mongolia who broke a bone in her foot playing volleyball is here now. PC Mongolia is going to start banning PCVs from playing volleyball. I hate it for her, but at least I have someone to hang out with. She has a walking boot and crutches and is more mobile than me, though. Mom and I did manage to go to a flower show at the Swissotel. We rented a wheelchair from the hospital and took a taxi. The flowers were gorgeous and they had some vendors there, so we got in a little shopping. I think we're going to try to go to a mall that has a whole section of traditional Thai crafts. We'll see how that goes. It is nice to get out of the hotel for an afternoon. Well, that's about all the news. I'll write again after my next appointment.

Surgery Day plus 4

Hi all! Surgery went well. The doctor said the tendon was 95% torn, so practically a total rupture. That however does not change his opinion that I will probably be able to return to Mongolia within 45 days. The hospital was really great. I had a fabulous private room with a flat screen tv that had a bunch of channels in English. The food was really good. I picked my meals from a menu, and I could choose from western, asian, or vegetarian. They also have halal meals because they have lots of muslim patients. I can totally see why this hospital is a medical tourist destination. My whole stay at the hospital which included 3 nights and the surgery only cost about $6500. I highly recommend Bumrungrad if you have medical needs that your insurance won't pay for. I was discharged Monday afternoon. I started PT the day after surgery, and I've been going everyday. I have a giant cast on my foot that weighs about 5 pounds and is really uncomfortable. I haven't been out except to go to PT. And the hospital ferries me back and forth in a wheel chair. However, today at PT they told me I should walk with crutches as much as I can, so tomorrow I'm going to walk over (across the street). I don't have too much pain now. Mostly just discomfort. My mom arrives tonight. I am so glad she's coming. It'll be nice to get out of the hotel room even if it's just to sit at Starbucks for a little while. (and yes there's a starbucks at the hospital as well as a McDonalds). I'll keep you all posted. Thanks for all the well wishes and prayers.

surgery

Just a quick note before I'm admitted to the hospital. I have surgery tomorrow morning (Saturday) at 7 AM. They're admitting me tonight to make sure I get a good night's sleep before surgery. I'm at the Bumrungrad International Hospital. It is a first class hospital. My hotel is across the street from the hospital, and the hospital staff wheels me over here in a wheelchair. And when I need to go back to the hospital, the hotel staff gets a hospital staffer to bring me over in a wheelchair. You would never get that kind of service in the States. The doctor thinks I'll be able to make it back to Mongolia within the 45 days, though I may have to return with a walking boot on my foot. I'm optimistic, and can't wait to get this done and back to Mongolia. My mom is going to come to Bangkok in a few days and stay for a couple of weeks, so I won't be without some help. Maybe we'll actually get to see some things too. We'll see--maybe a bus tour. Thanks for all your well wishes.

A Short Hiatus from Mongolia

Hi all! Sorry for not posting. I've been settling in quite nicely at my site. My job is going well. The people I work with are really great. Which makes it all the more disappointing that I have to leave my site for a while. Last Saturday I was playing volleyball with teachers from my school in a tournament when I ruptured my right achilles tendon. I have an 80% tear, so I am going to need surgery. On Sunday, PC flew me to Ulaanbaatar. Yesterday I had an MRI done (which is how I know it's an 80% tear). I'm still in UB but I've been approved to go to Thailand to have surgery done there. With recovery time, I will probably be there for 5 weeks. PC has a policy that you have 45 days to recover, and if you don't, then your service is over and they send you home. I am going to be the best patient ever, so I can make it back to Mongolia. I really want to finish my service. I love what I'm doing here. You know, I was the only non-Mongolian at the volleyball tournament. There were 8 teams of teachers and staff from schools around the city. Everyone was talking about me and asking my teammates about me (none of my teammates speak English). So, I was thinking to myself, Wow, I better be really good today, because all eyes are on me. It was our first game in the tournament about half way through, and I had to hop off the court and be taken away in an ambulance (though the ambulance was really a jeep with a light on top). I was so embarrassed. Such is life. I have received really good care. My sitemates and my counterparts met me at the hospital and helped me through. One of my sitemates, Geoff, speaks really good Mongolian. He translated for me, which was really helpful. When he arrived, I was looking up the word "tendon" in my dictionary, trying to talk to the doctor. There happened to be an American surgeon in my city at the time. He was doing a training trip with a surgical team from the University of Utah. He and the other surgeons from the hospital were all out in the countryside on Saturday. My counterparts doggedly tracked him down at his hotel and brought him to my apartment Saturday evening. His name is Dr. Price. He's a general surgeon. He brought with him his interpreter who is a doctor from UB, and the chief of surgery from the hospital in my city. The chief of surgery is an orthopedic surgeon. So they all looked at my leg and confirmed what I knew from the moment it happened--I tore the achilles tendon and would need surgery. They then went to a pharmacy and brought back supplies to put a plaster splint on my leg. The Mongolian chief of surgery did it in my apartment. It was kind of funny because while the doctors were gone to the pharmacy, the teachers from my volleyball team arrived. When the doctors came back, there were like 12 Mongolians in my apartment. They all watched the doctor put the plaster splint on my leg. Some of the teachers who came to see me come to my English class for teachers (I was teaching the teachers English 3 times a week), and they were very sad that we wouldn't have English lessons anymore. That made me feel good about the work I'm doing but really sad that I have to take this break. So, I'm trying to be optimistic. Everyone send good, healing thoughts my way. And if anyone's up for a vacation, I'll be in sunny Thailand by myself for 5 weeks.

I'm a PCV!

Hi all! It's official--I am a PCV and no longer a trainee. We swore in on Friday. Right now I'm sitting outside on the porch of a cafe that has free wireless, enjoying a beautiful sunny day. As my training sitemate Eric would say, it's a real bluebird of a day. Swearing in was quite the event. There were several official speeches and then the M21s put on performances. There were 4 people who gave short speeches in Mongolian. Other people did traditional Mongolian dances and sang Mongolian songs. I didn't do any of that. It was beyond my talents. But it was fun to watch. So, I passed my language test with a novice high. After our Mongolian teacher told us how we were the worst site, our site had the highest scores as a group. 50% of us scored intermediate low. Our teachers were very proud. Last Sunday I found out where my permanent site is. Because of PC rules, I can't publicly post the name of the town, but I am in an aimag center (like a state capital) in the very far north east of Mongolia. The aimag borders Russia and China. It is steppe land, famous for it's gazelle population. It was a total surprise, but I am very happy. There are 2 other M21s in the same town as me, and 5 M20s. And two of my training sitemates, Jason and Pico, are in soums (small towns) in the north. If there were roads, it would only take them 3 or 4 hours to get to my town, but because there are no roads, it'll take 6 or 7 hours. My town is pretty big, about 30,000, so there is good shopping. And because we're on the Russian border, we can get real cheese, which I am extraordinarily excited about. All the organic milk in Mongolia, and they haven't mastered the art of cheesemaking! I will be teaching at 2-year vocational college. The students "major" in things like mining, shoemaking, tailoring, cosmetology, etc. It looks like I will be doing a lot of teacher training. There are 3 English teachers besides me who are my counterparts. I'll solo teach a couple English classes and team teach with the other English teachers. I will also be teaching English to the other faculty members. There are 50 total faculty members. There are also a couple Korean volunteers who teach something with computers at my college. I should have plenty to do. I leave UB tomorrow. We are driving to my site in a college vehicle. I'm going with my supervisor and 2 teachers from the college. If all goes well, it'll be a 14-hour drive. My supervisor doesn't speak much English, so I'm hoping the teachers speak more. I'm going to exhaust my Mongolian repertoire in the first 15 minutes. Well, my battery is running low, so I need to wrap it up. My next post will be from the far east!

Training is almost over!

Hello all! So, training is almost over. We leave our training sites on Sunday and all come together again for a couple more days of training and then we go to UB for swearing in. We find out Sunday where our permanent sites are going to be. Everyone is quite anxious and ready to start their permanent assignments. I know I am. We have Mongolian language tests and our final evaluations on Friday. I'm not sure how I'm going to do on the language test. I think I know enough to live by myself but not carry on any deep conversations. I can shop by myself and navigate transportation, so I think I'll be ok. If you fail the language test, the PC pays for a tutor for you at your site. If you pass the language test (and they're looking for us to be at high novice level), then a tutor is still a good idea but PC won't pay for it. So there is a certain advantage to not passing. Of course, I will do my best! Last weekend we had a community appreciation event and a host family celebration. For the community appreciation event, we painted lines on the concrete volleyball court outside the elementary school. We also painted a bench and some tires that are stuck in the ground as an obstacle course. We had an American bbq for our host family celebration. We had German potato salad, baked beans, a green salad (with broccoli and actual lettuce!), and hamburgers. The families thought it was great! I went to UB with a few other trainees and our language teachers on Saturday to shop for the bbq. We had a great time in UB. We ate dinner there and had pizza and french fries. It was a real treat! It was kind of expensive though, on a PC budget. Well, I've got to go. I'm helping with dinner tonight. We're having tsuivan, which is a common Mongolian dish which has--surprise, surprise--cabbage, mutton, and carrots. Hopefully for my next post, I'll be at my permanent site! P.S. The picture is me with my host family (minus my host sister, Bolormaa). We took this picture for the PC certificate I gave to my family.

Naadam

Naadam, Mongolia's national holiday, was July 11-13. Most towns have their own celebration and there is one huge 3-day celebration in Ulaanbaatar. There are competitions in the three national sports--wrestling, horse racing, and archery. There is also a fourth sport, shagai, that is becoming more important at Naadam. Shagai is a game played with sheep ankle bones. There are several different versions but they usually involve some combination of flicking a bone into another bone and/or rolling the bones. I've played shagai with my host family. I am not a very accurate flicker, so I'm not very good at it. In my town, there was a one day celebration. It was kind of like a town fair. There were vendors set up selling drinks and khooshur (fried meat pies). Different groups (like the school, the hospital, political parties) have tents set up and offer airag (fermented mare's milk--the traditional alcohol) and food. There was wrestling, and they had a stage set up for singing and dancing. Mongolians are all about the singing and dancing. In fact, as part of our cultural training we are learning a couple Mongolian songs so we can sing along at parties. There was also horse racing but it was out in the khodoo (countryside) so I didn't get to see it. Most people dress up in their best traditional clothing, so it's very colorful. I tasted airag, fermented mare's milk. It tastes like watered down, bubbly sour cream. I thought it was ok, but some of sitemates really hated it. Airag is supposed to be "good" for your stomach, which I think means it cleans you out. I didn't have any trouble because I didn't drink that much, but a couple of my sitemates spent quite a bit of the next day in the outhouse. The wrestling is fascinating. When the wrestlers first come out in the arena (a field) they do this eagle dance, waving their arms and then they slap their thighs and butt. They are showing their power, or something like that. I took a video of some of the wrestlers coming out. I'm trying to attach it, but it's taking over an hour to upload. The winner also does a little eagle dance after the match. There are some wrestlers who clearly wrestle frequently, but they also take competitors from the crowd. There is a military base in my town, so there were a few military guys who took up the challenge. There are very few rules in Mongolian wrestling. You just have to get the other guy to hit the ground with some part of his body between his knees and shoulders. And apparently, you can do that anyway you can. The wrestling outfits originated many years ago when a woman entered the wrestling matches and beat a bunch of men. After that, all competitors have to wear the speedo-like bottoms and the sleeves that reveal the chest. No women allowed. I went to Ulaanbaatar with my host family for the 3rd day of Naadam. We went to Sukhbaatar Square (which is the center of the city and where the parliament building is) and there was a parade of people wearing traditional Mongolian costumes. Each region/tribe has their own style. It was very interesting. The couple in the top left picture are Kazakh. I didn't get to see any archery. I guess I'll have to try and catch that next year. We only have a couple weeks left in training. I'll find out where my permanent site is about August 16. We have a big graduation ceremony in UB where we meet our site counterparts (our supervisors and people we work with at site). A lot of trainees are having traditional clothes made for them for our swearing in ceremony. My host mom is a seamstress, so I'm having her make me a jacket that will be really cool. I'll be sure to post pictures when it's done.

Storm

Hi all! Sorry it's been so long since my last post. PC is keeping us busy! Remember in my post about Mongolian weather that I told you about the really cool storms here? Well, a couple weeks ago we had this big thunder storm that had the coolest lightning. It took me about 15 tries, but I finally got a picture of the lightning. The lightning did not really go down toward the earth much. It looks like the Greek gods are having a war and throwing thunder bolts at each other. I took this picture from an upstairs window in my house.

Mongolian Food Part 2

Well, I had my first taste of marmot. My host dad, Tuyakho, loves to hunt marmot with his buddies. He goes frequently to the countryside. This time he and his buddies brought the marmot home to cook and eat. They cooked it the traditional way by stuffing it with hot rocks and then blow torching off the hair. I did not see the first part, the stuffing of the hot rocks. But I did see the blow torching off the hair. They did all this in our backyard. For those of you who don't know, a marmot is a large rodent. It looks like an oversized guinea pig. The one they had yesterday was small, I'm told. It was about the size of a cat (at least when bloated with hot rocks and being blow torched). After all the hair is blow torched, they cut it open and remove meat and rocks. It looked like to me that there were just chunks of meat on the inside, but I can't be sure of that. I got a chunk just removed from the inside. It wasn't too bad, but it was tough. I think it tasted like gamey old shoe leather. And of course, the Mongolians ate the fat with it. I did not. Tuyakho's friends asked me to come out in the yard and join them in the eating and drinking vodka. I took a sip of the vodka that was offered me (it is rude to refuse) and one bite of the marmot. That was enough for me. I was also given one of the hot rocks that cooked the marmot. It is supposed to be good for the body. You pass it back and forth between your hands til it cools down. Then you put it in a plastic bag and put the rock in your pants next to your stomach. I guess it cures what ails you (which of course could be the marmot, ironically!). I felt a little silly with a rock in my pants, but when in Mongolia... I washed my hands about 4 times after that. The rock is greasy and smells like you might imagine a wild, torched rodent would smell like. It was a little difficult to get the smell off my hands. I also did not break out in plague boils. Marmots carry the black plague--yes, that black plague from the Dark Ages. I heard that 4 or 5 people a year die from the plague after having eaten an infected marmot. My host dad eats it all the time, so I took the risk and lived to tell the tale. I'm going to try to post my pictures now. You've got to see these, especially you, Sarah!