Will I ever make it to Mongolia?

Wow, I can't believe it's been a month since I returned from Canada.  It took that long for my left arm to heal after I fell on it extremely hard.  Between the bad arm, horrendous allergy problems, and getting jabbed regularly for vaccinations, I have felt like the walking wounded.  Good news is that my blood test results were great - negative for a myriad of horrible illnesses.  I wasn't worried about having any major disease or STD but it is reassuring to be 100% certain. The Mongolia government requires HIV and TB testing so I know they won't reject me for health reasons.

The Skills for Working in Development (SKWID) training was a mindblower.  Four long days of learning and applying the participatory approach to working.  Since I fell down on Saturday morning, the second day, I kind of faded in and out regularly.  Couldn't be helped.  I did okay with my faciliations until the final one, where I partnered with Alastair, a Briton who's been living in Canada forever.  We had worked something out beforehand than he changed it when we started.  Unfortunately, I was unable to be flexible and keep up with him. (I'll blame it on my arm pain.)  I could see myself crashing and burning in front of everyone.  Horrible.  The funny part was that the more I withdrew and the quieter I got, the more he talked and took control, and vice versa.  We had to laugh about it in the end.  Alastair was surprised he got his certificate of completion, given our horrible final performance.  But as Mike the facilitator said, sometimes you just miss the boat. 

The group was small, there were only 8 of us and 4 of us had attended the previous four-day Preparing for Change training.  Steffen, a Canadian anthropologist, Judy and Stephen, a married couple destined for Cameroon, and me.  The other 4 were pretty interesting: Melanie, a nurse from San Francisco, Pauline, a Quebecoise, Sarah, an environmentalist working for the Canadian government, and Alastair, a retired Briton who's lived in Canada forever. He also had already volunteered for a year in Bangladesh.

The group was great because we went out to eat together every night then went to the Mayflower pub afterwards.  We had a lot of laughs and mighty interesting conversations about Komodo dragons, marmots cooked from the inside out, and various maladies that have occurred to some of us in various countries.   I definitely enjoyed myself more during my 2 weeks in Canada with such like-minded individuals.  I really felt extremely happy.

So I have been back in SoCal for a month, working on filling out tons of paperwork, getting all kinds of medical tests and vaccinations, and trying to get a criminal background check without doing the Livescan fingerprinting process.  That was impossible.  Finally, CUSO-VSO accepted a county court records search for me.  Hallelujah!  So once I go to the dentist, I'll be set.

I wrote to a volunteer who's in Araikhveer, the town where I'll be stationed.  He works with a water project there.  He said that nobody speaks English there so that I should really study the Mongolian language.  How much can I learn in less than 2 weeks?  I guess I'll have to buy language software.  Nareej also told me that the place is extremely boring so I should bring plenty of movies.  Hmmm... In addition, he's vegetarian too, and is having a hard time.  Hello hardship, I say.