Last Post EVER!

We're home! Oh man, America is just the way we left it and things are awesome.

Our travel was long, but things went smoothly and we arrived in both Tokyo and LA on-time. The Tokyo airport was a bit of a disappointment -- not only was it hot and muggy, but its selection of eateries wasn't as inclusive as we would have liked (no Starbucks? no Subway?). Still, we managed to get a McDonald's fix -- hopefully it's the first AND the last one we will get now that we are back in the USA where healthier dining options are available to us.


Our parents were waiting for us just outside of the customs gate at LAX and it was a wonderful reunion. Even though we were tired, hot, and smelly, we all piled into the car and headed right for the Cheesecake Factory, just like I dreamed! After fighting through 40 minutes of traffic (welcome back to LA), we were sitting at a table with margaritas in hand, munching on chips, and not one, but TWO dips: amazing guacamole and hot spinach-and-cheese. The rest of the meal (my chicken sandwich with red onion, avocado, bacon, and bleu cheese) was mouth-watering and the dessert (lemon torte and Reese's caramel chocolate cheesecake) was divine.

I snapped a picture of Ashlee hugging her mom just outside of customs. Sorry, the picture is blurry. That's Ashlee's dad in the orangish shirt over her shoulder and that's my mom on the left with her camera also taking a picture of the reunion.

My mom and I

My sandwich. FYI, Ashlee got a pizza and salad. She said the salad was so good it made her want to cry.

Me eating my sandwich

Dessert

Our car was waiting at home. My little cousin has been taking care of it for us. His name is Hamish the Hyundai. All our Mongolian friends approved of the fact that we drive a Hyundai in America. "Ah, Korean cars are very good."

Now we are currently staying at my parents' house and we have been keeping busy unpacking and catching up with friends and family. It really feels that we have accomplished a lot these past two days. First and foremost, we got our iPhones! It actually ended up being better that we got them here because we managed to get a healthy rate discount through my dad's work. We've also been shopping up a storm since Mongolia claimed most of our wardrobes. All in all, life is great.

I guess this brings me to the end of the post...and the blog. I'd really love to be able to write something deep and profound here. Maybe write something about how our time in Mongolia has completely changed our lives and the lives of the friends we made and the students we taught. At the moment, however, the whole thing is too fresh in our minds for me to write something so definitive -- not to mention our heads are still spinning from the excitement of being back in America. Suffice it to say that while our Peace Corps was definitely a roller-coaster (the highs were high and the lows were oh-so-low) we are happy we did it and we have no regrets. We made some amazing (and hopefully life-long) friendships and some memories that will never fade. Peace Corps, it has been swell.

Peace Corps No More!

This morning Ashlee and I successfully completed the close-of-service process, officially ending our two years' of service with the Peace Corps here in Mongolia. As of 11:30am today, we are no longer Peace Corps Volunteers. Instead we have moved into alumni status as "Returned" Peace Corps Volunteers, or RPCVs. It feels awesome!

Adding to this feeling of awesomeness, the antibiotics I have been taking to kick this stomach bug seem to be working and I am feeling MUCH better -- plus the rain finally stopped and the weather is perfect! All-in-all, we're both feeling pretty good, albeit tired and ready to come home.

Our flight leaves tomorrow at 7am, so it will be an early morning. We'll have a 5-hour layover in Tokyo (we're hoping to score some good sushi) and then it's a 13-hour flight to Los Angeles. We will land around lunchtime and our parents will pick us up and whisk us away to the glorious Cheesecake Factory. Much to Ashlee's amusement, I have already scouted out the menu online and I have an idea of what I want to order: chips and guacamole, a Navajo chicken sandwich (add bacon and bleu cheese), and a mojito. For dessert, I'm vacillating between the red velvet cheesecake and the lemoncello torte. Hmm, decisions decisions.

As for the rest of today, we are currently sitting in our tiny guesthouse room packing our bags for the trip tomorrow. We're worried that we have more things than we will be allowed to take, and we really want to avoid paying exorbitant excess baggage fees, so we have to make some tough decisions on what to take and what to leave behind. Tonight we're going to meet up with some friends to say some final goodbyes -- not all of our goodbyes, however, because there is a fair number of fellow RPCVs flying out with us tomorrow.

Life is pretty sweet at the moment.

PS - Because of our (Ashlee's) excellent budgeting skills, we have found ourselves with a healthy amount of leftover Mongolian tugriks. Rather than blow this little nest egg on last-minute (and unnecessary) souvenirs, we decided to convert the sum to US dollars to bring back to America. After visiting the currency exchange kiosk at the State Department Store, we have exactly enough money to buy our iPhones! It's like it was meant to be.

Getting Ahead of Ourselves (Myself)

I woke up this morning excited to check my email for an order confirmation from Verizon about our iPhones. While there was definitely a confirmation email, it was a confirmation of the cancellation of our order. There was no explanation of the cancellation other than a phone number to call, which I called through Skype. It turns out that orders can't be placed outside of the country. Lame.

COS Update

Today was pretty productive. We managed to take a good chunk out of our "close-of-service" checklist, including our final medical appointments and getting our travel per diem (we're getting $64 to spend at the Tokyo airport!).

My stomach has still not recovered from my final Mongolian meal this past Saturday and I am now on antibiotics. Keep your fingers crossed that I am better by Saturday, because at the moment making a 13-hour international flight on a wobbly belly is about the last thing I want to do -- plus once we touch down in LA I'm planning to gorge on either Avila's El Ranchito or Cheesecake Factory (Ashlee and I can't decide what we'd like our first meal to be).

Also, we decided to get a leg-up on the readjustment process and we ordered our cell phones online this afternoon. We have each been wanting an iPhone for years now and we figured it would be now or never. When we placed the order we were asked what area code we wanted. Now I grew up as a 909 and Ashlee a 949/714, so we had to compromise. We figured that since the next two years of our life will take place in Los Angeles, a 310 area code sounded good. The phones will come via 2-day shipping, so hopefully they will be waiting for us in the hands of Ashlee's dad when we land at LAX on Saturday.

Tomorrow the plan is to lay low. Hopefully this little El Nino that has been rocking UB for the past two days will finally blow out of here. Walking around the city has not been fun. Maybe we will take in a movie -- Ashlee says that Kung Fu Panda 2 is playing at the theater just around the corner from our guesthouse.

That's all for now.

Goodbye, Olgii!

Ashlee and I have officially picked up stakes and moved out of Olgii. We are currently cooling our heels in UB finishing the laborious close-of-service protocol to end our time with Peace Corps. Weird.

The past couple of days has featured lots of packing and goodbyes. Yesterday our friend Nurbol treated us to lunch at Arvin, the local Mongolian restaurant. Ashlee was right, I totally jinxed myself the other day when I said something about eating my last Mongolian meal. I got a traditional Kazakh meat dish -- and I have been paying for it ever since. I have found it a lot easier to say goodbye to Mongolia when its food keeps me up tossing and turning all night and running to the bathroom every 20 minutes.

Anyways, the weather was gorgeous in Olgii today -- a perfect day to fly. Brian, Sabit, and Nurbol accompanied us to the airport, which was nice because we have over a hundred pounds of luggage. The flight itself went smoothly and we made it to our guesthouse fine.

Since I was still feeling a bit under the weather, we kept it low-key this afternoon. A simple lunch at Cafe Amsterdam before closing our bank accounts at Khan Bank. Some nasty weather rolled in after lunch time and it has been raining ever since -- which means that tomorrow the city, with its complete lack of drainage, will be riddled with small rivers and lakes. Awesome.

Here's some pictures from this morning.

Olgii's airport. This year they finally started paving the runway.

The US State Department only approves of one domestic airline: Eznis.

A shot of the dirt runway during takeoff.

Flying out over Olgii

Downtown Olgii. That's my school square in the middle.

Last Olgii Family Get-Together

The end of our time in Olgii is fast approaching. On Saturday we had our last "Monopoly Night" with all 5 of us Olgii PCVs. I hit the bottle a little too hard and paid for it Sunday morning.


Just last night Brian had us over for an amazing pizza dinner. It was literally the best pizza I have ever had -- well, it's tough to beat Costa Mesa's Haus of Pizza, but last night was pretty darn good. It had everything from buffalo sauce to bbq sauce to pepperoni to chicken seasoned in a "spicy Cincinnati butt rub." I swear that Brian makes this stuff up sometimes. Anyways, it was a great time and it also gave us a chance to say goodbye to our good friends Khala, Nurbol, and Sabit.


We're UB-bound tomorrow!

My Very Own Kazakh "Sweet"

Ashlee and I just got back from a farewell lunch with a few of my teachers and the school's vice-principal. It was our third or so round of goodbyes and probably our last time eating Mongolian food...hmm, hopefully I didn't just jinx us on that. Sorry, Ashlee!

A couple of weeks ago I got a phone call from Bahitgul asking me to come to school because the teachers wanted to give me a "Kazakh sweet." I learned long ago to not seek immediate clarification on things like this (especially over the phone) so I decided to go with it. The entire walk to school I kept wondering what exactly a Kazakh sweet would entail. It turns out that she meant to say a Kazakh suit. The reason I had to go to school was because they were going to get it tailor-made and they needed to measure me.

At lunch today they presented me with my new suit -- a snazzy embroidered velvet jacket and matching hat. Despite the measurements, the coat has a pretty snug fit -- it's about an inch shy of buttoning and I can't really lift my arms above my shoulders. Everyone found this funny, however, and they took turns trying to pull the jacket shut and then, upon giving up, patting my tummy. Thanks, guys.


They also gave Ashlee a really pretty wall-hanging, bringing our collection of hangings to three now. We're going to have a pretty heavy Kazakh theme in our next apartment.

After finishing lunch, we all headed out to the town square to take some pictures in front of the government building and the war memorial. Then we just sort of awkwardly stood around for 10 minutes or so because no one really knew how to say goodbye. I guess I have been so focused on our return to America that I haven't really given much thought to what our departure will mean for the friends we have made here in Olgii. Everyone was really sad and worried that we would forget them. I tried to my best to assure them that we will keep in touch -- afterall, if our future children turn out to be spoiled little jerks you better believe that we will be sending them to spend a summer with Aunt Bahitgul in the Mongolian countryside to get some perspective!

Now in a couple of hours we will have our last sitemate get-together with all 5 of us Olgii PCVs. Although we aren't leaving until Tuesday, Justin is taking off tomorrow for a children's camp in the neighboring province. We will be marking the occasion with multiple hands of Monopoly Deal over a bottle of Grant's scotch whiskey along with sour patch kids, cheezits, pretzels, and peanut butter. Can you tell that our cupboards are getting pretty bare?

Blustery Day

Guest Post by, Ashlee

"... and the rain rain rain came down down down..."
The "rainy" season is upon us here in Mongolia. Generally this means 30 min of light showers once or twice per week, but today it's coming down in buckets with thunder and lightning and that musky smell. We're cozy in our apartment in Olgii, praying for the sanity of our friends that continued on the trip to Tavan Bogd National Park...

Packing Up & Saying Goodbye

Well, I know our blog has been silent for a couple of weeks, but it's because there is nothing really new going on. I took down our official "Countdown to Freedom" last week because it was making me too antsy, but we are leaving Olgii exactly one week from today and we'll back in California a week from Saturday.

We've both been trying hard to keep ourselves busy and entertained with movies, television shows, and the internet. A PCV buddy of mine recently gave me over 900 e-books for my kindle so I have been on a literary binge for the past few days now.

This past week we managed to square our accounts with our agencies and our landlord -- supposedly all of our utilities have been paid and we are good to go, and we have the signed forms to prove it to Peace Corps! We have pretty much divided up all the things that we are leaving behind amongst the remaining PCVs and close friends we have here. We are also diving into our kitchen cupboards with reckless abandon, eating up all the precious care package items that we have been hoarding for the past couple of years. I think we still have 4 cans of refried beans and something like 3 boxes of Kraft macaroni 'n cheese, so we're pretty much set for the rest of the week.

We've also been spending a lot of time with our sitemates. This past week we've been getting up early to watch the NBA Finals with Brian. It was a pretty exciting series and I think there was a group of 8 of us watching Game 6 over bloody marys and eggs benedict. Our trip out to Tavan Bogd (the national park on the Russian border) has fallen through for various reasons, but we're not too sad. We realize that we have had enough Mongolian travel experiences for a lifetime and now we have a few extra days to pack up and say goodbye to our counterparts.

We have already tapped into our PC-issued "readjustment allowance" and we have been flexing our credit cards e-purchasing items that we know we will need/want for the summer. We have also decided to bite the bullet and get iPhones. We are planning to order them this weekend so they will be ready for us the minute we get to my parents' house. Ashlee would probably like to point out that this was entirely my idea and that she thinks I'm a little silly for getting so excited. Oh, well.

So, yeah, that's about it. When we get to UB next week we will have to spend a couple of days in the PC office officially closing out our service, returning our PC-issued equipment (water distillers, training books, medical kits), getting medically cleared, closing our bank accounts, and conducting exit interviews with the country director. Supposedly getting out of Peace Corps is even more complicated than getting in. We're looking forward to it...