Hey everyone, sorry it took so long for my latest update. I was out of Olgii for almost three weeks but now I am back home, my computer is fixed(thanks once again to the awesomeness, patience and help of my computer genius mother), and I am back online.
In late January I took a van across the country to Ulaanbaatar. The trip was an interesting one. The van had five flat tires, we stopped what seemed like a hundred times to drink tea and it took a grand total of 61 hours. I made it in one piece though and met up with Jacob and the other guys from the basketball team at one of the guesthouses Peace Corps volunteers frequent. I was lucky enough to attend the first ever 'Super Bowl party' at a bar in UB and I ended up being on CNN for a little quick interview. The link for that is in my last post. After a couple days of hanging out in UB we took a train down to the city of Sainshand, in the Gobi desert southeast of the capital. The train ride was slow but not too bad of a ride overall. It takes about 10 hours and makes multiple stops.
We arrived in Sainshand pretty late but Jacob had hooked us up pretty nicely, we had a big hotel room in a pretty solid hotel and we were greeted by his coworkers with plenty of food and beverages. Jake also came through big time on the meal hookup. We had a local restaurant give us three meals a day for the whole week we were in Sainshand. The first couple days consisted of us practicing at the gym twice a day and eating meals, relaxing, and just chillin' like guys chill. From Thursday until Sunday we played six basketball games for the tournament. Being that we are all Peace Corps volunteers, haven't played much serious basketball over the past year, and that we hadn't played together as a team we did pretty well. We won our first five games pretty easily but the teams were competitive. They had some athletes and some good shooters but we managed to survive a few runs and win each game leading up to the gold medal game.
Before I talk about the last game I gotta say, the vibe and the scene at the tournament was awesome. There were tons of people there to watch the games, something like 15 or 16 men's teams and maybe 7 or 8 women's teams participating, and the town seemed pretty overwhelmed having eight pretty good sized American basketball players walking around plus a few other American PCV's hanging around to watch and cheer us on. During all of our games the gym was packed, a few hundred people crowding the bleachers and the balcony, tons of people standing, there were literally toes on the baseline the whole game. It was hard to even take the ball out on dead balls because of the crowding.
The gold medal game we actually played against a team of professional basketball players from UB. These guys basically play basketball for a living and get paid to do it. That being said, basketball isn't as competitive in Mongolia as it is back in the U.S. From a young age basketball players in the States have the fundamentals of the game and teamwork pounded into their heads. It's relatively new to Mongolia and outside of UB, basketball has different 'rules' and in some cases, no rules at all. There are many talented athletes in Mongolia and I think with better coaching and a more fundamentals approach to the game they could have some great basketball players. Now THAT being said, we lost the gold medal game to this team unfortunately. They came out gunning for us and gained a considerable lead pretty early in the game. I normally wouldn't complain about something like this or make excuses but the officiating was probably the worst I've ever seen in my life. We got called for multiple fouls and the other team would smack and hack us down low when we had the ball and we'd get no calls. In the 3rd we were down by as much as 17 points but we had a few good defensive stops, got a good offensive run going and cut the lead to 2.
After a couple more questionable calls I fouled out early in the fourth and we weren't able to pull ahead. We ended up losing by two points and earned the silver medal for the tournament. We were definitely disappointed that we didn't win the gold but it was still a fun tournament. The opening and medal ceremonies were really great, the environment was great and it was a great event to be a part of. After the final game we went to the restaurant for a quick dinner banquet, a little partying and celebrating and then we had to hop on the 9:00 train back to UB for an exhibition game. The train ride back wasn't quite as pleasant as the train ride there, since some of the PCV's had consumed a bit of alcohol and were slightly inebriated and it was an overnight train. We arrived back in UB at about 7 AM tired and a bit cranky but thrilled to be alive nonetheless. Two of our players, Peter and Kevin, had to catch rides back to their sites so we ended up having to play our exhibition game with only six players, six exhausted players.
It's amazing what six straight days of basketball will do to you when you haven't played seriously in a while. We went to the big gym where the Mongolian leagues play for our exhibition game around noon. We had six players to their fourteen. The team we played this time was actually a team of all stars from the professional league so we figured we weren't going to do too well, especially given our lack of players. The game started off well and we played pretty decent. We came out strong for the first three quarters and were up by as much as eight points towards the end of the third. In the fourth our fatigue took over and we just couldn't keep our momentum. They hit a few three pointers, we missed a couple shots and had some really bad turnovers, and the Mongolian all star team ended up beating us by seven points. From what we heard the game was televised on Mongolian national TV but we didn't get a chance to see any of it.
So that was the end of our basketball glory days. I spent a few days in UB before getting a bus back home to Olgii. The ride back to Olgii was about 45 hours, pretty cold and tiring but it wasn't as bad as the trip out to UB, thanks to no flat tires and not as many stops for tea. I'm glad to be back in Olgii. I have gotten back into my teaching routine and I picked up a few new students. In the next week I am going to be meeting with a teacher at Laura's school to discuss getting a life skills course started and I will also be meeting with a private English teacher to discuss working on some conferences and competitions for students throughout Olgii. I am also trying to get a geography class started and another English club going so things are looking good. Progress on projects is slow here but any progress is good news. More info to come. Hope everyone is doing well. Take care.
