Water, Us, or Yc, Molly

Water is, in Mongolian, written like "yc" and pronounced "us," if there was an umlaut over the u. "Oos" might be a better interpretation. If you're concerned, pleace check with the linguist from below. Mongolia, according to Allison (a legitimate scientific resource), is running out of water. There's a projected date by which the country will be dry and that date isn't too far off. It's said that we (they) are currently in a period of drought; however, I always thought that droughts were supposed to end. The "rainy season," something that had been described to me as having been "two weeks of torrential downpour" is, I am told, sporadic at best and can last as little as a few days. (This is my spotty memory here, not actual facts.)

Pennsylvania, dear land of my heart, is much more wet than this. Back in high school it rained every Thursday. Totally serious. I made a chart. In Pittsburgh they say there are more rainy days than sunny days a year. I think this is positively wonderful

When it's too dry, I feel like I am going to dry up into dust. There is something intrinsically right in being submerged in water or caught in a heavy rain. I have this theory that everyone imprints on a kind of non-urban terrain--the place where they would be without civilization to shield them, the place where they feel natural. Mine involves trees, so much green your eyes hurt, and vast oceans of water. So, pretty much New England.

Mongolia is very dry. Here, my water addiction, a silent force driving and destroying my life, becomes obvious. I need to drink it, to bathe in it, to breathe it in to feel whole and alive. I search water out, stalking across the land like a lone, uhh, stalker looking for water, if just to look at it. We use water to wash our clothes in the bathtub, filling up basin after basin. We boil it, store it in the fridge, and consume it later. We fill our nalgenes with boiling water and night and wrap our bodies around them to stay warm. I eye the rivers and lakes, judging whether or not I can swim in them, how safe it is, and if I'll let myself risk the dirtiness of it.

When it rains I stand outside as though I can soak it up and hold it all inside of me.

I think I notice here a lot more how much we use water and how we need it. Every day we take turns boiling water. We fill up our electric kettle and then empty it into large bowls where it cools. We put it back in old juice containers and use it later to drink.

We didn't have hot water for a while there. When this happened we'd take turns boiling water and filling our laundry basin with it, washing our hair and bodies in these strange, careful ways. It took me times to get used to it, but I never really felt clean until the day I first tried dumping it over my head to rinse off. I think it's the psychological sensation of being doused in water that makes me feel clean.

Water is still my favorite thing to drink, it always has been. Ask my parents, I always preferred water. I never liked soda, still don't--the bubbles tickle too much. Water is pretty great. I'm going to go let my stomach appreciate some right now.