I woke up on the 19th feeling terrible; I guess it was my turn to get sick (I almost made it—9 out of the 11 of us got sick on one day or another this trip). I managed the day long car ride quite well and we stayed at the first tourist camp that evening. Our flight took off for UB around 12:20pm and we were back in the hostel by 3pm. I spent the entire afternoon checking e-mail and typing up these journal entries. I didn’t manage to finish and spent all of Sunday doing the same thing. The night we got back our entire group went out for excellent Indian food and were planning on going to the ridiculously named “scorpion club”, but as we left the restaurant we noticed that all of the stores, bars, clubs, and most of the restaurants in the entire city were closed (at 8pm on a Saturday?). We had no idea what was going on, but the city was really creepy with everything shut down. We called it a night and decided to try again on Sunday. After a day of journaling and internet use at various cafes and bars, a group of us walked down to the “scorpion” which would have been open, like everything else, if it still existed. Again no idea what happened…this place was here when we left for the home stay and when we came back it was gone, no signs, no lights, no trace that this place ever existed.
Sunday night just reaffirms my theory that in UB it is just chaos. In this city nothing makes sense, and as long as none of it makes sense everyone knows what’s going on and can adjust to it and live with the ridiculousness of the potholes, and the traffic, and the missing menu items, and the people who sleep on the sidewalks whether or not they are drunk, or the 30+ people on the street with scales waiting to either guess your weight or let you check if you’ve really put on those extra pounds from eating nothing but mutton fat. This city is quite outrageous, but I really do like it here, and it feels a bit more like home then the countryside.
Monday marks the beginning of a weeklong series of lectures by individuals who work in politics, economics and social change. The first speaker was former SIT student (who actually married his language instructor and now lives here-scandal!) who now works for Ivanhoe Mines. Mining is the economic backbone of Mongolian and will continue to be probably for the next century or two. Erdenet, which is the second largest city in Mongolian, came about because of the copper mine established there during the socialist period; the mine constitutes about half of the GDP of Mongolia. Anyway, Luke is in charge of communication for Ivanhoe, which is the company that will start mining in the south Gobi at a site called Oyu Tolgoi (OT) as soon as there is government approval. OT is the largest deposit of copper ever found next to an enormous deposit of gold; this site was the International Geological Mineral Find of the Year (that’s what they actually call it) in 2004. To put this into perspective, Mongolia’s GDP will quadruple when this mine actually starts producing, so there is a lot riding on this one project.
Politics surrounding and holding up the project are so complicated I cannot even begin to explain them, but it is fascinating that everyone in the country seems to have an opinion on the mine and expectations about the new capital. Mongolia as the law stands now has a windfall profits tax of 60% and want a 50% stake in the mine, haha you’ve got to be kidding right? Absolutely not, former socialist view are so ingrained in the politics of this country that this project looks like it may never get off the ground, but it probably will if the new parliament changes the mining law this session. Oh yeah, elections finally got sorted out (remember those riots over the summer-more about that in a minute) and the parliament elected a coalition government cabinet of 9 ruling party members MPRP and 6 opposition members (I know very little of this makes sense, what counts here is that the national government is in place and is structured way differently than in the U.S.).
So Luke went through the whole project, and I learned the difference between block cave mining and pit mining. Then Layton, Luke’s boss, came to speak to us more about Mongolia and community enhancement from the mine (essentially Ivanhoe is bringing in infrastructure to the local herders, which is good and bad....but I will leave it at that). Layton himself is an American who came to Mongolia in 1992 with the Peace Corps and has lived in UB since then. He had some interesting insights into the way UB has grown and how Mongolia in general has progressed from socialism to democracy from a foreigner’s view. Essentially, as will be the running theme for this government, Mongolia is to bureaucratic, centralized, and lacks a population big enough to have decent people working in every sector. Also people here are very independent and do not like being dominated (go figure, you descend from the man who ruled half the world and you don’t like being dominated), so they are very afraid and suspicious of outside investors and foreign influences.
On Tuesday, Undarya came to speak to us; she is a civil society leader who runs and works with NGO’s. Undarya had excellent English and was the most passionate speaker so far and focused her attention on human rights abuses propagated during the July 1st riots. This was our first real taste stories about the riots since we’ve been here because no one really seems to know what happened and no one wants to talk about it. Now the riots happened on July 1st after the MPRP (former communist party) won a majority of parliament seats. Their headquarters and the modern art gallery, which also housed national artifacts, were looted and burned and 6 people were killed by police. A four day state of emergency was put into effect that evening.
No one really knows what happened that night, and stories are conflicting. Undarya’s stories contradict what I read in the states, but I also read that the election was fair and there was no voter fraud (looking back I was ignorant). Voter fraud in this country is rampant and buying votes is how you win elections. There is visual evidence of massive voter fraud in many previous elections as well as this one, however, the West’s major news source from Mongolia is the head of the Asia society in Mongolia who declare that this election was fair on the basis of one review in one province. He, Bill Forder, was then quoted in all of the major articles in the U.S. as saying that the elections were fair.
It is more likely that protesters were out that night because they were fed up with this voter fraud. That night the government building had an entirely new fence put up around the building, and several hundred police men in full riot gear were stationed outside the MPRP headquarters well before protesters ever got violent (in the U.S. this would be called a conspiracy theory, but here the MPRP really do have this kind of control and could engineer this protection in advance if they thought something was really going to happen). Well in the end the MPRP building was probably burned by the MPRP themselves (they also burned the art gallery so that people would be enraged about the entire event). I say this because the police left suddenly around 10pm and people started looting (managing to get past complicated security systems in the art gallery that one would need access cards to pass). Hundreds of people were arrested and beaten brutally for no apparent reason. The police apparently grabbed anyone on the street and beat them and locked them up (the police knew that there was a state of emergency that evening but did not inform citizens for some reason). Undarys whole speech was eye opening because neither the government nor the police were prepared to handle a riot, but, now that this huge catastrophe has happened, no one is being blamed or prosecuted (which is her work-trying to get the human rights abuses to be recognized and prosecute). No one in the government even wants to talk about it, and now most of the information had been classified and taken out of the public view, so we may not know for a long time what really happened.
On Tuesday afternoon, we went back to the purges museum that I visited during my first week, and I learned that most of what I figured out from the pictures (which lack English signs a lot of the time) was correct. The office that was recreated belonged to P. Genden whose grandson now runs the museum and gave us a tour revealing my ability to decipher history from pictures and limited English. P. Genden was the first secretary of the community party in Mongolia, but when the purges came about he disagreed with Russian officials and was held under house arrest in Russia until they killed him. However, years before, when Genden first took his post as the head of Mongolia he would have frequent meetings with Stalin in Moscow, where they would often debate and argue, and (here’s the great part) during one of these debates Genden slapped Stalin in the face and walked out. He is the only person ever to do so, and he managed to live another 7 years before he was killed to make way for a more amenable soviet puppet.
On Wednesday, the former Prime Minister Amarjargal came and spoke to us (yes, this country is that small that a former Prime Minister, who is still in parliament, could take time out of his day to talk to 11 American students personally). He said a lot of the same things that Layton did about socialist and Mongolian legacies influencing politics. He also told us that he thinks there needs to be a refocusing of government on education and healthcare and that the corruption and problems in government will not likely change for several generation. I have to agree that as easy as it would be to change the government here, it’s not going to happen until the people born in the democratic era gain power over the government which will not be for another generation at least. I’m not really doing anything around UB after class except checking my email to see about Watson and Fulbright stuff so my evenings are not that exciting, thus I am not really writing about them.
Thursday our first speaker was Ganbat (the reason I keep only giving first names for people is that Mongolia is such a small country that everyone just uses first names or nicknames-they also only have 6 digit telephone numbers), a professor at the Academy of Political Education. He essentially gave a lecture on the political history of Mongolian and then broke down the hugely bureaucratic system of government for us. There are over 2100 appointed governors at various government levels and a quarter of those positions have corresponding elected bodies that range from 11 to 76 members (this does not include an actually bureaucratic civil servants who do the grunt work thus an enormous percentage of the population works in the government sector).
Our second speaker was named Lutaa and was, seemingly the foremost expert on media in Mongolia. Most of the newspapers and T.V. stations in the country are owned by major political parties and business, so the media is very skewed and rarely fact-based. Therefore, as has been true since the Mongol empire, the main source of information is word-of-mouth, which is more reliable and impartial then other media sources (make you think). Journalism has not evolved to be impartial and much of the print media is a mix of opinion and fact. Mongolia also has a freedom of press and free media society, so foreigners are allowed to broadcast and distribute media in Mongolia. This allows Eagle T.V., an American evangelical news network that tries to be like CNN for Mongolia (and is probably the most impartial T.V. station in the country) and broadcast Fox news in the evenings, is allowed to function in Mongolia. Most of the entertainment programming in the country comes from South Korea, which provides soap operas free of charge to Mongolian stations (these shows are very popular and pretty much drive popular culture and trends among youth in the country). The movie industry consists of a film or two a year and the most popular show on T.V. is an extremely low budget Total Request Live with one dude who takes request on his cell phone and plays them. After class I went to a café with wireless access and ended up talking to this woman who runs and NGO that does medical training in Mongolia (it’s amazing the people you meet in expat bars in this country).
Friday the 26th was the end of our lecture series for the week, and we heard from two people who work in economics. The first was Vinny (from Jersey-no joke) who was the Economic and Commercial Section Chief at the U.S. Embassy, who was not very much like a Vinny at all. He talked about the work that the embassy does to help promote American business in Mongolia and vice versa. They advocate for transparency and a stable economic environment and fair opportunities for U.S. business (it’s ok you can laugh). Mongolia is also getting a Millennium Challenge Grant from the U.S. for $300 million that actually will do some good and not fall into the wrong hands (unfortunately it’s at the cost of land privatization, which is a relatively foreign concept in a country that is nomadic- this will eventually destroy the nomadic way of life, but that’s a larger conversation). At the end of Vinny’s talk he broke down the entire Foreign Service Exam, which is a hell of a test, but I did learn the no language component is require, so I may still give that a shot in the future.
Our last speaker was the chairman of the board of the Haas Bank in Mongolia, which is a microcredit bank and is apparently doing really good work here. Ganbold was a highly optimistic man with a very sharp suit. Unfortunately, his talk rehashed all of Mongolian history for us. After he finished we held a student-led discussion about the speakers that week. The four men in the group led the discussion, which went all over the place, but I guess we all did well, I hope, since a large part of our grade is dependent on this discussion. After the discussion I met up with this girl who was doing her Watson, which is on architecture, in Mongolia right now and another girl who is currently applying to the Watson from Mongolia (she is with a different program but we met in a café randomly and I offered to help her since my application had already been submitted- I find out if I’m nominated on the 14th, which is the same day as my Fulbright interview). Again, that night alcohol sales stopped all over the city because, and I’m not joking, there is a new law that alcohol will not be sold on the 26th of every month. It seems arbitrary days and some Saturdays have been designated as no alcohol days at district all over the city to curb the alcoholism in UB (we will see if that works- alcoholism is rampant here and there are drunkards passed out all over the streets at any time of day and you can smell vodka on peoples breaths at all hours walking though the city).
Saturday was the day I had been dreading all week because not only do we have class all day, but it is language class (3 back to back to back classes). The classes actually were not as bad as expected and moved along quickly once Chris started calling our class a prison, Audrey stuffed an entire apple in her mouth and ate it, and we played hangman and Pictionary, which all provided sufficient distraction to pass the time. Tomorrow I am going to the black market to buy some stuff and prepare for my next home stay. My next host father is named Sharav and is a night watchman for the local community garden as well as being a herder. My host mother’s name is Tsetsgee an there is one little girl, who is three and my host parent’s granddaughter, that will be there during my stay. The home stay is south east of UB and on the flat steppe where you can get lost just by wandering off a little ways because the land all looks the same (it seems even these natives in this area frequently get lost-not comforting). The people and the lifestyle are supposed to be much slower in Delgerhan (the name of the soum), which I cannot really imagine because I thought the lifestyle at my last home stay was slow. I guess I will just have to wait and see.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
First Homestay In Hovsgol
The first day of my extensive home stay began with a trip back to the Chinggas Khaan international airport. The Mongolian version of “America’s Got Talent” was playing on the T.V. in the waiting room, and I believe the 80 year old beat-boxer may have the best chance of winning. We flew a little 30 person propeller plane on Eznis airlines, which only serves domestic flights in Mongolian and is owned by some Belgian company. The best part of this airline was matching everything from the upholstery to the cups to the flight attendants sweater that were all in the Texas Longhorns burnt orange color. On an hour long flight we still manages to get cheese, crackers and a pastry (God, I love foreign airlines). We arrived at the absolute smallest airport (two rooms) in the town of Muran. We were met by three Russian vans that unbelievably drove us off into the steppe at night with no lights and no roads. The drivers went for almost an hour through land that looked exactly the same lit by only headlights and managed to find our ger camp. Before bed, we all just stared at the stars because you could see everything (I could see the Milky Way for the first time from the ground and it was so clear in the sky). We were staying in a tourist camp, which was given away by the enormous beds (the only ones that I’ve fit in so far). The real adventure begins tomorrow.
The next day we drove all day north to get closer to the valley that houses our home stay. We stopped to see deer stones along the way. Deer stones are 3000 year old carved stones that are all over the Mongolia countryside. The stones stand three to eight feet high and generally include carvings of the sun and, of course, deer. They are highly religious sites for shamanic practitioners and were likely prayed to for a good hunting season or protection during the hunting season. We spent the night camping in national protected area (which are protected… but people can still live in the area to follow the nomadic lifestyle). I wrote this journal entry by firelight as I listened to some interesting stories around the campfire. One of the stories was about my host family: apparently my host father’s father was a shaman. This shaman at the age of 88 told his wife that his time had come for one last ritual in which he should not be talked to, disturbed or touched. As the ceremony began, the shaman ascended through the hole in the ger, but the shaman’s wife against his request had to touch him one last time before he left. Reaching out, she touched his foot and he immediately fell to the ground. Angered the shaman told his wife that the gods were now angry and would not take him away. As a result the shaman apparently lived to the127 years old.
We didn’t get many other stories out of our director, but we did get to experience the epic dislike of the Chinese that Mongolians have. This point was made clear to us when we asked about ghosts in Mongolian culture. Ghosts are souls that did not make it to the next world and are condemned to be here for doing something bad, but as we were told all ghosts are Chinese because the Chinese are so greedy. Mongolians love to take shots at the Chinese for everything, and our conversation about the Chinese gymnasts at the Olympics was hilarious. Another thing that I found humorous was that Mongolians appear to resell the overstock clothing from the rest of the world. For instance, Baagana, our language coordinator, is in his late 20’s and showed up today wearing a “More Cowbell” t-shirt (he had never seen the SNL skit-he just liked the shirt), a “Land of the Free” belt buckle, and a Discraft hat. Mongolians wear Ohio buckeye, U.S. army, and spurs jerseys without knowing where these shirts come from or what they represent, and the clothing is frequently oversized and appears to just be overstock from the western world (my favorite tee so far has been the 2004 French presidential election shirt).
On the 7th we packed up camp and drove for about an hour to base camp for our home stay. On the way we were informed that we should not wander into the woods because 5 Tuvan raiders had crossed the border illegally to rustle cattle (they apparently killed some scientists about 5 years ago). Remember when I joked about getting a gun to protect myself against raiders…it’s a little too real now. Before we met our host families officially we had to have a horse safety course where I sat on a horse for all of 90 seconds and was told that if a horse won’t move I should stab the ground with a knife or just pee on the horse (feeling really secure about my horse riding skills now). As our host families arrived one-by-one we got our first taste of Horum, which is the top layer of cream that comes from yaks’ milk. This stuff makes heavy cream in the States look like skim milk. They eat it on bread with sugar and it is well worth the impending heart attack. They also fed us cheese that completely lacked flavor (no joke-flavorless cheese…I’m not sure this is a good thing).
After a brief introduction of all the families to their students, I got in my host father’s blue truck (think big Ford Model-T) and drove the short distance to our ger. My ger was five minutes from the river and about a 20 minute walk from the base camp (I was the closest student to base camp). My host mother and my 5 year old host sister were there to greet me when we arrived. Be-yand-baand (this is spelled phonetically for ease-it took me a few hours to get the pronunciation down from the Cyrillic spelling), the little girl, was wearing bright red lipstick and looked her very best when I arrived; I knew this child would be my greatest ally. I was placed on the guest side of the ger (the left side) and given one of the two beds in the entire ger. That first day the family would not even come over to my side, and they kept other guest on the family side of the ger on my behalf I guess. I met my host father’s mother (the wife in the story) and my host mother’s sister who live in the ger next door. I gave my host family some gifts first thing; the tin ornaments of the horse, the boot, the state of Texas and the Alamo were immediately hung above the alter, which is on the north side of the ger. The packet of fennel I brought was also well received, but the packed of chili powder did not fare so well (I’m not sure my host mother had ever seen it before).
I also gave Be-yand-baand a small kite. She and I proceeded to fly kites for the next few hours until she decided it would be more fun for me to chase her around the goat pens until I ran out of breath. Our conversations over several hours ranged from topics of “oh my god, I’m living with nomads” to “no one on the step speaks English”; if Be-yand-baand had any good advice for me I couldn’t understand it, though I don’t think either of us minded. Later I watched my host parents catch a hurt goat (who did not want to be touched) and release him from his recovery pen. I also watched a little news on a black and white T.V. that along with a single light bulb is powered by a solar power. Other things noted on this first evening was the raw sheep meat hanging about two feet from my bed that was used for lunch and dinner (just walk over slice off some meat and cook) and the dried curd on top of the ger or next to the fire place (this is a staple during the winter). As for cooking, there is one stove in the center of the ger that is heated by wood and is used to make everything (and by everything I mean several dishes that all consist of mutton, onions and fat-the diet here is not so varied) including bread, which tastes like mild sourdough. Dinner was traditional buuz, think pot stickers with mutton, and the best part of dinner was that Purev and Naran talked the entire time they made dinner (about what I have no idea, but it was nice).
At dinner, as I learned later, slurping and sucking loudly of food means that you like it and that you are a strong Mongolian, so when Be-yand-baand went to town on the buuz I was a little shocked at first. After dinner I used my phrasebook and my pictures to break the ice with my host family. I learned that my host father is one of nine children and my host mother is one of ten. Also my host father likes folk music that utilizes the horse fiddle. You would think that at this point I would be gaining some valuable Mongolian vocabulary; instead, I found that I was really good at writing English words out phonetically in the Mongolian alphabet, so I taught my host father how to say a few phrases in English. That night my two host brothers, who are 20 and 18, returned home after what I assumed was a long day of herding. That night I went to sleep with the sound of the wind sweeping across the steppe and whipping against the ger (which is made of felt and keeps both the rain and wind out).
And on the 8th day I awoke to find my host father brushing his teeth. Now this is when I realized that I was living with a very progressive herder because not many of the other host families had members with any form of dental hygiene or all their teeth for that matter. It rained the entire day and then it snowed. It was relatively miserable weather because it was so cold, and I pretty much stayed in the ger the entire day. Throughout the course of the day I watched a Chinese film with Mongolian subtitles, got Be-yand-baand to draw some really great stick figures, watched Naran make curd by mixing in sugar to help it dry faster and watched Naran sweep out the ger my collecting twigs and tying them together to make a broom. I also realized that toothpicks are a national commodity; they are in every restaurant and everyone, including my host family, had tons of them (something to pick all the meat out of their teeth).
Today did produce something wonderful today. I found out that my host father plays Durak, a Russian card game and one of the card games I wrote into my Watson proposal. Actually most of the people in the Aimag play Durak, but nowhere else in Mongolia do they play the game. Their version of the game is a bit different from the way I learned, but after losing about 30 games I was off running and playing confidently. The best part is that I learned, played and enjoyed the game with people (both my host brothers also play) who do not speak the same language that I do. This is one of the obstacles I was most afraid of in my Watson proposal, but after experiencing it, I know that my Watson really will work and if I get nominated I will have a great story for my national interview. Playing cards with my host family revealed a lot about them individually and wider Mongolian culture, for instance, they all played the game by slamming their cards down, which may be a testament to the repressed violence that many of us students believe is woven throughout Mongolian culture (wrestling, archery, etc.) My host father played the game very carefully, visibly counting cards and taking time to strategize, as I would expect an educated and intellectual man would. In addition to his playing style my host father would also advise me on how to play cards; by this I mean he would take the cards right out of my hand and play the whole game for me which fit with his dominating persona as the head of household and provider for not only his family but extended family. His sons played the game fast and reckless as you might imagine teenage boys would.
The 9th was filled with card games as I challenged my host family and various guest from around the valley to too many games to count. I also took a three hour hike to what I thought was the closest hill to climb…turns out it took about an hour to just get to the base of the hill, which I subsequently climbed turned around and walked back home (distance on the steppe is deceiving). I helped chop wood when I came back, which Purev found hysterical when I would swing and sheer a tiny piece of wood off instead of chopping a piece in half. I also tried jimis today, which is the Mongolian word for juice but is actually redcurrant berries and is unbelievably sweet. My program coordinator finally showed up at around three in the afternoon and I finally got to have some semblance of a conversation for the first time in 48 hours. I learned that the reason my host brothers were out so late and kept going out for really long periods of time was that our family had lost its horses the first day I arrived, and they were trying to track them down. The end of the day was great because my host brother came and got me to show me five Bactrian (two humped) camels that where roaming the valley. I got up within four feet of these enormous animals. I think I got my best pictures of the trip with these camels against the backdrop of the snow capped mountains; the pictures look completely Photo Shopped.
On the 10th we got a break from our host families and drove north as a group to the Saatan Reindeer Festival. The Saatans are a small group of less than a 1000 people who live a traditional herding lifestyle but only herd reindeer and live in teepees instead of gers for more mobility (however, the teepees are tiny and have not insulation or room for an entire family to live…I don’t know how these people actually survive the winters). The festival was scheduled to begin at 11:00am, which is when we arrived, but like everything else in Mongolia the festival started late, about 4:30pm. It rained the entire time we were there but when the festival started it was worth the wait as we saw performances, song and dance, that were reminiscent of a country fair when the microphone became unplugged for a good chunk of this one girls song. We also got to pet reindeer that stood in the crowd to watch the show just like everyone else. Afterwards we watched a reindeer race, where children raced around a nearby hill and merely had to finish the race to really win (most of them were shaken off or taken in completely different directions by their respective reindeer).
The 11th was a big day. I awoke from some strange and usually creative dreams that seem to be more and more prevalent since I’ve got here and asked my host brothers to let me help them with herding. The younger of the two brothers took me out on horseback. The only help I received was in getting on the horse and then they pretty much left me to my own devices to get the horse to follow my host brother over the river and through the woods, literally. We first stopped to check on some of his cows and then proceeded up a hillside toward what I thought were some goats on the neighboring mountain top. Well it turns out the next mountain top was quite a steep walk that we had to switchback up. At the top I realized that these goats I thought I saw were actually horses. Given that this was my first time on horseback in Mongolia, at the top of a mountain and on a horse that likes to race other horses (all horses in Mongolia are natural race horses and tend to race when they are around one another) I feared for my well being. We proceeded to switchback down the mountain with about 30 horses in the lead, and I did not stand a chance when my horse, who up until now was rather pokey, took off running down the side of the mountain taking my through a bank of trees where I receive a heavy blow to the stomach from a very low branch. I managed to hang on and even go back and retrieve my hat before heading back to camp at a brisk pace (one controlled by the horse not me). After my horse adventure, I went over to Audrey’s (a fellow SIT student) ger and we ended up walking to see another student Amanda who was not feeling well the day before. Amanda ended up not being there, but the walk along the river was nice and Audrey and I were entertained by her 8 year old host brother who, despite a bandaged head, never slowed his wild antics. When I returned to my get there were an entire sheep’s worth of intestines and internal organs boiling in the central pot. They came from the sheep that was to be cooked for my birthday tomorrow and were now hanging next to my bed in four large skinned pieces. I went to bed early because the horse ride had really taken it out of me (it lasted about 4 hours).
Happy 22nd Birthday! I can’t really believe I spent my 22nd birthday in a ger on the Mongolian steppe. My host family prepared all morning for my birthday party. My host father actually fashioned to large wooden benches out of tree logs because there was not enough seating in the ger. All the SIT people arrived along with respective members of their host families to enjoy the celebration. For lunch Hor-hog (spelled phonetically, the traditional Mongolian BBQ if you will where river stones are heated and then placed in a large container with meat and vegetables and some water to pressure cook essentially) was prepared while the guest played charades with Mongolian vocabulary and held a wrestling tournament where all the SIT’s lost within the first two rounds. For the meal we all crowed into the ger where I received the shoulder and breast meat of the sheep (the best parts for the honored guest). During the meal several speeches were given and many folk songs were sung, one by a student in our group. At the end, host father presented my with an offering spoon that had the six major animals of Mongolia carved into it and a sweat scraper for my horse made out of animal bone.
My birthday was a pretty amazing experience, but to top it off…after everyone started to leave the Mongolians took the opportunity of having several men together to walk over to base camp and help the herder there castrate his horses. Not exactly the birthday show I wanted to see; actually it was horrifying. In the States they usually sedate a horse and use sanitary instruments, in Mongolia they have three guys hold a horse down and use a little pocket knife (I don’t want to describe in any more detail because it really was that painful to watch). Mongolians also eat the horse testicles right away for strength. On a lighter note, that evening while I was watching the Mongolian news network I discovered that their theme music is actually the theme music from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie (came as quite a shock after hearing it and getting excited about watching something I actually recognized).
On the 13th, my host father took me out with him on a sacred trek that lasted about six hours on horseback. A little more confident in my horse riding skills we proceeded over the river and through the woods upstream for several miles. The country was beautiful despite being bitterly cold and windy for most of the trip. We stopped for lunch in the middle of a swamp, and my host father with nothing but a knife and a single match created a roaring fire. He, as always, made tea first (not milk tea finally) but with the swamp water that was so disgusting I didn’t believe that even boiling it would kill all the stuff I saw swimming in my cup. I choked all the tea down and he made more mutton and onions, which I ate with a spoon he carved out of wood in about 60 seconds (I was really impressed and kept the spoon). After lunch we climbed to our destination, which was a large ovoo that my host father holds in the highest of spiritual regards. He made several offerings of food and spice and burned pine needles as incense; he also said some prayers and fetched to sheep skulls out of nowhere and placed them on the ovoo. We trekked back after that and ended up watching a wrestling tournament on T.V. The thing about Mongolian wrestling is that there are no rules and no weight classes and the only way to win is to get you opponent to hit the ground first with almost any part of his body (arms are the exception). That night I interviewed my host father via translation from Ulzii, my academic director, about his life and family. Turns out he graduated from school as a veterinary doctor, use to be a mayor of a sum, and is the oldest child in his family, which is why he went back to herding in the early 1990’s (to take care of his family and mother…this responsibility falls to the eldest).
The 14th was my last full day with my host family, and I spent it herding with my host father who had trouble locating both his goats and sheep (this guy really has trouble holding on to his animals). It took several hours to track them down separately and then herd them together. I also chopped some wood and played Durak. Inspired by my host father’s excellent knife skills, I also went down to the river and whittled myself a pair of chopsticks (they are a little short but not bad for a first try).
On the 15th, I walked with my host father and Be-yand-baand to base camp and said goodbye (I managed to write a thank you letter in Mongolian and gave them a picture of myself). My host father invited me back anytime and wanted me to wish mom and John well. Back in the Russian vans we drove all day to Lake Hogsval where we stayed at Garage 24, which is a really nice guest house (it’s named garage 24 because it used to literally be a garage for soviet trucks during the socialist period—numbering is a common staple left over from the socialist time period…the three power plants in UB are named “power plant one, two and three”). Starving and sitting on the porch, several of us students bought smoked fish from a woman in front of the guest house. It was actually really good and definitely dispelled my negative prejudgments about fish in Mongolia. Dinner was excellent and we got yogurt and fresh berries as a late night snack as we sat in front of the fire and talked the evening away.
On the 16th we went to the information center for the lake and learned about the protected areas and efforts to preserve the environment and wildlife. We also walked through the town we were staying in, which is on the southern tip of the lake, and found that all the traditional food that we’ve had so far were made with fish in this little town (and actually tasted pretty good after weeks of nothing but mutton). For luch we had the most amazing shepards pie, which was followed by a language lesson and an lazy afternoon of homework and journaling.
The 17th brought with it a 5 hour horse trek to our next guest house, called the blue pearl, which was right on the water. I named my horse “broken shopping cart” because he always stumbled forward and veered off to the right making me guide him back to the left to stay with the group. That night we played Mafia as a group, though we changed the characters to being Tuvans, herdsmen, a shaman, and a park ranger so that we could have Mafia Mongolia style. The next day we debriefed our home stay and then took what we all thought would be a short hike up to the top of a hill to see a nice view of the lake. In actuality this was a 6 hour round trip hike up a very steep mountain. We all managed to make it to the top, wishing we had brought water. The view was worth it and the wind kept us on our toes. The lake is quite beautiful but my pictures will never do justice to this country’s landscape.
The next day we drove all day north to get closer to the valley that houses our home stay. We stopped to see deer stones along the way. Deer stones are 3000 year old carved stones that are all over the Mongolia countryside. The stones stand three to eight feet high and generally include carvings of the sun and, of course, deer. They are highly religious sites for shamanic practitioners and were likely prayed to for a good hunting season or protection during the hunting season. We spent the night camping in national protected area (which are protected… but people can still live in the area to follow the nomadic lifestyle). I wrote this journal entry by firelight as I listened to some interesting stories around the campfire. One of the stories was about my host family: apparently my host father’s father was a shaman. This shaman at the age of 88 told his wife that his time had come for one last ritual in which he should not be talked to, disturbed or touched. As the ceremony began, the shaman ascended through the hole in the ger, but the shaman’s wife against his request had to touch him one last time before he left. Reaching out, she touched his foot and he immediately fell to the ground. Angered the shaman told his wife that the gods were now angry and would not take him away. As a result the shaman apparently lived to the127 years old.
We didn’t get many other stories out of our director, but we did get to experience the epic dislike of the Chinese that Mongolians have. This point was made clear to us when we asked about ghosts in Mongolian culture. Ghosts are souls that did not make it to the next world and are condemned to be here for doing something bad, but as we were told all ghosts are Chinese because the Chinese are so greedy. Mongolians love to take shots at the Chinese for everything, and our conversation about the Chinese gymnasts at the Olympics was hilarious. Another thing that I found humorous was that Mongolians appear to resell the overstock clothing from the rest of the world. For instance, Baagana, our language coordinator, is in his late 20’s and showed up today wearing a “More Cowbell” t-shirt (he had never seen the SNL skit-he just liked the shirt), a “Land of the Free” belt buckle, and a Discraft hat. Mongolians wear Ohio buckeye, U.S. army, and spurs jerseys without knowing where these shirts come from or what they represent, and the clothing is frequently oversized and appears to just be overstock from the western world (my favorite tee so far has been the 2004 French presidential election shirt).
On the 7th we packed up camp and drove for about an hour to base camp for our home stay. On the way we were informed that we should not wander into the woods because 5 Tuvan raiders had crossed the border illegally to rustle cattle (they apparently killed some scientists about 5 years ago). Remember when I joked about getting a gun to protect myself against raiders…it’s a little too real now. Before we met our host families officially we had to have a horse safety course where I sat on a horse for all of 90 seconds and was told that if a horse won’t move I should stab the ground with a knife or just pee on the horse (feeling really secure about my horse riding skills now). As our host families arrived one-by-one we got our first taste of Horum, which is the top layer of cream that comes from yaks’ milk. This stuff makes heavy cream in the States look like skim milk. They eat it on bread with sugar and it is well worth the impending heart attack. They also fed us cheese that completely lacked flavor (no joke-flavorless cheese…I’m not sure this is a good thing).
After a brief introduction of all the families to their students, I got in my host father’s blue truck (think big Ford Model-T) and drove the short distance to our ger. My ger was five minutes from the river and about a 20 minute walk from the base camp (I was the closest student to base camp). My host mother and my 5 year old host sister were there to greet me when we arrived. Be-yand-baand (this is spelled phonetically for ease-it took me a few hours to get the pronunciation down from the Cyrillic spelling), the little girl, was wearing bright red lipstick and looked her very best when I arrived; I knew this child would be my greatest ally. I was placed on the guest side of the ger (the left side) and given one of the two beds in the entire ger. That first day the family would not even come over to my side, and they kept other guest on the family side of the ger on my behalf I guess. I met my host father’s mother (the wife in the story) and my host mother’s sister who live in the ger next door. I gave my host family some gifts first thing; the tin ornaments of the horse, the boot, the state of Texas and the Alamo were immediately hung above the alter, which is on the north side of the ger. The packet of fennel I brought was also well received, but the packed of chili powder did not fare so well (I’m not sure my host mother had ever seen it before).
I also gave Be-yand-baand a small kite. She and I proceeded to fly kites for the next few hours until she decided it would be more fun for me to chase her around the goat pens until I ran out of breath. Our conversations over several hours ranged from topics of “oh my god, I’m living with nomads” to “no one on the step speaks English”; if Be-yand-baand had any good advice for me I couldn’t understand it, though I don’t think either of us minded. Later I watched my host parents catch a hurt goat (who did not want to be touched) and release him from his recovery pen. I also watched a little news on a black and white T.V. that along with a single light bulb is powered by a solar power. Other things noted on this first evening was the raw sheep meat hanging about two feet from my bed that was used for lunch and dinner (just walk over slice off some meat and cook) and the dried curd on top of the ger or next to the fire place (this is a staple during the winter). As for cooking, there is one stove in the center of the ger that is heated by wood and is used to make everything (and by everything I mean several dishes that all consist of mutton, onions and fat-the diet here is not so varied) including bread, which tastes like mild sourdough. Dinner was traditional buuz, think pot stickers with mutton, and the best part of dinner was that Purev and Naran talked the entire time they made dinner (about what I have no idea, but it was nice).
At dinner, as I learned later, slurping and sucking loudly of food means that you like it and that you are a strong Mongolian, so when Be-yand-baand went to town on the buuz I was a little shocked at first. After dinner I used my phrasebook and my pictures to break the ice with my host family. I learned that my host father is one of nine children and my host mother is one of ten. Also my host father likes folk music that utilizes the horse fiddle. You would think that at this point I would be gaining some valuable Mongolian vocabulary; instead, I found that I was really good at writing English words out phonetically in the Mongolian alphabet, so I taught my host father how to say a few phrases in English. That night my two host brothers, who are 20 and 18, returned home after what I assumed was a long day of herding. That night I went to sleep with the sound of the wind sweeping across the steppe and whipping against the ger (which is made of felt and keeps both the rain and wind out).
And on the 8th day I awoke to find my host father brushing his teeth. Now this is when I realized that I was living with a very progressive herder because not many of the other host families had members with any form of dental hygiene or all their teeth for that matter. It rained the entire day and then it snowed. It was relatively miserable weather because it was so cold, and I pretty much stayed in the ger the entire day. Throughout the course of the day I watched a Chinese film with Mongolian subtitles, got Be-yand-baand to draw some really great stick figures, watched Naran make curd by mixing in sugar to help it dry faster and watched Naran sweep out the ger my collecting twigs and tying them together to make a broom. I also realized that toothpicks are a national commodity; they are in every restaurant and everyone, including my host family, had tons of them (something to pick all the meat out of their teeth).
Today did produce something wonderful today. I found out that my host father plays Durak, a Russian card game and one of the card games I wrote into my Watson proposal. Actually most of the people in the Aimag play Durak, but nowhere else in Mongolia do they play the game. Their version of the game is a bit different from the way I learned, but after losing about 30 games I was off running and playing confidently. The best part is that I learned, played and enjoyed the game with people (both my host brothers also play) who do not speak the same language that I do. This is one of the obstacles I was most afraid of in my Watson proposal, but after experiencing it, I know that my Watson really will work and if I get nominated I will have a great story for my national interview. Playing cards with my host family revealed a lot about them individually and wider Mongolian culture, for instance, they all played the game by slamming their cards down, which may be a testament to the repressed violence that many of us students believe is woven throughout Mongolian culture (wrestling, archery, etc.) My host father played the game very carefully, visibly counting cards and taking time to strategize, as I would expect an educated and intellectual man would. In addition to his playing style my host father would also advise me on how to play cards; by this I mean he would take the cards right out of my hand and play the whole game for me which fit with his dominating persona as the head of household and provider for not only his family but extended family. His sons played the game fast and reckless as you might imagine teenage boys would.
The 9th was filled with card games as I challenged my host family and various guest from around the valley to too many games to count. I also took a three hour hike to what I thought was the closest hill to climb…turns out it took about an hour to just get to the base of the hill, which I subsequently climbed turned around and walked back home (distance on the steppe is deceiving). I helped chop wood when I came back, which Purev found hysterical when I would swing and sheer a tiny piece of wood off instead of chopping a piece in half. I also tried jimis today, which is the Mongolian word for juice but is actually redcurrant berries and is unbelievably sweet. My program coordinator finally showed up at around three in the afternoon and I finally got to have some semblance of a conversation for the first time in 48 hours. I learned that the reason my host brothers were out so late and kept going out for really long periods of time was that our family had lost its horses the first day I arrived, and they were trying to track them down. The end of the day was great because my host brother came and got me to show me five Bactrian (two humped) camels that where roaming the valley. I got up within four feet of these enormous animals. I think I got my best pictures of the trip with these camels against the backdrop of the snow capped mountains; the pictures look completely Photo Shopped.
On the 10th we got a break from our host families and drove north as a group to the Saatan Reindeer Festival. The Saatans are a small group of less than a 1000 people who live a traditional herding lifestyle but only herd reindeer and live in teepees instead of gers for more mobility (however, the teepees are tiny and have not insulation or room for an entire family to live…I don’t know how these people actually survive the winters). The festival was scheduled to begin at 11:00am, which is when we arrived, but like everything else in Mongolia the festival started late, about 4:30pm. It rained the entire time we were there but when the festival started it was worth the wait as we saw performances, song and dance, that were reminiscent of a country fair when the microphone became unplugged for a good chunk of this one girls song. We also got to pet reindeer that stood in the crowd to watch the show just like everyone else. Afterwards we watched a reindeer race, where children raced around a nearby hill and merely had to finish the race to really win (most of them were shaken off or taken in completely different directions by their respective reindeer).
The 11th was a big day. I awoke from some strange and usually creative dreams that seem to be more and more prevalent since I’ve got here and asked my host brothers to let me help them with herding. The younger of the two brothers took me out on horseback. The only help I received was in getting on the horse and then they pretty much left me to my own devices to get the horse to follow my host brother over the river and through the woods, literally. We first stopped to check on some of his cows and then proceeded up a hillside toward what I thought were some goats on the neighboring mountain top. Well it turns out the next mountain top was quite a steep walk that we had to switchback up. At the top I realized that these goats I thought I saw were actually horses. Given that this was my first time on horseback in Mongolia, at the top of a mountain and on a horse that likes to race other horses (all horses in Mongolia are natural race horses and tend to race when they are around one another) I feared for my well being. We proceeded to switchback down the mountain with about 30 horses in the lead, and I did not stand a chance when my horse, who up until now was rather pokey, took off running down the side of the mountain taking my through a bank of trees where I receive a heavy blow to the stomach from a very low branch. I managed to hang on and even go back and retrieve my hat before heading back to camp at a brisk pace (one controlled by the horse not me). After my horse adventure, I went over to Audrey’s (a fellow SIT student) ger and we ended up walking to see another student Amanda who was not feeling well the day before. Amanda ended up not being there, but the walk along the river was nice and Audrey and I were entertained by her 8 year old host brother who, despite a bandaged head, never slowed his wild antics. When I returned to my get there were an entire sheep’s worth of intestines and internal organs boiling in the central pot. They came from the sheep that was to be cooked for my birthday tomorrow and were now hanging next to my bed in four large skinned pieces. I went to bed early because the horse ride had really taken it out of me (it lasted about 4 hours).
Happy 22nd Birthday! I can’t really believe I spent my 22nd birthday in a ger on the Mongolian steppe. My host family prepared all morning for my birthday party. My host father actually fashioned to large wooden benches out of tree logs because there was not enough seating in the ger. All the SIT people arrived along with respective members of their host families to enjoy the celebration. For lunch Hor-hog (spelled phonetically, the traditional Mongolian BBQ if you will where river stones are heated and then placed in a large container with meat and vegetables and some water to pressure cook essentially) was prepared while the guest played charades with Mongolian vocabulary and held a wrestling tournament where all the SIT’s lost within the first two rounds. For the meal we all crowed into the ger where I received the shoulder and breast meat of the sheep (the best parts for the honored guest). During the meal several speeches were given and many folk songs were sung, one by a student in our group. At the end, host father presented my with an offering spoon that had the six major animals of Mongolia carved into it and a sweat scraper for my horse made out of animal bone.
My birthday was a pretty amazing experience, but to top it off…after everyone started to leave the Mongolians took the opportunity of having several men together to walk over to base camp and help the herder there castrate his horses. Not exactly the birthday show I wanted to see; actually it was horrifying. In the States they usually sedate a horse and use sanitary instruments, in Mongolia they have three guys hold a horse down and use a little pocket knife (I don’t want to describe in any more detail because it really was that painful to watch). Mongolians also eat the horse testicles right away for strength. On a lighter note, that evening while I was watching the Mongolian news network I discovered that their theme music is actually the theme music from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie (came as quite a shock after hearing it and getting excited about watching something I actually recognized).
On the 13th, my host father took me out with him on a sacred trek that lasted about six hours on horseback. A little more confident in my horse riding skills we proceeded over the river and through the woods upstream for several miles. The country was beautiful despite being bitterly cold and windy for most of the trip. We stopped for lunch in the middle of a swamp, and my host father with nothing but a knife and a single match created a roaring fire. He, as always, made tea first (not milk tea finally) but with the swamp water that was so disgusting I didn’t believe that even boiling it would kill all the stuff I saw swimming in my cup. I choked all the tea down and he made more mutton and onions, which I ate with a spoon he carved out of wood in about 60 seconds (I was really impressed and kept the spoon). After lunch we climbed to our destination, which was a large ovoo that my host father holds in the highest of spiritual regards. He made several offerings of food and spice and burned pine needles as incense; he also said some prayers and fetched to sheep skulls out of nowhere and placed them on the ovoo. We trekked back after that and ended up watching a wrestling tournament on T.V. The thing about Mongolian wrestling is that there are no rules and no weight classes and the only way to win is to get you opponent to hit the ground first with almost any part of his body (arms are the exception). That night I interviewed my host father via translation from Ulzii, my academic director, about his life and family. Turns out he graduated from school as a veterinary doctor, use to be a mayor of a sum, and is the oldest child in his family, which is why he went back to herding in the early 1990’s (to take care of his family and mother…this responsibility falls to the eldest).
The 14th was my last full day with my host family, and I spent it herding with my host father who had trouble locating both his goats and sheep (this guy really has trouble holding on to his animals). It took several hours to track them down separately and then herd them together. I also chopped some wood and played Durak. Inspired by my host father’s excellent knife skills, I also went down to the river and whittled myself a pair of chopsticks (they are a little short but not bad for a first try).
On the 15th, I walked with my host father and Be-yand-baand to base camp and said goodbye (I managed to write a thank you letter in Mongolian and gave them a picture of myself). My host father invited me back anytime and wanted me to wish mom and John well. Back in the Russian vans we drove all day to Lake Hogsval where we stayed at Garage 24, which is a really nice guest house (it’s named garage 24 because it used to literally be a garage for soviet trucks during the socialist period—numbering is a common staple left over from the socialist time period…the three power plants in UB are named “power plant one, two and three”). Starving and sitting on the porch, several of us students bought smoked fish from a woman in front of the guest house. It was actually really good and definitely dispelled my negative prejudgments about fish in Mongolia. Dinner was excellent and we got yogurt and fresh berries as a late night snack as we sat in front of the fire and talked the evening away.
On the 16th we went to the information center for the lake and learned about the protected areas and efforts to preserve the environment and wildlife. We also walked through the town we were staying in, which is on the southern tip of the lake, and found that all the traditional food that we’ve had so far were made with fish in this little town (and actually tasted pretty good after weeks of nothing but mutton). For luch we had the most amazing shepards pie, which was followed by a language lesson and an lazy afternoon of homework and journaling.
The 17th brought with it a 5 hour horse trek to our next guest house, called the blue pearl, which was right on the water. I named my horse “broken shopping cart” because he always stumbled forward and veered off to the right making me guide him back to the left to stay with the group. That night we played Mafia as a group, though we changed the characters to being Tuvans, herdsmen, a shaman, and a park ranger so that we could have Mafia Mongolia style. The next day we debriefed our home stay and then took what we all thought would be a short hike up to the top of a hill to see a nice view of the lake. In actuality this was a 6 hour round trip hike up a very steep mountain. We all managed to make it to the top, wishing we had brought water. The view was worth it and the wind kept us on our toes. The lake is quite beautiful but my pictures will never do justice to this country’s landscape.
Life In The City (Ulaanbaatar)
Can you believe I have school on Saturday; it’s like I’m in some foreign country or something. Three more language sessions were only tolerable because tomorrow is a free day. After class Chris and I went to this French Bakery he found while he was here the week before the program started (I think he was fly fishing). The café had wifi and some delicious pastries, but my surge protector took out all the power in the dining room when I plugged in my computer. I guess I won’t try that again. After sending out an e-mail or seven, I bought a beer for one of my other roommates, Mark. Now when I say a beer, I mean a two liter plastic bottle filled with the Mongolian equivalent of Natural Light. It was sort of a dare; needless to say Mark had a fun night. In fact several of us got drunk and went to this club down the street from the hostel called Ismuss. The land lady, who sits at the door (they have someone 24/7 to slide a metal bar behind the door as a lock, did not want to let us leave because it was late. After a strange game of charades and a few choice Mongolian words, we were out the door and on to Ismuss. What a place! They had a 15 foot tall statue of Lenin on the dance floor with laser lights flashing out from behind his giant head (the statue used to be in front of the state library during the socialist era). We danced the night away and made friends with some kids from Inner Mongolia (that’s actually in northern China) and Japan. I slept well and didn’t get out until 10:45am.
Sunday was our free day. Several members of the group got up at 6am and hiked the hills south of town. I decided to spend the day walking around the city hitting up museums and wandering around. Seven and a half hours of walking later, I was really tired but I had managed to cover about 50% of the city on foot including three museums and three monasteries. The first museum was actually just a house turned memorial and museum to the victims of the purges of the early socialist era. About 30,000 people were killed and over 700,000 disappeared (that’s a huge percentage of the population) during the purges. The memorial was downstairs and the museum was upstairs with gruesome artistic representations and old military paraphernalia as well as pictures of those killed for leading a revolt. The most shocking moment was when I hit the top of the stairs and took a left into the first room, which had a display just below eye-level with about 15 human skulls. Yes, these were actually excavated bones of those who had been purged now on display in a very blunt manner. Every single skull had a visible bullet hole in it.
Anyways, moving on to happier things, I went to the Wedding Palace next, which is where many people in UB get married. They were setting up for a wedding while I was there and everyone was dressed in their finest deels (pronounced dell-like the computer), which are traditional Mongolian robes for men and women especially in the country. I actually getting one in a few days, tailored for me. I went to the National History Museum next, where Mongolians trace their heritage from the Stone Age all the way to present day in a linear timeline straight through the museum. The petro glyphs and deer stones (sacred carved stones all over the country) were absolutely amazing and in great condition and there was one room with all of the different traditional clothing from the 20 or so ethnic groups in Mongolia. The museum was very modern and well done and must have been built recently along with the new government building. There is even a section dedicated to George W. Bush because of his historic visit to Mongolia (he’s the first U.S. President to travel to Mongolia, and it’s a huge deal here). There was also practically a shrine to Genghis Khan, and that’s to be expected especially since there is a statue of him equivalent in size to Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in front of the new government building.
After the museum I stopped and had a cheeseburger (I know), I was o.k. I visited a small market and several shops as I pushed toward the Ger districts, the ghettos of Ulaanbaatar, but really just where rural families have moved to be close to the city (UB’s population has tripled in the last eight years). I went into the Monastic School of UB and walked around the temple while the 10 year old monks-in-training made fun of me (I think) until their teacher came and one almost forcibly removed me. The monks themselves do not appear to like westerners, at least that has been the pattern with my encounters, which are rather cold and uncomfortable. I will keep my distance for a while. The next two monasteries were packed with people waiting to pray with the monks in traditional Buddhist temple buildings as well as special religious gers. I wanted to go in and pray too for the full experience and any extra help I can get, but I decided to climb a prayer hill instead. The hill was north of the last temple and overlooked the ger districts. There was and ovoo, a sacred mound of rocks that you walk around three times and add a rock to, at the top of the hill and a woman offering flavored water to whatever is out there.
My long journey back to the hostel took me to what I think is the only movie theater in the entire country (2 screens/now showing: Hellboy II and the Mummy III), an arcade, a music store (where I bought some great Mongolian pop music and the movie Rent in Mongolian-not as entertaining as I hoped), and the State Department Store. This store was the Mongolian State (during the socialist era) store where you pretty much had to buy everything. The store is now more like a giant Macy’s with an entire floor devoted to souvenirs. It was a great place to hide indoors when a freak shower passed over the city. Most rainstorms here either last the entire day or just a few minutes, either way in that few minutes the temperature literally dropped thirty degrees and then bounced back after the cloud passed. I ended my free day with an excellent cold beef and pepper salad with a sweet mayo sauce (yeah I don’t know why I tried it either, but it turned out to be one of the best things I’ve had here so far).
Monday morning we met in Sukhbaatar square (in the middle of the city where the government building is; Sukhbaatar was the national hero that led the revolution against Chinese rule in at the beginning of the twentieth century) and headed out to the mountains to the south. We climbed to the top of the closest mountain where a monument to the soviet soldier stands, a relic that tells the history of socialism in mosaic form. Highlights of that trip though are the guy with the eagle on the stairs leading to the top (beautiful bird with a huge four-foot wingspan) and the view of Ulaanbaatar from above. Unfortunately, obstructing a clearer view was an enormous cloud of dust and pollution that lingers over the city pretty much all the time. I’m told that in a few weeks when the winter normally starts the pollution is ten times worse (which I can’t imagine since it seems so bad already) because of the coal plants providing heat and all the gers burning wood, dung, and trash to keep warm. Well, I was not exactly thrilled to go back into the city after what I had just witnessed, but we had a scavenger hunt assignment that had to be done. My group was sent to the Natural History Museum, which houses all of the fantastic mineral and animal wealth of Mongolia.
However, the museum is a little old and the animal taxidermy jobs are pretty unique. The animals all look a bit to shocked and there intense stares make them all look like there on drugs. My personal favorites were the snow leopards that looked like they were on an acid trip and the praying bear that was standing tall with his paws together and a heavenly look towards the sky. The museum did have a great dinosaur collection with lots of woolly rhinoceros (I had never seen one before and the museum had three whole skeletons), most of it coming from the Gobi, but some of the dinosaurs were not properly put together (mismatch dinosaurs are both hilarious and somewhat sad). The coolest thing though is that they have a case with a raptor fighting a miniature triceratops (another dinosaur I had never seen that had almost exclusively been found in Mongolia). Apparently the two were fighting when a sand dune collapse on top of them preserving them mid fight. I’ve never seen anything like it. After the museum we tried to find lunch, which proved to be difficult because today was the first day of school and the streets were flooded at lunch time with students who had returned from surrounding areas for school. School for me today consisted of more language class. Dinner was fabulous, a few of us went out to and Indian food restaurant that was so good. Angela, one of my group members, ordered her dish with 65% spice on a 100 scale and no one at the table could take more than a small bite without tearing up and reaching for a drink.
Tuesday is traditionally a bad luck day in Mongolia; you are not supposed to travel or get your hair cut. Superstition? Not likely, Tuesday ended up being a terrible day for everyone in the group for one reason or another. My day began with a hopeless search for a laundry place; I walked around for two hours only to realize there was a place right around the corner from my hostel that did laundry. Unfortunately, they, like most other places in this city, open several hours late, so I had to go to class with my laundry still in tow. I didn’t get it done until the next day because the place was closed by the time I got off of school. At school I did get my first home stay family assignment (assuming they have not moved, which is apparently quite common and would leave me with a backup family). I will be residing with Purev, my host father, and his family. Purev is 50 and his wife Naran is 49; they have six children (yep, I got the largest family) though only three of them, two boys my age and one really cute five year old girl, will be there with me because most of the children are at school. My host family has all five major types of animals in Mongolia: sheep, cows, goats, horses, and camels. As an added bonus my host father apparently owns reindeer farther north in the country. I really want to ride a camel, and I’m already riding a horse to and from my home stay (it is the major mode of transportation in that area).
Getting information on my family was really exciting and frightening all at the same time because I am literally riding out to some camp miles away from any other westerners and am going to be immersed in a language that I can’t even count to ten in for about eight day. Now it really sinks in that I’m here. Well, my unlucky Tuesday continued that evening when a few of us went back to the State Department store for some supplies. While shopping the building lost power on the third floor, and only the third floor, so we went up to the fifth floor to shop while the computers rebooted on the third floor when power was restored. While on the fifth floor power went out on that floor. We gave up and went to dinner, which was trying because lots of shops and restaurants in the area were without power; the funny thing, though, was that the shops without power were sort of randomly scattered all over a four block radius as if the power grid just randomly ran through shops without any cohesive city planning scheme (seems to fit the lack of infrastructure in this country). We did get to see this armature girl rock group sing classic rock music at the pub we went to for dinner and that did brighten our spirits at the end of the evening.
Wednesday was just a day of language classes (3 back to back to back) and our bags were picked up to be driven to the north. Thursday was much more interesting because we had a blessing ceremony where three Buddhist monks camp to our educational building and preformed a 45 minute ritual. They chanted and burned incense (that we all passed around, sniffed, and rotated around our bodies three times. They also created a small mandala out of rice, beans and beads. After the ceremony we asked questions and everyone passed the snuff bottle around (everyone in Mongolia has one of these things—they are for religious use), and we all snorted a little stuff and per the ritual. The highlight of the afternoon though was when a cell phone went off in the middle of our questioning and the biggest monk just pulled his cell phone out of his deel and had a conversation in the middle of our conversation. The thing about this scene is that this monk actually received several calls and answered them all.
While it is taboo to answer your phone during presentations, class, and meetings in the U.S., in Mongolia cell phone culture has not shunned the answering of phone calls during these events. My teachers at school will answer their phones all the time in the middle of calls, and we heard stories of high-level officials stopping in the middle of presentations in front of hundreds of people to hold a cell phone conversation. Switching back to monks, in Mongolia they are yellow hat Buddhist (versus red hat), which is a liberal sect that allows it’s monks to get married and apparently be part of this crazy cell phone culture (they probably would be anyway).
Sunday was our free day. Several members of the group got up at 6am and hiked the hills south of town. I decided to spend the day walking around the city hitting up museums and wandering around. Seven and a half hours of walking later, I was really tired but I had managed to cover about 50% of the city on foot including three museums and three monasteries. The first museum was actually just a house turned memorial and museum to the victims of the purges of the early socialist era. About 30,000 people were killed and over 700,000 disappeared (that’s a huge percentage of the population) during the purges. The memorial was downstairs and the museum was upstairs with gruesome artistic representations and old military paraphernalia as well as pictures of those killed for leading a revolt. The most shocking moment was when I hit the top of the stairs and took a left into the first room, which had a display just below eye-level with about 15 human skulls. Yes, these were actually excavated bones of those who had been purged now on display in a very blunt manner. Every single skull had a visible bullet hole in it.
Anyways, moving on to happier things, I went to the Wedding Palace next, which is where many people in UB get married. They were setting up for a wedding while I was there and everyone was dressed in their finest deels (pronounced dell-like the computer), which are traditional Mongolian robes for men and women especially in the country. I actually getting one in a few days, tailored for me. I went to the National History Museum next, where Mongolians trace their heritage from the Stone Age all the way to present day in a linear timeline straight through the museum. The petro glyphs and deer stones (sacred carved stones all over the country) were absolutely amazing and in great condition and there was one room with all of the different traditional clothing from the 20 or so ethnic groups in Mongolia. The museum was very modern and well done and must have been built recently along with the new government building. There is even a section dedicated to George W. Bush because of his historic visit to Mongolia (he’s the first U.S. President to travel to Mongolia, and it’s a huge deal here). There was also practically a shrine to Genghis Khan, and that’s to be expected especially since there is a statue of him equivalent in size to Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in front of the new government building.
After the museum I stopped and had a cheeseburger (I know), I was o.k. I visited a small market and several shops as I pushed toward the Ger districts, the ghettos of Ulaanbaatar, but really just where rural families have moved to be close to the city (UB’s population has tripled in the last eight years). I went into the Monastic School of UB and walked around the temple while the 10 year old monks-in-training made fun of me (I think) until their teacher came and one almost forcibly removed me. The monks themselves do not appear to like westerners, at least that has been the pattern with my encounters, which are rather cold and uncomfortable. I will keep my distance for a while. The next two monasteries were packed with people waiting to pray with the monks in traditional Buddhist temple buildings as well as special religious gers. I wanted to go in and pray too for the full experience and any extra help I can get, but I decided to climb a prayer hill instead. The hill was north of the last temple and overlooked the ger districts. There was and ovoo, a sacred mound of rocks that you walk around three times and add a rock to, at the top of the hill and a woman offering flavored water to whatever is out there.
My long journey back to the hostel took me to what I think is the only movie theater in the entire country (2 screens/now showing: Hellboy II and the Mummy III), an arcade, a music store (where I bought some great Mongolian pop music and the movie Rent in Mongolian-not as entertaining as I hoped), and the State Department Store. This store was the Mongolian State (during the socialist era) store where you pretty much had to buy everything. The store is now more like a giant Macy’s with an entire floor devoted to souvenirs. It was a great place to hide indoors when a freak shower passed over the city. Most rainstorms here either last the entire day or just a few minutes, either way in that few minutes the temperature literally dropped thirty degrees and then bounced back after the cloud passed. I ended my free day with an excellent cold beef and pepper salad with a sweet mayo sauce (yeah I don’t know why I tried it either, but it turned out to be one of the best things I’ve had here so far).
Monday morning we met in Sukhbaatar square (in the middle of the city where the government building is; Sukhbaatar was the national hero that led the revolution against Chinese rule in at the beginning of the twentieth century) and headed out to the mountains to the south. We climbed to the top of the closest mountain where a monument to the soviet soldier stands, a relic that tells the history of socialism in mosaic form. Highlights of that trip though are the guy with the eagle on the stairs leading to the top (beautiful bird with a huge four-foot wingspan) and the view of Ulaanbaatar from above. Unfortunately, obstructing a clearer view was an enormous cloud of dust and pollution that lingers over the city pretty much all the time. I’m told that in a few weeks when the winter normally starts the pollution is ten times worse (which I can’t imagine since it seems so bad already) because of the coal plants providing heat and all the gers burning wood, dung, and trash to keep warm. Well, I was not exactly thrilled to go back into the city after what I had just witnessed, but we had a scavenger hunt assignment that had to be done. My group was sent to the Natural History Museum, which houses all of the fantastic mineral and animal wealth of Mongolia.
However, the museum is a little old and the animal taxidermy jobs are pretty unique. The animals all look a bit to shocked and there intense stares make them all look like there on drugs. My personal favorites were the snow leopards that looked like they were on an acid trip and the praying bear that was standing tall with his paws together and a heavenly look towards the sky. The museum did have a great dinosaur collection with lots of woolly rhinoceros (I had never seen one before and the museum had three whole skeletons), most of it coming from the Gobi, but some of the dinosaurs were not properly put together (mismatch dinosaurs are both hilarious and somewhat sad). The coolest thing though is that they have a case with a raptor fighting a miniature triceratops (another dinosaur I had never seen that had almost exclusively been found in Mongolia). Apparently the two were fighting when a sand dune collapse on top of them preserving them mid fight. I’ve never seen anything like it. After the museum we tried to find lunch, which proved to be difficult because today was the first day of school and the streets were flooded at lunch time with students who had returned from surrounding areas for school. School for me today consisted of more language class. Dinner was fabulous, a few of us went out to and Indian food restaurant that was so good. Angela, one of my group members, ordered her dish with 65% spice on a 100 scale and no one at the table could take more than a small bite without tearing up and reaching for a drink.
Tuesday is traditionally a bad luck day in Mongolia; you are not supposed to travel or get your hair cut. Superstition? Not likely, Tuesday ended up being a terrible day for everyone in the group for one reason or another. My day began with a hopeless search for a laundry place; I walked around for two hours only to realize there was a place right around the corner from my hostel that did laundry. Unfortunately, they, like most other places in this city, open several hours late, so I had to go to class with my laundry still in tow. I didn’t get it done until the next day because the place was closed by the time I got off of school. At school I did get my first home stay family assignment (assuming they have not moved, which is apparently quite common and would leave me with a backup family). I will be residing with Purev, my host father, and his family. Purev is 50 and his wife Naran is 49; they have six children (yep, I got the largest family) though only three of them, two boys my age and one really cute five year old girl, will be there with me because most of the children are at school. My host family has all five major types of animals in Mongolia: sheep, cows, goats, horses, and camels. As an added bonus my host father apparently owns reindeer farther north in the country. I really want to ride a camel, and I’m already riding a horse to and from my home stay (it is the major mode of transportation in that area).
Getting information on my family was really exciting and frightening all at the same time because I am literally riding out to some camp miles away from any other westerners and am going to be immersed in a language that I can’t even count to ten in for about eight day. Now it really sinks in that I’m here. Well, my unlucky Tuesday continued that evening when a few of us went back to the State Department store for some supplies. While shopping the building lost power on the third floor, and only the third floor, so we went up to the fifth floor to shop while the computers rebooted on the third floor when power was restored. While on the fifth floor power went out on that floor. We gave up and went to dinner, which was trying because lots of shops and restaurants in the area were without power; the funny thing, though, was that the shops without power were sort of randomly scattered all over a four block radius as if the power grid just randomly ran through shops without any cohesive city planning scheme (seems to fit the lack of infrastructure in this country). We did get to see this armature girl rock group sing classic rock music at the pub we went to for dinner and that did brighten our spirits at the end of the evening.
Wednesday was just a day of language classes (3 back to back to back) and our bags were picked up to be driven to the north. Thursday was much more interesting because we had a blessing ceremony where three Buddhist monks camp to our educational building and preformed a 45 minute ritual. They chanted and burned incense (that we all passed around, sniffed, and rotated around our bodies three times. They also created a small mandala out of rice, beans and beads. After the ceremony we asked questions and everyone passed the snuff bottle around (everyone in Mongolia has one of these things—they are for religious use), and we all snorted a little stuff and per the ritual. The highlight of the afternoon though was when a cell phone went off in the middle of our questioning and the biggest monk just pulled his cell phone out of his deel and had a conversation in the middle of our conversation. The thing about this scene is that this monk actually received several calls and answered them all.
While it is taboo to answer your phone during presentations, class, and meetings in the U.S., in Mongolia cell phone culture has not shunned the answering of phone calls during these events. My teachers at school will answer their phones all the time in the middle of calls, and we heard stories of high-level officials stopping in the middle of presentations in front of hundreds of people to hold a cell phone conversation. Switching back to monks, in Mongolia they are yellow hat Buddhist (versus red hat), which is a liberal sect that allows it’s monks to get married and apparently be part of this crazy cell phone culture (they probably would be anyway).
Life On The Other Side Of The World
Life on the other side of the world. Excitement, adventure and challenge: all things I wanted and have already gotten in Mongolia. I keep wondering how I got here and just what I was thinking in the first place. I took off from San Antonio at 2:50pm on August 23rd. After a quick hello from Danny (an interesting friend who makes me pasta) at the airport, I flew to Dallas and LAX. I met some of the students on my group and we waited for the ticket counter to open at 10:00pm. Our flight to Beijing took about 12 hours, which is less than I initially thought, and the Chinese movies were pretty priceless with strange green furry animals that helped children with their self-esteem. When we got to Beijing we were so fried that we watched re-runs of Olympic archery since it was 4am and we had to wait until 7:30. As we descended into Ulaanbaatar you could start to make out the white gers (yurts- you know the rational nomadic tents) dotting the countryside, which was spectacular.
We hit the ground running at 10:30 am on the 25th, shortly after we arrived, beginning our classes right away with orientations and a great Mongolian meal. Afterwards we went down to the main square where the problems of a third world country are obvious with a brand new multimillion dollar hotel across a pothole ridden street from the lavish government building. The streets are littered with garbage and, despite what is supposed to be obvious poverty for a country whose average family lives on five dollars a week, there are brand new SUV’s all over the road and these people can afford five dollar a gallon gas, and they are all dressed in brand new name brand clothing. Anyway more about that in the future; the reason we were down at the square was to see the celebration of Mongolia’s first Olympic athletes to win medals (two gold and two silver). The celebration was quite the show. I was interviewed by a very well spoken unusually talk Mongolian guy for one of the local TV stations in Ulaanbaatar (UB). We also witnessed the sever drunkenness that pervades this culture.
Mongolian’s drink vodka like water at the dinner table, where everyone has a glass and several bottles are polished off in a single meal. In the square however, drunken men were trying to break dance, which was entertaining for a while until we all realized that we had barely slept in the last 48 hours. Just walking out of the square I saw more bottles of vodka than I see in recycling bins in Grinnell in a month. We went back the hostel, which was nicer than I expected (indoor plumbing and electricity), and I crashed for the night.
The 26th was mostly another orientation day at the educational site, which is about an hour walk or a ten cent bus ride from the hostel. The educational site is in an apartment building where one of these large family apartments was converted into a few offices and classrooms. The people running the program are all fantastic from the program director who grew up in the soviet controlled era and her husband who owns a 160 pound dog to the ex-military college teacher and the young kid who’s studying to be a lawyer. After a day of being warned about flies laying eggs in people’s eyes and marmots carrying the plague (yes the black plague) a group of us went out the local Ukrainian restaurant. No joke the Mongolian waitresses were dressed in traditional Ukrainian outfit and there was imported Ukrainian vodka (go figure) but that’s where the authenticity ended. The meal was pretty good though and our only major problem was when we asked for the check and the waiter brought the table a single glass of tea. Knowing a little language will certainly go a long way.
The morning of the 27th me and two guys from the program went to breakfast at this 24 hour place around the corner from our hostel where the menus were all in Mongolian, so we just pointed at something on the menu and ended up with spaghetti for breakfast. After that experience I was looking forward to my first day of intensive Mongolian (60 hours total for the program). Now, I haven’t properly studied a language in over seven years, and apparently Mongolian is ranked as one of the most difficult languages to learn. Turns out that even though the language uses the Cyrillic alphabet, Mongolian pronounces all the letters differently from Russian much to the disappointment of the one girl on my program who had studied Russian. Language class really takes in out of you, so to split the day up we went to the U.S. Embassy. We have a pretty nice embassy, and we got to meet the ambassador, whose rosy perspective on Mongolia’s political, economic, and social situations was a little stomach churning. At the end of the day we went to see a performance of traditional Mongolian performing arts, which included dancing, throat singing, and contortion acts that were absolutely amazing. After the performance a group of us ate at the Seoul restaurant, which is probably the most expensive restaurant in town costing me $14.50 for dinner. The food was not worth the money, but seeing the Japanese ambassador and saying I had been there was.
Thursday the 28th was a day not soon to be forgotten. I was walking from my hostel to the bus stop at about 7:00AM and four men jumped me in the alley and mugged me. It was a very opportunistic incident, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were definitely drunk and thought they could mug the foreigner for some money. They didn’t have any weapons and were sorely disappointed to find that I only had about $1.50 in my wallet, which they cordially gave back to me after they were done. I managed to wrestle my camera back from them and they ran away. I’m completely fine because I was prepared, my wallet was a decoy for just such a mugging, but I still can’t believe it happened. People here were horrified. Mongolians cannot believe the crime rate because they have never had problems like this before and have no idea how to deal with it. Anyways I had to go to the police station and fill out a report via translator with the “department of crimes against foreigners.” Even the police were shocked about a group attack on a foreigner. Later I caught up with my group at the American Center for Mongolian Studies, which is for students studying in Mongolia from abroad. I got to see a former SIT student turned Fulbright scholar give a presentation on NGO’s and ethics, which was good thought it was strange that the entire crowd was foreigners like the performance a few nights before.
Friday the 29th was fantastic. The language course is unbelievable difficult trying to learn Mongolian from two native professors who speak practically no English (talk about immersion). Five hours of language class can really take its toll, and I was thinking in class today about some things I’ve notice about the population here. They are relatively young as a society, which over 60% of the people being under 35. They also smoke like it’s going out of style. Cigarettes are everywhere: they are on every restaurant menu, in every shop, and they are street vendors on every corner selling them out of boxes. The streets themselves are horrible. Everyone drives SUV’s because they have to drive on streets that are just a series of pot holes with no traffic signs and just a few lights. Thus no one obeys any sort of driving laws and rush hour here is probably the safest time of the day because the gridlock is so bad that cars are facing backwards in oncoming lanes of traffic as they try to maneuver to side alleys and on sidewalks. Crossing the street is probably the most dangerous thing in this town, and drivers never yield to pedestrians. Just a few observations I was rolling over in my head as I tried to decipher my teacher’s statements in Mongolian. After class though, our group got to go to the Black Market, so named because in the Soviet era you were not allowed to hold a second job (plus you can get some shady stuff there-think old Soviet weapons). The market was huge and filled with random stuff ranging from pots to stationary to clothing to milk curd to toys. I bought a pair of riding boots, which I need for the countryside. They were really frustrated with me because I needed such a large size and they really didn’t have anything. After a half- hour I finally found a pair and talked the guy down about ten dollars from the original price. The food in the market was the best though, I could tell what any of it was, but I’m pretty sure that there were about 3000 types of curd there in all colors and shapes. I spent about three hours just wandering around negotiating and enjoying the people who are very friendly and don’t pressure you about buying. That night my SIT group bonded in the traditional manner: over vodka. My group is filled with some really great people, and I thank god that they are because this place is a far cry from the States. I still can’t believe I’m here; Mongolia is so great, and I’m so glad I made it here. Looking forward to my first home stay in the country. It will be in the far north in a nomadic camp that will take two days by van after a flight to the regional capital from UB. My host family speaks no English and the only transportation once I get there will be by horse. I can’t wait. On top of that my program added a third home stay to my semester, so I will be staying in a second nomadic camp in a few weeks that is out on the steppe by the Gobi desert (my third home stay is in UB later in the semester). This is going to be amazing.
We hit the ground running at 10:30 am on the 25th, shortly after we arrived, beginning our classes right away with orientations and a great Mongolian meal. Afterwards we went down to the main square where the problems of a third world country are obvious with a brand new multimillion dollar hotel across a pothole ridden street from the lavish government building. The streets are littered with garbage and, despite what is supposed to be obvious poverty for a country whose average family lives on five dollars a week, there are brand new SUV’s all over the road and these people can afford five dollar a gallon gas, and they are all dressed in brand new name brand clothing. Anyway more about that in the future; the reason we were down at the square was to see the celebration of Mongolia’s first Olympic athletes to win medals (two gold and two silver). The celebration was quite the show. I was interviewed by a very well spoken unusually talk Mongolian guy for one of the local TV stations in Ulaanbaatar (UB). We also witnessed the sever drunkenness that pervades this culture.
Mongolian’s drink vodka like water at the dinner table, where everyone has a glass and several bottles are polished off in a single meal. In the square however, drunken men were trying to break dance, which was entertaining for a while until we all realized that we had barely slept in the last 48 hours. Just walking out of the square I saw more bottles of vodka than I see in recycling bins in Grinnell in a month. We went back the hostel, which was nicer than I expected (indoor plumbing and electricity), and I crashed for the night.
The 26th was mostly another orientation day at the educational site, which is about an hour walk or a ten cent bus ride from the hostel. The educational site is in an apartment building where one of these large family apartments was converted into a few offices and classrooms. The people running the program are all fantastic from the program director who grew up in the soviet controlled era and her husband who owns a 160 pound dog to the ex-military college teacher and the young kid who’s studying to be a lawyer. After a day of being warned about flies laying eggs in people’s eyes and marmots carrying the plague (yes the black plague) a group of us went out the local Ukrainian restaurant. No joke the Mongolian waitresses were dressed in traditional Ukrainian outfit and there was imported Ukrainian vodka (go figure) but that’s where the authenticity ended. The meal was pretty good though and our only major problem was when we asked for the check and the waiter brought the table a single glass of tea. Knowing a little language will certainly go a long way.
The morning of the 27th me and two guys from the program went to breakfast at this 24 hour place around the corner from our hostel where the menus were all in Mongolian, so we just pointed at something on the menu and ended up with spaghetti for breakfast. After that experience I was looking forward to my first day of intensive Mongolian (60 hours total for the program). Now, I haven’t properly studied a language in over seven years, and apparently Mongolian is ranked as one of the most difficult languages to learn. Turns out that even though the language uses the Cyrillic alphabet, Mongolian pronounces all the letters differently from Russian much to the disappointment of the one girl on my program who had studied Russian. Language class really takes in out of you, so to split the day up we went to the U.S. Embassy. We have a pretty nice embassy, and we got to meet the ambassador, whose rosy perspective on Mongolia’s political, economic, and social situations was a little stomach churning. At the end of the day we went to see a performance of traditional Mongolian performing arts, which included dancing, throat singing, and contortion acts that were absolutely amazing. After the performance a group of us ate at the Seoul restaurant, which is probably the most expensive restaurant in town costing me $14.50 for dinner. The food was not worth the money, but seeing the Japanese ambassador and saying I had been there was.
Thursday the 28th was a day not soon to be forgotten. I was walking from my hostel to the bus stop at about 7:00AM and four men jumped me in the alley and mugged me. It was a very opportunistic incident, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were definitely drunk and thought they could mug the foreigner for some money. They didn’t have any weapons and were sorely disappointed to find that I only had about $1.50 in my wallet, which they cordially gave back to me after they were done. I managed to wrestle my camera back from them and they ran away. I’m completely fine because I was prepared, my wallet was a decoy for just such a mugging, but I still can’t believe it happened. People here were horrified. Mongolians cannot believe the crime rate because they have never had problems like this before and have no idea how to deal with it. Anyways I had to go to the police station and fill out a report via translator with the “department of crimes against foreigners.” Even the police were shocked about a group attack on a foreigner. Later I caught up with my group at the American Center for Mongolian Studies, which is for students studying in Mongolia from abroad. I got to see a former SIT student turned Fulbright scholar give a presentation on NGO’s and ethics, which was good thought it was strange that the entire crowd was foreigners like the performance a few nights before.
Friday the 29th was fantastic. The language course is unbelievable difficult trying to learn Mongolian from two native professors who speak practically no English (talk about immersion). Five hours of language class can really take its toll, and I was thinking in class today about some things I’ve notice about the population here. They are relatively young as a society, which over 60% of the people being under 35. They also smoke like it’s going out of style. Cigarettes are everywhere: they are on every restaurant menu, in every shop, and they are street vendors on every corner selling them out of boxes. The streets themselves are horrible. Everyone drives SUV’s because they have to drive on streets that are just a series of pot holes with no traffic signs and just a few lights. Thus no one obeys any sort of driving laws and rush hour here is probably the safest time of the day because the gridlock is so bad that cars are facing backwards in oncoming lanes of traffic as they try to maneuver to side alleys and on sidewalks. Crossing the street is probably the most dangerous thing in this town, and drivers never yield to pedestrians. Just a few observations I was rolling over in my head as I tried to decipher my teacher’s statements in Mongolian. After class though, our group got to go to the Black Market, so named because in the Soviet era you were not allowed to hold a second job (plus you can get some shady stuff there-think old Soviet weapons). The market was huge and filled with random stuff ranging from pots to stationary to clothing to milk curd to toys. I bought a pair of riding boots, which I need for the countryside. They were really frustrated with me because I needed such a large size and they really didn’t have anything. After a half- hour I finally found a pair and talked the guy down about ten dollars from the original price. The food in the market was the best though, I could tell what any of it was, but I’m pretty sure that there were about 3000 types of curd there in all colors and shapes. I spent about three hours just wandering around negotiating and enjoying the people who are very friendly and don’t pressure you about buying. That night my SIT group bonded in the traditional manner: over vodka. My group is filled with some really great people, and I thank god that they are because this place is a far cry from the States. I still can’t believe I’m here; Mongolia is so great, and I’m so glad I made it here. Looking forward to my first home stay in the country. It will be in the far north in a nomadic camp that will take two days by van after a flight to the regional capital from UB. My host family speaks no English and the only transportation once I get there will be by horse. I can’t wait. On top of that my program added a third home stay to my semester, so I will be staying in a second nomadic camp in a few weeks that is out on the steppe by the Gobi desert (my third home stay is in UB later in the semester). This is going to be amazing.
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