Mongolia
8/02/2005
a magical journey on greyhound
so the bus trip. it was magical.oh yes, magical.let’s see… sat next to the skinniest man who is still alive on the bus trip to seattle. he had a mohawk, a real one because he was a real punk. we talked about my knitting. we were sitting right infront of the bathroom. this guy who was sitting in front of us made use of the facilities and i don’t know WHAT he had been eating because when he left the strong odor of marijuana floated around the rear of the bus. me and the punk kind of looked at each other like,oh god. and that was in the first ten minutes of the trip.
seattle was waiting forEVER. i started talking to this girl while waiting in line to get on the bus. there is serious competition for window seats on the greyhound, so everyone waits in line for a serious hour before they even contemplate boarding the bus. she looked normal. case of mistaken identity. not overtly crazy, just really inane conversation about her dui’s and how great she is. on the bus this twenty year old puppy of a boy sat next to me. he’s half japanese and is going to move to japan in march for his church. he fell asleep and started drifting towards me. i’ve become much more tolerant of personal space since mongolia. this bus was going all the way from seattle to billings, so i sat next to him the whole time. the next day he moved from drifting towards me to pretty much being on top of me. i was quite certain that any moment he was going to end up cuddled up in my lap, drooling slightly. luckily, he got distracted by the crack dealer on the bus and sat by him on the leg of the trip from billings to fargo. i was quite sad that my puppy got sucked into the dark side of crack. (i’m not kidding, this guy was walking up and down the aisles asking likely people if they would like a hit). he seemed like such a nice little boy.
in billings we had five hours so me and the girl, maya, and this guy named deen went to get something to eat. damien had only enough money to buy smokes and grandma’s cookies from the vending machines and so we walked all over billings trying to find a cheap place. we ended up at a brew pub and found out all about how he works for high-powered physicians as an office assistant, but somehow can’t manage to scrape together money for food. oh, and we heard about the first time he was in jail. and he said namaste instead of thank you. in otherwords, complete tool.
waiting to get on the bus to go to fargo, another bus pulled into thestation to pick up some more passengers. i don’t know exactly what happened, but all of the sudden there was this little angry woman wrapped in a huge blanket with a cigarette dangling from her fingers storming into the station. the bus started pulling out and she flipped. starting screaming, trying to hit the guard, cussing about how her shit was on the bus, she had stepped off for a smoke right by the fuel line, got kicked off the bus but somehow didn’t realize that meant that the bus would be leaving without her. so all of us are standing there awkwardly staring at her listening to her rather mundane cursing style. then this classic guy with a voice like he smokes ten at a time while drinking moonshine starts telling her to shut up because there are children present and if she doesn’t shut up he’ll make her. so his developmentally challenged daughter starts shrieking, dad, don’t you touch her! don’t you touch her! as she’s saying this, she has a half-smile on her face and is kind of looking around at everyone like, look at me. they argue about whether or not he’s going to make that woman shut her mouth for a while. the woman disappears after threatening lawsuits and everyone trudges onto the bus.
my next seat partner was a classic soft bottomed midwest lady who sat next to me so that neither of us would have to sit next to anyone ‘undesirable’. after she kept trying to start conversations,i began to think she was pretty undesirable. even when my headphones were on, she talked. my forcefield didn’t work.
fargo was nice. it was nice to get off of the bus for a while and know i wouildn’t have to get back on for 18 hours and i would NEVER have to see ANY of those people again. my friend chris’ ex-girlfriend erica picked me up and we went to her place, walked around fargo, got caught in a tornado, went out to dinner, and watched tv.
next morning, back on the bus. didn’t have to sit next to anyone,just mindlessly watched the landscape go by.from minneapolis to duluth i again didn’t have a seatmate, but i did have to listen to a mormon missionary try and convert a woman. that was a little annoying. but she seemed into it, so i didn’t try and tell him to shut up.
5/15/2005
all has been crazed the past month. flew to choibolsan to give a seminar on sti/hiv/aids, communication, and confidentiality to social workers and school doctors. it was fun but frustrating because people still equate education with sanctioning of behavior. and when we flew back, it was windy as all get out and when we were coming in to land in ub our plane suddenly dropped in altitude and i was fairly certain we were going to slam into the side of the mountain or the ground. but we landed safely. then the next week i took the train out to khentii aimag and gave a lecture on sti and condom use to secondary school students in three different soums(villages). so much fun. it is an exhausting lesson to give, but when they do the role play and the condom demonstration, it is sooooo much fun.
everyhting is getting wrapped up here. all of my projects are fairly well finished so i’ve been taking it easy at work lately. mainly now i’m trying to run around and finish up things to get ready to go home. packing, giving stuff away, setting up someone to take care of my bills when i leave, etc etc etc. we had our close-of-service conference last week, so everyone was intown. it was a lot of fun, though exhausting! my friend vanessa is getting married to her mongolian boyfriend, so we had a bacheloretteparty for her. one of the guys in our group, agreed to dance for the party. it was amazing. so much fun. it was almost all ofthe girls in my group and we just ate and drank and played stupidgames and watched the dance.
my friend and i arranged an impromptu girl wrestling competition.oddly enough, when we ran through the halls announcing GIRLWRESTLING, more boys than girls ran out to the lobby. i lost sadlyto almost eveyrone except for stacey, who is this tiny chinese womanyou could fold up and put in your pocket. if i had lost to her, iwould have been devastated indeed.lately i’ve been consumed with the urge to go to america andCONSUME. i want to buy pretty clothes and hair things and just revelin an orgy of buying whatever.
3/01/2005
they just told us that thebbc announced all the political protests going on here. i read thereport and it makes it all sound sooo serious. but it doesnt’ feelthat serious here. i’ve seen a bunch of protests and stuff, but intalking about it with my coworkers, it doesn’t really seem as thoughall that much drama is going on. though who knows… anyway,there’s a protest scheduled for april 7th and we’ll see what that islike. they are protesting the corruption in the government, orsomething like that. anyway, keep an eye out for stories on it thatyou see. it would be interesting for me to see if the americanmedia is covering it at all, and if so, in what way.in other news, it looks as though i’ll be switching apartmentsagain. about two weeks ago a swiss guy who lives in my stairwell onthe floor below me was attacked and strangled by two men. after hewas unconscious, they robbed him and even stole his shoes. heyelled and screamed, but no one came out of their apartments to helphim. he talked to the police and they said that in our districtthings like this are on the rise and they target people andforeigners who are coming back to their apartments alone at night.so i told the office about this, mainly just so that when somethinghappened to me they couldn’t say that i had never mentioned thesituation in my building. they are trying to figure out where tomove me as short-term housing is very difficult to find, especiallyin their price range in the city center. we shall see whathappens. and i got a prank phone call on sunday. this whole thingjust makes me tired. just more low-grade stress to deal with, ontop of looking for jobs and trying to plan for the future andwhatever.anyway, i’ll let you know where i move to for the next threemonths. part of me is tempted to just chuck the whole thing andleave… after all, i have to pack everything anyway…
2/03/2005
the end of time in thailand wasgood. it was difficult to get back on that plane to mongolia.after sukhothai, i took the bus to bangkok to meet up with isabel.in bangkok, i stayed a few nights at hostel thialand on silom road,which is near patpong, home of the famous sex shows. women canshoot ping pong balls out of their vaginas. there’s a show calledmagic razor blades. i decided the name was disturbing enough and ididn’t need to know what exactly the show entailed.silom also has good shopping and restaurants. i puttered around andgot to know the people in my dorm room. luke was from england. he was on his way to a long holiday in australia. some guys he knew from england happened to be in thailand at the same time. they camein one night when i was reading. it was like a thuggy boy band thathad taken their fashion cues from the fonz had invaded my room.luke was the only one wearing a tshirt and who hadn’t either shavedhis head or coated his hair with protective layer of grease. 2 ofthe members were tricked out in matching wife-beater/skinhead combosand the fonz had a greasy black ducktail hairdo and a black muscleshirt. one of the skinheads just wanted to get to the ping pongshows. skinhead #2 and the fonz were asking me about thailand witha liberal dose of winking, love-calling, and slick toothy smiles.luke escorted them out, came back and related his entire life story,complete with recent disolution of long-term relationship, manyphotos of his dog, and his liking of girls with american accents.
acouple of girls, kiwi and aussie, came in and we all had a longinvolved discussion about the crocodile hunter. antipodeans have no love for him, apparently.isabel and i left for damnoen saduak, the town where the floatingmarket is. we took a bus. on getting to DS, this man met us at thestation and was firmly planning on taking us to the guesthouse heworked for. we tried to get him to go away by telling him we werewaiting for a ‘friend’. he stayed with us. isabel left to golooking for our ‘friend’ (or a different guesthouse) and left mewith the man. he showed me his black book of notes from happytourists. i got to see every single one. his technique worked. wewere worn down and climbed into his tuktuk. we were driven out tothe guesthouse which was enchanting. the bungalows and restaurantwere connected by footbridges over the river. the next morning hepicked us up at 7am then drove us out to his house to take the boatto the floating market. we stupidly hadn’t agreed on a price beforegoing to his house so we were in a weak bargaining position. weended up renting his services for 600 baht to be taken to 2 floatingmarkets, the touristy everyday one, and the 6x monthly local one.the tourist one was horrible, just like a night market. however,riding in the boat through the canals was amazing. so beautiful andpeaceful. saw little kids getting driven to school in the longboats. a monk driving to a boat where a woman was selling icedcoffee and fruit. he bought several iced coffees and pieces offruit and notored back to a temple built on teh water. kind of likea starbucks run for people back at the office. the second floatingmarket was amazing. mainly women paddling about buying and sellingproduce and basketry. no other tourists were there. i bought mangoand coconut steamed in banana leaves all through hand gestures andsmiles. we motored back to the driver’s house, hearing all abouthis financial woes and marital difficulties.
then we went to thebus station to move on. isabel was going back to bangkok and i wasgoing to kanchanaburi, where the pows during wwII built the deathrailway and the bridge on teh river kwai. we got on the same bus,and aftger an hour, i was let off at a teeny structure on the side of the road, having been assured that the bus to kanchanaburi wouldcome there soon. after 20 minutes, a bus pulled up and the busattendant saw me and yelled COME ON! KANCHANABURI. at the kanchanaburi bus station they have a very well developedinformation/visitors center. after i picked my guesthouse, i wentout to find a tuktuk.
a tiny wiry thai man galloped up to me. wehaggled and agreed on a price to my guesthouse. then we walked overto his rig, passing all the tuktuks and arriving at a rickshaw. iglanced at the thai man who seemed to be getting smaller and olderby the second. i surruptitiously felt my butt and hips to see ifthey had magically shrank during the bus ride. they hadn’t. ohwell. if he was game, i was.what would have been a five minute tuktuk ride was a half an hourleisurely trip through town. i worried a bit that he may have aheart attack or a stroke but he was the little engine that could.
the guesthouse was again completely charming. i almost just did atour but they all either involved hot springs (um it was like 85degrees. hot springs?!?) or 4 hours at a swimming hole. i do’nt own a swimsuit and hadn’t brought shorts. so i opted to see the JEATH museum about the pows, see the cemetaries, and look at thebridge. i walked to the museum. walks to an unknown destination always feel so long. on the road there, i noticed a tall pillarwith japanese writing on it. it was a monument to the pows that haddied during the building of the railway that the japanese soldiershad built. every year, volunteers from japan go to kanchanaburi tohave a memorial ceremony for their souls.
about a block down is thejeath museum. the museum is weirdly horrible. they’ve put updisplays of gaunt mannequins in the throes of death. the mannequins all look like jesus and are coated in a fine layer of cobwebs.large statues of the major world leaders during the war are up andtheir stories written on plaques. inside a small room is asarcophogus containgin the bones of the nationals of thailand andburma who were forced to work on the railway even though theyweren’t soldiers.
outside the museum was a guy who was letting people pay to feed ababy elephant. the baby elephant was about the friskiest animal ihave ever seen. i was the only person walking by him at the time and he skipped up to me and smacked me on the shoulder with histrunk and then skittered away and then skipped back and did itagain. though cute, baby elephants skipping around you is a bit alarming, especially when you are wearing flipflops. apparently,when isabel was there, he had gone into the river for a bath. whenhis trainer tried to call him out, the baby submerged himself in the river to hide. unfortunately, he had to breathe. so when his trunkcame slowly up out of the water, it gave away his hiding place.
i had thought to stay in kanchanaburi for a few nights, but leftafter one. i was exhausted and just wanted to watch movies and eat. i took the bus back to bangkok and got in a cab to go back tohostel thailand. not only did the cab take me in the wrongdirection, but every time the cab stopped for a light, the cabbie fell asleep. asleep. he fell asleep. after the third time, ijumped out of the cab. the driver looked a bit confused anddisgruntled.
i spent the next few days in bangkok eating everything possible andgoing to the movies. at night i hung out with the people at theguesthouse and came away with a few stereotypes of folks. the aussie women i met were all very loud and know-it-all and smokedlike it was their job. kiwi girls are smart and funny, wear theirhair in short bobs, and only wear black, blue, brown, and grey.canadian boys are quiet and funny and smart and always have badhair. scottish boys always sound like rumbling thunder when theytalk and could say anything and be completely charming. ghanaianmen are very forward and flirtatious.
funny story about the men from ghana. they were in the room rightnext to mine that had 6 people in it. the wall dividing the roomsstopped a foot from teh top to allow for air circulation. everyonein my room had just gone to bed. it was about 130. we hear theghana guys go in their room and the lights go on. they’re chattingand then we hear SEX SHOW SEX SHOW SEX SHOW!!! PUSSY PUSSY!! FUCKYEAH! FUCK YEAH! FUCK ME BEAUTIFUL GIRLS!!!! my mind immediatelycreated the mental image of them jumping up and down on their bedsas they chant this over and over. peter (canadian, bed by mine) andi look at each other and crack up. liz, the hideously loud andobnoxious aussie girl, throws an empty water bottle into their room,then promptly covers her head with the blanket and feigns sleep.one of the guys peeks over the wall and asks who did that and why.i ask them to please be quiet. there are a few more shouts of SEXSHOW SEX SHOW then they leave. presumably to see a sex show.
going back to mongolia was almost as much of an adventure asthailand. i check into my flight and go to the departure gate. weget on the plane and wait. and wait. and wait. we are told to getoff, plane change due to technical difficulties. they give us freelunch and tell us to reboard at 330 at gate 12. then the waitertells us to reboard at 1 at gate 5. we get into beijing and thehotel that the office has booked me in has sent a person with myname on a sign. lovely. the hotel is posh, i get free breakfast,the room has cable. i order room service and eat greek salad andcheesecake while watching oprah primetime. free shuttle to theairport, then suddenly im being met at the airport in ub by myfriends. it is cold and snowy. welcome home.the time since then has gone by relatively quickly. we had tsagaansar (white moon festival). i’ve been planning a seminar mycounterpart and i are giving in april.
my sister jenniei s coming on friday for a week. i’ve been sending my resume out andapplying for fellowships. i have 130 days left here. hard to imagine that short span of time.during the training, we watched the movie the weeping camel. ihighly recommend it. it is so hodoo, so mongol. not my everydaymongol, but one i have seen and that some of my friends live in. itis slow but worth it. when i get home, i want to watch it withpeople and see if they laugh when i laugh. i’m sure i’ll cry, too.i’m ready to come home of course. but i’ll miss this place andthese people. knowing how things work. eating aruul. makingappointments with homeless kids for when i’m going to give themmoney or food. seeing plumbers cower from my midget cat. camelswalking in caravans through the edges of the city. cattle grazingin dumpsters with dogs and goats. old ladies in dells digging theirknuckles into my kidneys or grabbing my arm for support whilecrossing the street or getting through crowds. everyone at workreading the newspaper or talking about brad and jen because there’s nothing to do and they will be at the office until 7pm no matterwhat.
but, good cheddar cheese, English newspapers readily available, andcars that stop for pedestrians should make up for it.
1/29/2005
one of those kids who runs into things so their parents make them wear a helmet
spent a few days in pai. took a weaving class for two days. learned howto do karen-style weaving. the karen are a hilltribe in thailand. thewoman who taught me is from bangkok and has been weaving since shewas a little girl. it was a lot of fun–very meditative and relaxing. i made ascarf and my teacher said that i picked it up very quickly. i’m hoping tomake a loom in mongolia and in the states so that i can continue. my scarfis pink and green and my teacher didn’t think it would turn out nicely, butnow she has decided to make a scarf in those colors herself. when icome back in the summer, she is going to show me how to make a morechallenging bag. the day we left pai we had some time in the morning, so isabel and i went elephant riding. i was undecided up to the day , but then figured it wasno worse than riding a horse or anything. and isable is a vet and so shelooked for signs that the elephants were well=treated and she liked theplace we went the best. we could either ride the elephant through thejungle or in the river. we chose the river option after hearing that thejungle was boring. i’m glad we did, because the small amount of time werode through the jungle was very boring indeed! but riding in the riverwas SO MUCH FUN. we had to give the guides our cameras and glassesand everything because when they got to a deep enough part, theelephants just submerged themselves in the water, making us slide off.our elephant, boon-ma, loves the water so much she would lay underthere for five minutes at a time. it seemed as though she got out of thewater just enough for us to try and climb on and then she would roll ontoher side, drenching us all over again. we played for twenty minutes. itwas amazing. i probably got liver flukes, but it was worth it. after the ride,we fed her bananas and scratched her trunk.
we took off for chiang mai that afternoon, getting in around six and thenrunning around town a little bit. we went to bed, having bought our ticketsto go to sukhothai the next day (ancient capital, ruins, beautiful). in themiddle of the night i woke up nauseous and pretty much didn’t get back to sleep but fitfully until the alarm went off. had to cancel my ticket and stayin chiang mai an extra day to try and recover. isabel went on to sukhothaiand i slept pretty much the whole rest of the day, finally feeling human again that afternoon. i arrived in sukhothai this afternoon after a five-hourbus ride. i got ripped off by a tuktuk driver, taken to a far too expensiveguest house, and then left to go to the historical park.i’m staying in new sukhothai, which is 14km from old sukhothai. i didn’t realize how many guesthouses there were in old sukhothai, or that you could get bus tickets from them, leaving from the old city. had i butknown…
anyway, my guesthouse is about the cutest thing you’ve everseen. everyone has their own bungalow with a porch and an outsideshower and toilet. i went to the toilet and discovered that they are NOTshielded from your neighbors. so you have to pull a curtain and jimmy adoor. my landlady is so cute. she was telling me the quickest ways to geteverywhere and very perturbed when i told her how much the tuktukdriver was charging me. she offered me to take a ride on the motorbike inthe morning to the bus station for free, but the office doesn’t allow usto ride motorbikes, i’m a rule-abiding individual, so i had to say no. havingto explain to thai people why i can’t ride a motorbike is an exercise inhumility. they all look at me if i’m slightly ’special’. and when i explainthati need a helmet to ride a bicycle?!?
i took a bus to the old city and tried to find a bicycle shop that would loanme a helmet. when i would point to my head and say helmet? they allthought i was talking about a sunhat. what kind of idiot needs a helmet toride a bike on a flat plan in a secured park where there are virtually nocars? i finally found one woman who admitted that they had helments formotorbikes and that i could borrow one. she smiled at me like i was asimpleton and said, you’re very safe? i think maybe many people will lookat you and smile when they see your helmet. she was right. many peoplesmiled, a monk in saffron robes laughed at me. a monk laughed at me.
the ruins were beautiful. i can’t imagine a better way to spend theafternoon than riding a bike in the humidity, clothes sticking to you,watching school children rehearse for some sort of production involvingdancing and singing at a place so old and full of history. the wats andchedis were made of red brick in a bell shape with a spire on the top.buddhas sat in front of them, their gold paint having worn off, showing thegray-green stone underneath. the gold leaf was only left on portions oftheir hands and feet. there were expanses of grass between the brickfences that marked each wat. there were also a few lakes within thecomplex, each having one bridge that went to the center of a smallisland. i rode my bike all over the park, and to some of the wats outside ofthe park. it was amazing. unfortunately, my camera has crapped out,likely due to some water intake during the elephant ride. so i couldn’ttake any pictures. i had to buy postcards to give some idea of how lovelythis place was.
tomorrow i go back to bangkok to meet up with isabel and go to damoensanduak, where the floating market is. we’re getting to the town the nightbefore so that we can get up early early when the market starts to beat thetourists. the toursits from bangkok get there about ten so we’re going totry and get there about seven. then i’ll either just stay in bangkok or go tokanchanburi, where the bridge on the river kwai movie happened. not forthe movie, but during the war.
1/20/2005
I spent the past few days in chiang mai, in the north of thailand.it is chock a block with tourists and rather polluted. but it has tons of wats (temples) and markets and is a good place to arrange fortreks, cooking courses, massage courses, etc. we stayed for threenights at namkhong guesthouse, which was a five minute walk from thenight market. it was clean and the people who ran it were nice, butit was quite noisy. to make up for the noise was a dog, leo, apoodle whose hair was all grown out to look like a far-too-brushedfro. he was very lazy and adorable.
the first full day there, wewent to an umbrella festival in bo sang, a town famous forumbrellas. we saw school children play traditional thai instrumentsand do traditional dances. i drank my weight i thai iced coffee.and of course, i did the sensible thing and bought an umbrella. itis made of mulberry paper and during the drying process they putpurple flower petals in the paper. it is quite beautiful and when iget to a place where i will live for a while, i will make a lampshadeout of it. i also bought two handmade teak candlesticks. it allcost about 3-4 dollars US. quite amazing, really.
then after thefestival, we got back in the truck and drove up and up and up to doisuthep temple. from there you can see all of chiang mai. or youcould if the pollution haze would lift a bit. it was gorgeous,completely ornate. the ride up was a bit vomit-inducing butultimately worth it.the next day i took a cooking class and isabel went on a trek to see the paduang, orlong-neck tribe. the cooking class had eight people including me.everyone got to pick their own dishes, so that took forever. theneveryone promptly forgot what they were supposed to make, so we hadto keep saying, where is the list? where is the list? i made khaosoi (curried noodle soup which is traditional northern thai food andamazing), som tam (spicy papaya salad), green curry paste, greencurry chicken, chicken with cashews, and chicken in coconut milk.other people made similar things and a few desserts like mango insticky rice and bananas in coconut milk. we ate everything we madeand by the end o fth ecourse we were all laying on the floor holdingour bellies, ready for a nap. i got a cookbook to take home andpractice with. i’m quite excited to try and recreate these things inmongolia. i’m buying spices and things to take back with me.
yesterday we waited for the minibus to pai. eight people in theminibus including us. it was a gorgeous drive. halfway through, westopped and had to get on another minibus for reasons no one couldreally determine or explain. isabel was quite nervous because theytied all of our baggage on top of the minibus and we found out thatsome poeple o the other minibus had just lost their luggage from thetop. but we arrived safe and sound in pai last night. we’re stayingat a guesthouse called the golden hut. we have the bottom part of abungalow, without a bathroom, for 100 baht a night. we are right onthe pai river and it is ridiculously beautiful. this morning i hadan omelet and two cups of nice coffee for breakfast. we may go on atour where we ride elephants in the morning and ride a bamboo raft inthe afternoon. i am undecided about the elephant thing. one hand,it is traditional to work with elephants here and so on, other handyou do’nt know how they treat the elephants. but it is an elephant.and the pictures were so cute. i am also going to get a pedicurebecause my feet are disgusting now.
pai is pretty much set up to charm. small town. lovely food. lotsof shopping. easy to get around. gorgeous setting. completelytouristy. if i had it to do over again, i would skip chiang mai andhead straight to pai, as you can do everything here you can do there,but in a much prettier setting. all the damn hippies are annoying.i heard people jamming last night and kept searching around for thetwirlers (people who twirl when they dance). i didn’t see any rightoff the bat, but i’m sure they are out there.more later. hope all is well with you.
1/05/2005
so my tests are completed. monday was a bang up day. had to presentat radiology at 9am for an ivp. intravenous pyleograph, or somethinglike that. they inject fluid into you and then take a series of x-rays to track the fluid process through your kidneys and bladder. ittook a few hours. the fluid they injected was weird. it made mefeel hot and the nurse kept saying “no swallow! no swallow! or youvomit!”. i was also asked several times what happened when i pee-peed. and ordered not to go pee-pee when there was a lag time in thexrays. finally they finished and i stopped feeling all weird in myhead from the fluid. then i had to wait to see the doctor. then isaw dr choosin and he showed me the results of the blood test and theivp and everything was normal. so he asked if i wanted the cystoscopy. not so much that i wanted it, but that he felt i neededit, though he didn’t expect to find anything. so he’s all, how about230pm today? okay.we had to go to the operating room for it. my first time in anoperating room. i had the little hair cap on and got wheeled aroundthe hospital. took four tiny thai nurses to wheel me in. i waslaying in the prep room for a while, thinking. thinking about howmuch i wanted some drugs for this experience. then i startedwondering if they were going to shave me. they didn’t, which i thinkis a positive thing.so we get to the operating room and i haul myself from the wheeliebed to the stable bed. dr choosin is trying to reassure me about theprocedure, as i keep asking for drugs. “We not cut you. like pelvic exam” not so much, is my thought, as you are about to sticksomething the width of a pencil in my urethra, inflate my bladderwith fluid, and wiggle your camera around for about fifteen minutes.and it is taking place in an operating room. pretty much NOT AT ALLlike a pelvic exam.
they startcovering me with clothes, laying my arms out on slats to monitorblood pressure and oxygen. then, they bring out strips of cloth. toTIE ME ARMS down. i ask the nurse why they are tying my arms down.she starts giggling “so that you don’t get up”. ok. then they rigup a bar over my neck and hang a blue cloth on it that hangs down tomy chest so that i can’t see what they are doing. still not like apelvic. i feel my legs being lifted and put into leg resting things,then MY LEGS ARE TIED DOWN and my gown is lifted to above my waist.dr choosin comes in and sings, how are you doing? i start laughingand tell him that so far this is NOTHING like a pelvic exam. hesounds puzzled as he says, no we are not doing a pelvic today. justyour urethra.
so, i’m lying down on an operating table, naked to above the waist,legs spread, about four tiny thai nurses and one round little thaidoctor running around down there, but i can’t see because they havehung the blue cloth in front of my face. then he says, we willdisinfect you now. freezing cold liquid. as i’m shuddering from theshock he sings, oh it may feel cold. thanks, man.the best part is that he tells me not to be tense, that i mustrelax. it won’t hurt, just feel uncomfortable. i don’t think he hasever had this done to him because IT HURTS. for like two secondsuntil they get the camera thingy in. then it feels weird. they fillup my bladder so now i feel like i have to pee. luckily they havedecided to try and restore my dignity by this point and have coveredme with what feels like multiple layers of cloth until just my crotchis exposed. or whatever. i try to go to a happy place while he’swriggling the little camera around.
unfortunately, none of the happyplaces i know of include an elven man who sticks cameras up yoururethra. after a while, he sings out, all done you’re normal. theydrain my bladder and then he comes around to where my head is andsays, ‘look, here’s your urine. we got some of your urine, do youwant to see your urine?” and there is my urine. i don’t know why hethought i would want to see it, but okay. it seemed to make himhappy to show it to me.so get wiped down, wheeled to the room and lay there for a whilethinking about how much i have to pee and how much it is going tohurt when i do. then they escort me to the changing room and i gosee the doctor. he says there isn’t anything wrong that he can seeand so wants me to consult with a nephrologist.i go wait for the nephrologist. he wants me to pee for him. i do.he’s looking for protein. after an hour i go back and he has theresults. no protein, but i have to get checked every six months forthe next two years. then once a year. i have to lose weight becausei’m at the upper end of what’s healthy. he kept saying “No bigger!don’t get big!”. i have to exercise, not eat salt or fat.apparently he thinks i’m a pretty big fat-ass because he said thatmore times than i think anything else. then when trying to describewhy i had been bleeding, he said it is like a machine or a car.sometimes the engine leaks a little oil, but it is no big deal. justhave to keep watching and make sure the leak doesn’t get worse. thedoctors here are very eccentric.so that’s it. i’m okay but i have to be monitored. good to know.and now i just have to finish some stuff up and then i can go explore. which i’m very excited to do.
12/25/2004
so i did three sessions for in-service training. it wasa lot of fun. we went up to nukht, a resort about a half an hourdrive from ub, up in the mountains above the pollution. they hadenough food this year, which was a plus! i gave two talks abouthiv/aids and one about tuberculosis. i’ll be helping with planningthe training for this summer as well. i’m looking forward to that. ireally like training and am thinking to continue to find jobs inhealth training/education. i could be abroad 25% of the time, in thestates the rest… they had a talent show the last night and i was ajudge. i wish i could send you a picture so that you could know whatrating system we used. your pinky held up is bad (in mongoliannon-verbal), your middle finger held up is medium, and your thumb heldup is very good. you hold up a finger and say iiim, in theappropriate tone to match which finger is being held up. it was a lotof fun.and now for the bad part. i have blood in my urine. i have presentedwith it three times now, two times with no white blood cells in myurine. so, the good part is, they are sending me to thailand! idon’t know when yet, they’ll probably tell me at the end of the weekwhen i’m going. i’m going to get all kinds of checked out, perhapseven a camera in my bladder, which is interesting but i’ve heard ithurts when you pee after they take it out. that doesn’t sound so fun.but the office pays for everything and puts me up in a hotel andgives me per diem, so that’s nice. i’ll be taking vacation after thetest are all done. probably about two weeks, but that depends on mywork. though who is going to say no to a girl with blood in urine????surely no one would be that heartless!will be quite a shock to go from -20F to 90F. may have to do someSHOPPING while there…
…i’m a little nervous, but determined not to think about it too muchbefore christmas and before i know my dates and everything. i wishsomeone else would be there with me, but what can you do? anyone wantto rush to thailand? its beautiful this time of year…
12/08/2004
still mean, though subconsciously this time
did i spell subconsciously right? that looks wrong… anyway…Hey everyone! So, as if the birthday debacle wasn’t enough…World AIDS Day was last week. Every year we hold a competitionamongst the military units we work with, to test their knowledge ofHIV/AIDS and their ability to present information. They answerquestions, present skits and role plays. Its very fun to watch,especially if you can’t understand completely what they are saying.I love the competition.My friend Ben was staying at my apartment (you may recognize him asfriend2 from former emails), having had difficulty finding a ride.So he finally thinks he’ll have one set for early Tuesday afternoon(thinking you have one set is about as definite as you can get whenarranging rides unless you are taking the train or flying). Mondaynight we eat dinner and talk. As we’re getting ready to go to sleep(I have one room so my guests sleep with me) we start talking aboutwhen we first started talking. Our first conversation ever was aboutthe death penalty. So we start arguing about it again (he’s adamantly opposed, I haven’t made up my mind for reasons I won’t gointo here) and eventually we shut up and go to sleep.Next morning, I get up to go to work and Ben makes the comment, “God,I’m so tired. Why did you keep me up so late talking? I have somuch NOTHING to do today.” Some of you may be acquainted with mytendency towards violence when I’m tired. I start beating him aboutthe head and shoulders while yelling, “Does this hurt?!?” He sayskind of so I strike him more until he completely disappears inside ofhis sleeping bag and I don’t have to look at his stupid non-workingsnarky face. As I’m leaving he says he’ll call my cell around 11 sowe can have lunch before he leaves to go home. I yell my agreementas I shut and lock the door.Eleven comes and goes. No call. I consider calling my apartment tosee if he’s still there sleeping, but figure he’s either left town oris out running around doing last minute errands so I don’t call. Istill had leftovers from dinner and almost went home to eat, but thenwe had to leave for the competition, so I just grabbed something fromthe guanz next door.We get to the auditorium for the competition. I make friends withthe cutest little girl. I send a text to my friend Mitch telling herthat I won’t be done until 8, so if Ben happens to still be in town,please go by the apartment (he doesn’t have a cell phone so she can’tjust text him) and eat with him and that my phone will be off for therest of the afternoon due to the competition. Then I turn off myphone and settle back to watch.The competition is amazing. Interpretive dance, army guys dressed upas Buddhist monks rapping Lumino songs, unenthusiastically presentedchoreographed dances. The little girl and I make comments about whowe do and do not like, she leans against me when she gets tired, andI try and figure out a way to take her back to America with me.During intermission while they are tallying the scores for this firstevent, I turn on my phone to see if I’ve gotten any interestingtexts. I have the sound and the vibration modes off. Yet I happento see the word “Call” flashing. Weird. (What follows is anapproximation of the conversation)Kristin (whispering): Hello?Mitch: Hi. Ben can’t get out of your apartment.Kristin (still whispering, slightly annoyed): What do you mean hecan’t get out of the apartment?Mitch: You locked the door when you left. He’s trapped. He can’tget out of the apartment.Kristin (still whispering and laughing so hard she can barely speakanyway): Oh my god. Shit. I’ll go home and let him out.Mitch (giggling): Okay. I’ll tell him.Then I check my messages. Message from Mitch. You locked Ben in theapartment. He’s missed his ride.So I creep forward to the judges’ table and whisper to my counterpartthat I’ve locked my friend in my apartment and have to go home andlet him out. She looks at me strangely and says, okay.I luck out and catch the trolley right as it is going past theauditorium. I call Ben while on the trolley.Ben: Hello?Kristin: Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lock you in theapartment.Ben: There’s no way this is my fault, right? It’s all your fault,right?Kristin: Yes, it is all my fault.(Luckily, when he talked to Mitch, she called his ride and theyhadn’t left anyway.)Anyway, it takes me an hour to get home. By now I’m relieved that Ididn’t make him lose his ride home, planning where to take him fordinner to apologize, and giggling intermittently like a fiend.I get home and begin to apologize profusely. He’s had a lot of timeto himself to think during the day (from 9 am to about 430, with theonly companionship being my cat because my tv doesn’t work and my cdplayer is testy). He has decided that I must have done it onpurpose. For one of two reasons. The first being that I waspunishing him for our capital punishment discussion. Anyone whohasn’t made up their mind about capital punishment would OBVIOUSLYlock their friend in an apartment all day long. Of course. When hesaid that, I regretted rushing home to let him out. The secondreason being that I wanted him to wash the dishes and figured that ifhe was locked in the apartment, he would eventually get so bored hewould wash the dishes. Apparently, it isn’t at all possible that Iam so absent-minded when tired as to forget that when I lock the doorfrom the outside, anyone who is inside can’t get out because whenthey changed my lock the last time they left the old lock on theinside and only installed a new lock on the outside.In answer to your questions:• You can’t call out from my landline for reasons that arestill unknown to me. The phone will only receive calls. And, as hedoesn’t have a cell phone, he couldn’t contact anyone. I live on the4th floor, so he couldn’t jump. He considered tossing the key downto a trustyworthy looking Mongolian, but decided that he may not beable to fully explain what the problem was. So he just kept hopingthat I would have to come home for some reason. Mitch just happenedto call him around 3ish to see if he was still in town.• He left Friday morning on the train.• I didn’t end up buying him dinner because, “If I let you buyme dinner, then I can’t hold this against you anymore”.
11/28/2004
how are you all doing? all here is good. just had thanksgiving.whirlwind of gatherings and people, i tell you! and i had mybirthday. therein lies a tale of how mean i am to my friends.bit of background, important to remember:my friend seema and i went shopping. went to a store with fake blackmurakami louis vuitton bags. kind of ugly, kind of funky. my friendseema had just told me that her husband found her dressingstyle ‘frumpy’. not wanting to reinforce this, i agreed with herthat the bags were cute, though i would never wish to own one(ididn’t tell her that part). she thought about buying one of the bagsthen said, i don’t want to buy it if you want it. i said, don’tworry about it, i don’t want to buy it. if you like it you should buyit. she decides to wait and bring gunnar (her husband) to look atthe bag.for my birthday, we decide to go bowling and then back to mitch’s forcake and ice cream. the night before i meet a few people atcalifornia for them to drink long island iced teas and me to drinktea. or at least, that was my intention. however, the argument of,it’s your pre-birthday, man, was made. so i had one long island andwas done. i mean, i did have to go to work the next day. but myfriends friend1 and friend2 disagreed with my decision to only haveone drink, bought another one, and put it in front of me. pushers.so i take a sip and hand it to friend3. then friend2 takes his drinkand puts it in front of me, again with the argument, it’s yourbirthday week, man. so i manage to avoid ingesting most of thedrink, but it is a struggle. then they all decide they want to go tomitch’s and watch a movie. my protestations of i have work in themorning fall on deaf ears. i am forced to watch elf. then thegenius trio gets the great idea to drink everytime someone in themovie says elf. luckily, i fake them out and finally drag friend2,who was staying at my house, back to my apartment. at 3 a.m.friend2 snores really loudly, so i am woken up at 6 and can’t go backto sleep. fun. i go to work and they have told me i must stay atwork for lunch. my work people prepared a really nice lunch withcake and a present and of course, a bottle of vodka. i’m not feelingthe ‘best’ at this point and am staring at the vodka in a mixture ofhorror and disbelief. then they start pouring the tumblersfull andi’m reminded that we can’t stop until the bottle is empty. i’mpractically falling asleep, my head hurts, and i’m being forced todrink mongolian vodka.happy birthday!however, the beautiful thing about this country is, once theydiscovered my tired state, i was sent home. because i had to restbefore my party that night.that’s a legitimate reason to go home, folks. tired from a party thenight before and you have a party tonight? go home!so we go bowling and it is fun. i rock. then the cake gets broughtup and lights up the room with its blaze of candles. then the cakegets cut. normally, the birthday girl gets her piece first. or, ifmy friend katie is serving, the birthday girl gets it tenth aftersomeone who is not her really good friend notices the sad brithdaygirl isn’t eating cake.then everyone chats and such and i’m getting ready to leave andfriend2 is all, let me give you your birthday present. so he handsme a bag. oddly enough, it is from the shop where the ugly louisvuitton bags are. and it feels rather…cylindrical. oh shit. so iopen the bag and nestled in the bottom is the fake louis vuittonmurakami bag. my eyes got really big and i just stared at it for aminute. going through my head were the thoughts:1) dear god, how did THIS happen2)crap, this is really expensive3)what the hell do i say?i look at friend1 and she says, all delight, isn’t that the one youwanted? seema told us you really liked that purse.i believe this is when i started laughing hysterically and said, deargod no, i hate this purse. everyone looks at me and friend1 andfriend2 are saying that they hated it as well, found it very tacky.friend2, who just spent 33,000T of his 125,000T salary on this pursesays, my first instinct was that you wouldn’t want it, but i heardyou did so… i am laughing so hard i’m crying, because how absurdis this whole situation. so i’m in the hallway putting on my coatand everyone comes into the hallway and they are all holding camerasand demanding i pose with teh purse like i like it, then pose withthe purse like how you really feel. it is a rather papparazzimoment. then friend2, in this small voice says, i just wanted to getyou something you liked. everyone says, awwwwww.so i go home and go to sleep.in the morning i apologize to friend2, who is staying at my house,for my atrocious behavior. no one really likes to have theirbirthday presents laughed at, do they? so then he says, no I’M sorryfor not trusting my instincts and giving you this horrible gift. andhe again reassures me that he is relieved that i didn’t like it. sothen we go on a mission to ‘right the wrong’ as he puts it. we getthe money back from the store. at first, they just wanted to have mepick something else out from teh store. so i have to humble myselfand say, i am too big for your clothes. your clothes are verysmall. i cannot wear them. the lady looks at me for a minute,sizing me up, says za (yeah, okay) and tells us to bring the receiptback at 5pm to get the money. oh the HUMANITY!so we go shopping for cashmere gloves, can’t find any. and i feelweird going shopping with someone to get my birthday present anyway.so then yesterday we met for lunch and he hands me a bag with a nicebottle of red wine and a good book. which was pretty much theperfect thing to get.that afternoon i get a call. friend1 went by the store with the uglybags. the ugly birthday bag was gone. and she had heard seema hadgone fake lv shopping the day before. there is still the possibilitythat the bag will be mine…
11/10/2004
Back from the hodoo. Was a very interestingexperience.Scheduled” to leave work at 10. I figure we won’t leave until 12.surprisingly, we take off at 11. the director gets into the frontseat. Second surprise of the day—he puts on his seatbelt. Zula,me, tsetsgee-egch, and batbold pile into the back of our posh mini-van. No seat belts back here. We take off. Within about twentyminutes everyone starts getting into the food. Shock and dismaythat I am not hungry yet. This is just the beginning of the concernand scrutiny that my eating habits will endure for the week.Baganuur is a soum about 100km out from city center, but stillconsidered part of ub. After we leave baganuur (name means littlelake, baga=little, nuur = lake) the paved road ends and theadventure and experience of the dirt tracks that Mongolia considershighways begins. We have a road map of Mongolia, but I don’t knowhow much help it can be considering there are no signs on any ofthe `roads’. The roads are dirt tracks that branch off into about athousand different directions. We have 230 more km of steppe tocover to get to ondorkhan, the capital of khentii aimag. I knowthat it is possible to find ondorkhan, but I have no idea howZorigoo, the driver, can do it.We drive and drive and drive and drive and drive. It is impossiblefor me to sleep due to the jouncing of the car over bumps and such.Then, in the distance, the most beautiful sight—the millenniumroad. A road that Bagabandi the president wants to stretch from oneend of Mongolia to the other. We cross over the ditch that has beendug to preserve the road from use until the official end ofconstruction (no one pays attention to the threats of fines oranything else. It is a gorgeous stretch of road and you can hardlyexpect people to ignore it in favor of bumpy dirt roads) and forabout five minutes experience the bliss of smooth pavement and abump-free ride. Then, a large dirt barrier appears and our smoothride is ended. There are dirt barriers about every 100 yards orso. Zorigoo is valiant in his attempt to use the road, but we aredefeated. I feel like crying. My knee hurts and I have a permanentdent in the left side of my head from slamming it into the windowwhenever we go over a large bump.The sun goes down around 830 and around 845 we pull into ondorkhan.I am exhausted and hungry, even though we have stopped a few timeson the way to eat and pee. As we are in the eastern steppe, privacyis a non-issue. It doesn’t exist. The women I am traveling withhave solved this problem by taking their long jackets out andhanging them off their shoulders so that the cloth covers their bumswhile they pee. I do this too and am quite successful until anextremely strong wind blows. We eat bread and cheese and peppersand cucumbers and hyam (extremely fatty dried sausage. Like big fatsquares of fat surrounded by thin layers of meat). They notice I amnot eating hyam and so tsetsgee-egch (she is older than me, so I usethe honorific egch or big sister when talking to her/about her)keeps making me veggie and cheese sandwiches and everyone clucksbecause it is very windy and if only I ate the meat I would staywarmer.We get to khentii and they feed us meat and fat and flour productsand take us to our hotel. There are foreigners in our hotel and Istare at them in surprise. Then they speak to me very slowlybecause they don’t think I can speak English because I’m juststaring.
DAY TWO
The next day Zula and I hang out at the hospital and then we gomonitoring a bit and then to lunch. At the guanz are two veryblonde women chain smoking. I don’t really pay attention to thembecause I’m hungry and eating very good tsuivan that has actualvegetables in it. As we are getting ready to leave to traverse the360km of steppe to choibolsan, our next stop, the blondes stop meand ask if I speak English. Again I just stare at them in surpriseso they ask me slower, in thick german accents, if I speak English.I pull out of my stupor and say yes I do. They then ask if I ambritish. Not so much. Anyway, it turns out they are contestants ona german reality tv program where they try to get from Moscow toBeijing on one euro a day. So they need to hitchhike from ondorkhanto choir, a town on the train line about a six or seven hour driveaway. So we ask around at the hospital, find out that the bestplace for them to go is the holboo, or communication center whereeveryone goes to use the phone.As I’m asking around, lunch is being prepared. As a special treat,a hunter went out and killed a marmot and prepared boodog. Boodogis where they take a marmot, take out the insides, stuff it with hotrocks, then blowtorch the sucker. I walk into the room and they areall, Kristin look! Boodog! There is a yellow plastic bag with asmall creature resting on its back with its paws flipped up in theair, much in the manner of my cat when she wants her tummyscratched. Am mildly horrifed (especially after my morningexperience of being the one to prepare the bacon. Which is the legof a pig with the bones removed and then the meat and fat is tiedtogether with string. And maybe they don’t scrape off all of thepig’s hair so that Kristin has to feel pig stubble as she ispreparing breakfast. And maybe Kristin is going to be a vegetarianagain) and try to avoid looking at the little guy, though at thesame time I want to take a picture of it. Then I grab a small chunkof meat. I am now convinced that all delicacies are really justfoul and started as dares. This meat is so foul-smelling I can’teven handle it. It smells like a combination of wart remover andfecal matter and something antiseptic. The taste is nothingspecial, not strong or anything, but as I have to smell it everytime I try to take a bite, I can’t quite bring myself to finish it.I walk over to talk to my translator, grabbing a napkin as I walkpast. As I’m talking to her and my back is to the proud hunter whoslew the vicious rodent, I wrap the marmot bits in my napkin andslip it into my jeans pocket. (my jeans smell like marmot for therest of the trip. And even after I wash my hands several times,they smell like marmot for two days)I go back to the guanz, tell them where the holboo is, and write inCyrillic how to ask where the holboo is so that they can show it tothe Mongolians. Then we left for choibolsan. (I don’t know if theyever got to Choir)It is kind of funny that when you are trying to travel from oneaimag capital to another, it is quite possible to drive around inloops and squiggles in large fields until you find the proper road(dirt track). We finally found it and started out across thesteppe. The drive was amazing. In the middle of seemingly nowherewe saw two small boys dressed in dels riding horses, one with aschool backpack on his back. A herd of gazelle, or zeer, boundedacross the fields. Huge birds of prey swooped and circled throughthe air and walked along the ground. There were so many horses ofso many colors. And of course, tons and tons of cows and sheep andgoats. I had a good eight hours to look around and ponder things.One thing I pondered for about three hours was how large mydirector’s head is and if he were thinner, would his head be smalleror would it just look even larger? After two days of travel, I waswrecked. We neared choibolsan and I sent a text message to myfriend annie who lives there. It said, are you still up? My spirithas been broken.We made it across the steppe, but then got lost trying to find thecenter of town. We drove around for a good half hour trying to findthe main road, which as it is paved you would think it would befairly easy to distinguish from the dirt roads. After many callsand pulling over pedestrians, we found the hospital, were fedhuushuur and milk tea without salt, which frankly does not taste asgood as that with salt, and I was delivered to annie. As I am avery fragile creature, my director told me to take the morning offand they would call me for lunch.
DAY THREE
Annie makes me a fabulous breakfast of eggs and flax-seed breadtoast, which has so much flavor compared to the bread we normallyeat that I feel extraordinarily happy. Then we have real coffee andlaze about. She leaves for week and I read her trashy magazines,waiting for the call to lunch. They come get me around 1 and we goeat. Batbold and zorigoo eat the leftover huushuur from the nightbefore that were never refrigerated or anything. Later on, theywill both have `not normal stomachs’ and wonder why. Then we drivearound choibolsan visiting our patients. After five I head back toannie’s and we sit around and talk and read and wait for Vanessa,our friend who lives in baruun-urt, the capital of sukhbaatar aimag(a five hour drive) to arrive. She comes and we eat grilled cheesesandwiches and gossip about pc. A very satisfying day.DAY FOURWe wake up and eat more amazing bread and then my coworkers come andget me around eleven for the drive to baruun-urt. A short drive,only five hours. We get to town, check into the hotel, and go offto explore and look at the square. We get back and our officers inbaruun-urt have brought us dinner. Buuz and milk tea (again withoutsalt, none of the eastern aimags use salt in their milk tea). Iusually only eat four buuz, but am so hungry and the buuz are sogood that I eat all eight. The buuz are very salty and oily so thenon-salted, lightly buttered tea goes perfectly with them. I wasthinking as I was eating them that I wished I could package thistaste and send it home to you all. We all went to bed early becausewe were going to get up at 4:30 the next morning to travel to ShilinBogd, a sacred mountain, and then see the other sights in thatarea. It was going to be a long day as the entire trip would be 500km there and back. We had brought two doctors from choibolsan to gowith, were taking a doctor from baruun-urt, and had gotten a guidewho knew the way. Everyone was very excited and I was lookingforward to seeing the famous places.
DAY FIVE
We actually get up at 430, which frankly shocks the hell out of me.We all pile into the van and start heading out of town. We get notten minutes outside when the van stops. I’m a bit confused untilour guide, an older man in a del and cowboy hat, gets out of the vanand throws up, loudly. About fifteen minutes later he does itagain. I look at zula and make the signal for drunk. She shakesher head and says he’s carsick. A guide who gets violently carsickon reasonably good road? He ends up throwing up six times in aboutan hour and a half. I toyed with the idea of giving him someDramamine from my precious stash, but figure he will just throw itup before it has a chance to be digested. Eventually he stops hisretching and then he begins asking for directions. From everyone.We stop herders on their horses. We pull up at gers. We ask smallchildren. I turn to zula and ask how much we are paying him becauseI’m pretty sure we could have pulled over to gers ourselves to askfor directions, and without all of the throwing up. Turns out he isa candidate for a job at our baruun-urt office and wanted to impressthe director by helping us out. He was quite impressive.We finally find the ice cave, where we are going first. We allshimmy down into the cave and then the dude realizes he forgot thetorches and it is too dark in there to see, so he just describes howbig it is but we can’t really see it. Then we head for themountain, which is an extinct volcano in an area of extinctvolcanoes and in the old days robbers used to steal horses from richpeople and hide the herds in the craters. It is a very importantmountain for men to go to. We hike up the mountain then climb downinto the crater to eat. They pull out the same meat that we havebeen toting around for a day or so and start to eat. I don’t eatany because I don’t want a not normal stomach. Then the directorstarts talking about the volunteer they had before me, the black man(his words, not mine) that loved to eat meat. He loved that blackman. We all pile into the van and I am sitting next to batbold. Hepoints to my thigh, then his, then says he is thin and I am big.No, not big, fat. I sigh and say that in my culture that isinappropriate to say. At this point I am done with this trip. Butwe still have to make it home. We stop at another mountain that themen have to climb and then we go to a family’s home to drink tea,eat old meat, and tsuivan. Then we drive and drive to this amazinglake where a thousand swans are resting before their big migrationsouth. It is such a national geographic moment. This gorgeous lakewith a thousand honking swans, cows at the edge with vibrant greengrass dripping down their chins. Just as I’m looking around,amazed, these two camels come sauntering up to the lake, one creamywhite and the other dark brown. They survey the scene, decide weare all riffraff, and mosey to another part of the lake to drinkwater and gossip. We then drive a ways more and stop at the mouthof a river. I’ve never actually seen the beginning of a river. Itwas interesting to see the water bubbling up from the sand to createa small stream that fed into a lake and then a river.Eventually, we make it home and I get a text from Vanessa who alsojust got into town and I head over to her house to stay for twonights.
DAY SIX
Vanessa and I wake up and she makes amazing omelets and fried breadfor breakfast. We go for a walk around town and visit the marketsand such. All very pleasant. Then we run into my work people and Igo for lunch with them while she goes to check her school schedule.After lunch, zula and I meet up with Vanessa and go to the aimagmuseum, where they have sukhbaatar’s ger he lived in. his actualger. (sukhbaatar was a hero of the revolution) You can go into theger and lie on the man’s bed and use the man’s pillow. So strange.I got a picture of myself lying on his bed using his woodenpillow. You would never be able to do that in America. Themuseum lady told us not to take pictures after we had already takenthem.After the museum, we headed back to vanessa’s to introduce zula tothe wonders of vegetarian thai cooking. She had never cookedanything without meat before and was very interested in theprocess. Then she left for the hotel and we went to watch a movieat another foreigner’s house who was out of town. Then we went homeand went to bed, because I had to be ready to leave at 7am.
DAY SEVEN
They actually came to get me at 7 and we left town by about 730. Ihad been looking forward to the ride home because we had gotten ridof all of our supplies we had brought out to the branch offices andso I figured I would be able to stretch out. However, we had soldthree people rides to Ulaanbaatar for ten thousand tugriks each(about ten dollars). And one of these women had to have the vanstopped periodically to throw up. I’ve been here a year and nevermet any Mongolians who get carsick and then in one week I met twopukers. On the way back we went through ondorkhan again and rightoutside of ondorkhan we found a stretch of the millennium road thatwe were able to stay on for quite some time. We got into ub around8ish and I met some friends at a western restaurant for dinner. Ihad to stay at my friend’s house because while I was gone tinsleyhad been checking on my cat and somehow broke the key off in thelock and it was a huge mess and she ended up getting the lockschanged and then leaving all of the keys at the pc office so I hadto stay at mitch’s until the next morning when I had the energy to go to the office and get my keys and see if they would reimburse me for the cost. Which they did thank god because it cost 31,000tugriks, thirty dollars. Which is a hefty chunk of my living allowance.The trip was very interesting and long and tiring and beautiful.Next summer my director wants me to go to the offices in the west,which would be a much longer trip. Maybe by next summer I will haverecovered. After one day in the van I wanted to give all of thepeople who live in soums and have to travel like that anytime theywant to go anywhere a big hug and a shot of vodka.I have a much better idea of the remoteness of the countrysidepeople, the vastness of the country, and the difficulty of travel.And how much all of that will change once the millennium road isfinished.
10/10/2004
so i flew out to bayan-olgii for a week to see the eagle festival. ileft sunday october 3 and returned saturday october 9. flew out noproblem. though the dates i’d heard for the festival were wrong andrather than arriving on the first day of the festival, i arrived onthe last day. i still could have made it to see something, but afterflying all morning, i didn’t feel like rushing anywhere. so needlessto say, i didn’t see any eagles. after hearing about how they playtug-of-war with a goat carcass and use eagles to hunt a wolf that hasbeen injured and dragged behind a horse to make the hunt easier, iwasn’t so sad.we walked around olgii, went to the outside of the market (where wewere immediately surrounded by kazakhs holding up wall-hangings andbellowing prices) and without really meaning to, i bought a huge wall-hanging. these are large pieces of embroidered cloth edged invelvety fabric and used as a sort of headboard. they sell for 1/3the price in olgii as compared to ub. it’s a little overwhelming.then as we were wandering around we saw a camel. katie’s brotherchris was visiting from the states and wanted to ride one. so hebargained to ride it for 1000T, or less than a dollar. people gatherto see this weird sight of a foreigner paying to ride a camel. (bythe way, the regional director for pc came to visit us and they had alunch at a local ger camp for him. i went and they had camels andhorses for him to ride. so, even though i was wearing a skirt, ihopped right on the large brown camel and went for a spin. they arelight years more comfortable than horses, though when they stand upyou feel like you might pitch over their heads.)there’s a volunteer in a soum 70km from olgii so we drove out to hissoum for a few days. his soum is breathtakingly beautiful. grey andred mountains jutting up from teh ground and a river meanderingthrough the edge of town. the hashaa fences are cement and brick.it doesn’t really look mongolian, but not NOT mongolian either.everyone went for a hike but i stayed behind to have alone time.ended up sleeping then chatting in a mix of mongolian and englishwith josh’s hashaa sister. we bonded over a shared love of buuz.everyone came back, we walked ot the river. saw baby yaks,tussocks. we went to josh’s school and caused quite a sensation withour whitey parade. saw a mosque and a buddhist temple and went backto josh’s ger to make dinner and watch a movie on his computer.next day was similar. they went for a hike, i walked around towntaking pictures. at least, that was my intention. in actuality, iwas being hailed by some kazakh children, went over to chat, wasinvited into the house for tea. pained by the awkward conversation,i pulled out my camera and took scads of pictures. more and morefamily kept coming into have their photos taken. at one point, thelittle boys even ran outside the house to grab a sheep to bring inthe house for more photo-taking fun. i have never seen an animalbrought into a house unless it was going to be slaughtered. i triedto leave, but had to finishe my tea. then we went to 2 more housesto take pictures. it was fun and overwhelming. i’ll be sending themphotos as soon as i get paid. i met up with the others after iescaped the photo-mad kazakhs, clutching the gift of assorted drieddairy products they bestowed on me in thanks.we went back to olgii the next a.m. before we left though, my frienddave (the man who fit 3 choco pies in his mouth a few months ago) fit28 gumballs in his mouth. cameras were flashing left and right,causing the drool dripping out of the corners of his mouth to glistenlike satin.the trip was all in all lowkey. lots of trips to markets in searchof gorgeous (and comparatively cheap) wall-hangings. lots ofwandering around town, staring at the mountains. found the only soft-serve ice cream machine in mongolia. ate the best huushuur (meatpancake) that actually had a flaky crust with a decorative edge.that combo of flaky (NOT GREASY) crust, deco edge, and good qualitynon-fatty meat had everyone exclaiming for the rest of the day. we’dbe walking and out of the blue “Wow, those were really goodhuushuur”. the skies were grey so i was nervous we wouldn’t be ableto fly home, but we made it. last flight that did from the west.OH! and the last mildly amusing thing: my friend ben cut josh’shair. after dinner. and after saying, “i need a beer before i cando this”. and josh still let him do it!
8/12/2004
oh, and i changed apartments. my previous landlord was a jackass sopc moved me. to the ghetto. my new apartment is half the size ofmy old one. my new bathroom, not so pimp. my new kitchen, lackingan oven. my new tv, lacking cable. i was excited about the washingmachine until i discovered it leaks all over the place. i wasexcited about the vacuum for the carpet until i discovered that thecarpet smells like vomit whenever it gets wet. so i pulled up thecarpet to reveal the painted orange wood floor beneath. but what todo with the carpet? my friend was staying with me so i asked him ifhe would help me take it down to the dumpster. so he and anotherfriend are over at my apt and they are all, well we should take thiscarpet down now. then ben is like, why don’t we just throw it outthe window? why not indeed! me and dave looked at him like he wasa wee bit crazy, but eventually dave agreed to go downstairs to makesure the carpet didn’t crush any small children on the way down andi ran to get my camera. so i have pictures of my carpet beinghucked out the window. the best part is it took both of them tohaul it to the dumpster, when a homeless man approached them andasked for it, then trucked it off to wherever he was going carryingit all by himself.
6/12/2004
We went to the opening of a friend of a friend’s club recently. Itis called “Let It Be” and has pictures of the Beatles all over thewalls. Perhaps not the best theme for a disco. But it’s smallenough to be cozy and big enough so that you don’t feel cramped. Thewaitstaff is still a bit unsteady, with everyone’s orders close tocorrect but not quite. The music was good because they played ourfriend Gilad’s CDs. They had contests to attract patrons—best hair,best make-up, best outfit, and editor’s choice. I was thisclose towinning best outfit, but was shut out only because I am notMongolian. Coul dhave had a bottle of champagne AND been featured ina Mongolian fashion magazine. Was supremely disappointed, especiallybecause the girl they chose instead of me was wearing a blue denimjumpsuit with a wide white pleather belt and her pants were tuckedinto her white stiletto knee boots. What kind of fashion statementis that??? I was robbed!We just had Children’s Day. Got the whole weekend plus Monday andTuesday off. Nice. On Children’s Day we (me, Tim, Dave, Pat, andBritish Jim) went to the Children’s Park. Dust storms had beenblowing all weekend and were still going strong, so the air was hazyand brown. People were everywhere on the streets. Little girls weredressed in frothy princess dresses that more often than not had goldlame accents. The boys were dressed in mini-suits. The older kidswere dressed in usual gear. Hip hop fashion is HUGE here. It stilllooks strange and wrong. This one kid had the full-on rap staroutfit on and a cigarette dangling from his lips. He looked aboutten and was probably around thirteen. We wandered all over the park,taking in the spectacles of people cramming into pleasure boats likethere were boarding Russian jeeps to travel out to the countryside(though we didn’t SEE any sheep carcasses, we knew there had to be atleast one out there), five children stuffed into one of the rollercoaster cars that only one foreigner can fit into, and the Round-upRide. The Round-up is a circular cage that people stand up in aroundthe perimeter. It spins and gradually tilts and raises up, thenslowly comes back down. We were quite mesmerized by the Round-up.The first trip, we saw a guy bend over and throw up about 15 secondsinto the ride and people were trying to get off as soon as the ridewas level but before it came anywhere close to a complete stop. Thatride lasted 30 seconds. We decided to see if the ride was alwaysthat short and if people always raced to get off even if vomit wasn’tspinning around. The next ride lasted quite a bit longer, wenthigher into the air, but at the end, as soon as it leveled off,people were again unlatching their `safety belts’ and walking towardsthe exits—before the spinning came close to stopping. Excellent.The next ride we watched translates roughly to “Clockwise Bike”.It’s a bike that goes in a vertical circle around a track, so theperson is spinning and at one point upside-down. The best aspects ofthis ride were 1)the bike didn’t work so a guy had to stand there andspin the person and 2)about 1/3 of the track was missing. No oneflew off.There was a serious absence of screaming and laughing from almost allof the riders. The area around most rides was weirdly quiet, exceptfor one section of the air bikes. When the air bike riders got tothe section by the lake, screaming began in earnest. Boys werefilling plastic bags with lake water and launching them at the bikeriders, dousing them. Some of the bike riders had not securelyfastened their `safety straps’ so the belts were dangling. Somepassersby would grip the belts and hang on in order to be cartedthrough the air by the bike riders. A few of them shimmied up thestraps and climbed up onto the actual bikes, getting a free rideabout halfway around the circuit before they would drop off in frontof the place where legitimate riders got on/off the bikes. Somehow Idon’t think that would have happened in Disneyland.So I’ve been trying to get a Mongolian-style shirt made. I finallyfound a seamstress and went there after work yesterday for myfitting. The lady hands me the rough shirt and motions for me to putit on. In the middle of the store. I motion that I’ll put it onbehind the curtain. She motions for me to just take off my t-shirtand put on the Mongol shirt in the middle of the shop. I motionagain towards the curtain wishing I knew enough Mongolian to say, “Icome from a modest people!” As we’re doing this, a Mongolian womanis calmly trying on a pair of pants in the middle of the shop. So Igo behind the curtain and had just started putting on the shirt whenthe lady whips the curtain aside and starts shoving me into theshirt. It’s meant to be a wrap-around but they sewed the sides shutfor the fitting so it took some struggle on both our parts to get iton. We finally get it on and she starts marking and pinning it. Aswe are doing this, an old man in a dell stumps in for his fitting fora bright lavendar raw silk shirt. The lady and I get done with ournegotiations as to how short and tight the shirt should be and I’mpretty sure I’ve won (not so short and not so tight) but I won’t knowfor sure until Friday. Then, in front of the old man, the otherseamstressed, and a little girl who is fascinated by the process of aforeigner getting fitted for a Mongolian shirt, the lady (withoutwarning) grabs the bottom of the shirt on either side of the seam andrips the shirt off of me. In the middle of the shop. So, with asmuch dignity as a pasty half-naked woman can muster, I pull on mytshirt and talk to her about when I can pick up the finished shirt.Friday at 5? Okay.I had my physical the other day. My ears are filthy and full of dirtfrom the dust storms. Since I’ve been here I’ve lost 25 pounds, butmy blood pressure has increased (stress much?). I was telling thisto my friend Christine, an M13. She was surprised. “25 pounds?That’s a lot. When I first saw you this summer I didn’t think youwere…” she didn’t know how to politely finish the sentence so Ihelped her out “Such a fat ass?” “Well, yeah”I knew I had lost weight but I didn’t realize it was so much. Iwonder if I have a parasite. I’ll find out soon enough. As part ofour mid-service physical we had to prepare a MIF kit. I have no ideawhat MIF stands for, though if someone can send me a creative titleto fit the acronym and what we have to do, I’ll send you a pack ofChinggis playing cards. So, for the MIF kit we have to take twosamples of our own fecal matter, mix them with some orange liquid andsome iodine, CAP THE BOTTLES TIGHTLY, shake it for a bit, then shipit off to Washington. Pity the soul in Washington whose job it is todeal with thousands of PCVs’ fecal matter. I hope that is a highpaying job. Anyway, it’s pretty easy for me to do the collectionbecause I have a western-style toilet. The vols with outhouses arefaced with a trickier task. Some are waiting til they get in thecity to take care of it.The MIF kit has been quite the topic of conversation lately. I hadjust picked mine up to take home and do when I met up with Evan andChris to go eat. I wanted to take it home, but they convinced me tojust take it along to dinner as it wasn’t full, was in a bag, and noone would know what it was anyway. So we ate then went to Khan Braufor a beer. Chris was meeting a girl there for a date but he figuredhe’d just go to another table when she arrived. So we get there andmeet Eric W and Gilad. We’re sitting around talking, Chris goes tomeet his date then brings her to our table. Idiot. The subject ofthe MIF kit comes up. The MIF kit comes out. We’re playing with theMIF kit and reading the instructions at one end of the table whileChris is trying to chat up his date at the other. Eric has adifferent MIF kit so he brings his out to compare. By this pointwe’re pretty loud and laughing hysterically when Chris and his datelook over and ask what we’re talking about. So we explain. Oddlyenough, she left a short while later, claiming she was tired. Shewas probably just so impressed by Chris’ classy friends that she feltoverwhelmed and had to leave.Elections are taking place June 27th. So there are a ton of freeconcerts and rallies all over town. Billboards have appeared on anysurface that stays still. The Communists are very visible. Theyseem to get the most press coverage. There doesn’t seem to be a bigline here between work and working for the election. I’ve heard ofoffices where normal work has stopped and people are using time andresources to promote a candidate. And now that summer is here,people are starting to go to the countryside for one reason oranother. In July things pretty much stop because of Naadam. If myfriend Bird wrestles in Uliastai’s Naadam I hope to go there.Otherwise, I want to spend Naadam in Sukhbaatar with the trainees.And I want to go to Lake Hovsgol at the end of July with two of myfriends. We’ll see what happens.
6/10/2004
one of my friends left yesterday andwhile i’m happy that he gets to see his mom and his girlfriend andhis friends and not be bored doing nothing at work, i’m sad becausehe won’t be here anymore.so my trip to china… it was fun. relaxing. boring. really agood vacation all around. i was in beijing for 11 days. definitelyenough time to see all of the major tourist attractions. my proposedthem for beijing is: beijing–surprisingly pleasant. i didn’texpect the city to be so pleasant. it definitely has its fair shareof commie architecture, but the effect is softened by the trees andparks that abound in the city, as well as by the meanderingneighborhoods. whenever i felt harrassed by the sun, street vendors,and hordes of chinese tourists, i wwould turn off of the main streetinto one of the neighborhoods. They reminded me of high-walled stonehashaas (the fenced in yards that Mongolians live in) except i wasfairly certain that the dogs inside were small, fat, and pamperedrather than lean, dirty, and rabid.my train trip down was more fun than anticipated. I shared a berthwith two VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas), one a volunteer and theother a program officer. we traded stories and complaints about ourrespective organizations. turns out simon (the vol) knew some volsin my group and helen (the program officer) knew some of my non-pc ex-pat friends. mongolia is just a big neighborhood. we shared ourfood (including pizza and fresh-baked cookies that vso vols at one ofthe stops in the gobi gave them. yum!) and i got helen’s cell # tocall them later. my pc boss nancy was on the train as well, with herdaughter who was visiting from the states. the scenery wasbeautiful, especially when we woke up in the morning in china. thechinese towns had more trees and less trash than mongolian towns.people were up and about and working and riding their bikes at630am. and yes, i even saw people doing tai chi. there werebeautiful green hills that morphed into almost mountains. and thenwe saw the great wall. we saw it from a few points on the trainline. it was hard to believe i was seeing all of this clean greenbeauty AND the great wall. amazing.when we got to beijing everyone went to their respectivehotels/hostels. mine was on the subway line. but the directions asto how to get there from the stop were confusing. i met verity androb, a couple teaching in china, on the street as we were allwandering around trying to find this place. they both spoke a bit ofchinese and so were able to get directions. thank goodness.the room i stayed in had 10 beds. though who was in there shifted abit, there was only one night that it wasn’t full. besides me, therewere 2 other americans–jeremy who i’m pretty sure is the firstliberal texan i’ve met and bart from miami. bart was interestingbecause he followed the exact same pattern with each person he’dmeet. first, he’d be insulting and condescending. then, he’d beuncomfortable and deferential. then lastly he’d be for the most partnice and helpful with a touch of the original condescension which hadsomehow become more palatable over the course of your acquaintance.simon from denmark sounded like a cross between arnold schwarzeneggarand sean connery. verity and her sister charlotte were british, robdutch. we had 2 dutch brothers in the room for a time. i havedecided to always like to the dutch and to go to the netherlandssomeday. the dutch boys were invariably pleasant and funny andgifted with charming buddha smiles. but, i’ve decided its veryirritating when non-native english speakers make plays on words thati don’t understand but should. especially when they explain it to methen say something to their brother in dutch and they laugh.the hostel was relatively clean, but the staff was universallydeclared strange and creepy by me and my roommates, though no onecould explain why they were creepy. but the location and cost madeup for everything.i saw all of the sites: forbidden city, night market, summer palace,the great wall and so SOO many temples. when i look at my pictures,i have to keep them in order so that i can tell where i was when itook a picture. there’s a definite sameness to the architecture soyou can’t tell if you are seeing a temple or a palace.i learned how to say “i don’t have a dvd player” in chinese the firstday because i became SO TIRED of people approaching me on the streettrying to sell me crappy dvds. there were far fewer panhandlers inbeijing than in ub, though i’ve heard rumors that the governmentrounds up the homeless/panhandlers and ships them out of beijingperiodically. perhaps not the best way to solve the problem, but iwas a fan of that policy during my stay.the most amazing thing about bejing was the people. they seem tohave a capacity for enjoying themselves and their city that isn’t soapparent in mongolia. everywhere you went you would see groups ofold men playing mah jong or cards or just hanging out in the parks onthe benches having a chat. and the old men and women used the cityas their own personal jungle gym. anything that was stable enough tohold the weight of a human would be used for stretching or climbingon etc. in the parks in the mornings i would run across countlessgroups doing tai chi and ballroom dancing classes outdoors. young,old, didn’t matter. sometimes the dancers would have madeunfortunate music choices, such as when a pair was ballroom dancingto the song ‘age of aquarius’, which made me stop and stare for aslong as the dance lasted. and in the middle of some of the parksthat had old temples and altars, you would see badminton andvolleyball nets set up inside the altar space. in the forbiddencity, people were rhumba-ing to bad boy band music. and the militaryguys were playing basketball. it was very strange at first and i hadquite a bit of culture shock, but eventually i got into it and had alot of fun just watching everyone else have a lot of fun in theircity. helen and i went and watched a band play at this posh bar on alake and when we left, spontaneous line dancing lessons had startedat the square in front of the entrance to the bar street. it made mewant to live in beijing so that i too could become an excellentballroom dancer for free.my absolute favorite example of this was when i went to temple ofheaven park and heard a boombox pounding out some hiphop. i couldn’tfigure out where it was coming from until i walked past a hedge andsaw these women in their forties, for lack of a better word,boogieing down. their hips were shaking and their fists were pumpingand they had these huge smiles on their faces. even better, whenpeople would walk within earshot of the music, they would startbopping up and down to the beat and wiggling their hips a bit. then,once they got out of earshot, they would proceed to walk normally.it was amazing.chinese students of english lurked in touristy areas and would pounceon anyone who looked as though they spoke english. this is how i mettina. i was just trying to find a pair of pants to wear to work butinstead ended up doing an impromptu english tutorial. then before icould figure out how it happened, i agreed to let her come with me tothe summer palace the next day. the summer palace takes most peoplea day. we gunned through it in about two hours. everytime i wouldpoint to a path and say, what is down there? she would say, ohnothing interesting and we’d keep going. then i had been planning oneating real mexican food at a real mexican restaurant (i had heardthat they had imported real mexicans to cook at this place) butinstead i ended up eating at kfc with tina. when we saw the familiarsign in the distance she sighed happily and said, red and white aremy favorite colors. but, the kfc did taste pretty good.after my tina experience, i started pretending that i didn’t speakenglish and whenever someone would ask me if i did, i would justrespond in mongolian. i figured that was the safest thing to respondin as if i responded in russian or japanese or french they may haveactually understood me. not so many people speak mongolian.though when i went on my adventure to buy my train ticket back tomongolia (you would think you would buy that at the train stationwhere they sell tickets, wouldnt’ you? so would most of the peoplethat work at the central beijing train station. all of you and allof them are wrong. which i found out after running up and down threeflights of stairs about twenty times. you buy tickets at the beijinginternational hotel, but not in the office that you see from thelobby because that office is always closed. you have to walk down adank hall that has a very small sign that says CITS (the authoritythat sells the international tickets) and hope that when you go ithappens to be open) i found mongolians in the CITS office who alsospoke chinese and so helped me get my ticket. the odd thing aboutthis was that it phased NONE OF THEM that some white chick justrocked right up to them and started speaking mongolian. there wasabsolutely nothing strange about this to them. i can’t help but feelit SHOULD have seemed a LITTLE strange that i spoke mongolian tothem.once my ticket was secured in my hot little hand, i felt much morerelaxed and continued my wander around teh city. i met up with helenand simon to go to the great wall. we went to the second mosttouristy place. the first most touristy place has a kfc, which wouldhave been something to see, but they didn’t agree. it was cool toactually stand on the great wall but there’s not much more than thatto do. which was pretty much the same conclusion i came to about allof the sites. i mean, it is nice to see these things you’ve heardabout and all, but then what? you get your photo, your tshirts,whatever. much more interesting was just seeing how people live inbeijing and what they do everyday. and of course, eating.i had beautiful food. and it was so cheap. i didn’t have pekingduck, but i had yummy pancake things with chili sauce and egg in themand dry ‘mongolian’ hot pot and WAFFLES WITH REAL SYRUP and coffeeand the best fried eggplant i’ve ever tasted and jiaozi (dumplings)with vegetables and egg and lamb. i boycotted mutton the entire timei was there, which caused a few difficulties when i went out to eatwith people from teh hostel because they all wanted to eat mutton forsome reason. i went to eat hotpot with jeremy and per (a teacherfrom tok, alaska) and they tried to order but there were no pictureson the menu and no one spoke english so with the help of myphrasebook and jeremy’s chinese attempts we thought we ordered hotpotwith mushrooms and beef and peppers. we got a big bowl of bones withbits of mutton on them. so we sent it back and kept trying toexplain what we wanted. eventually they understood and went back tothe kitchen. then five minutes later, the bowl of bones came backout in the arms of a smiling waiter, who then frowned as we waved himback. five minutes later he peeked out of the kitchen at us, holdingthe bowl of bones. we waved him back. meanwhile, another party wasseated in the room next to ours. hurriedly, the waiter clutching thebowl of bones ran to their room and deposited it. apparently theydecided this was a delightful treat because they tucked right in.finally our hotpot came in. it was a sad steaming bowl of water withfive mushrooms in it and a few chili flakes. then they brought out aplate of thinly sliced raw mutton and a pile of about 15 mushroompieces. the raw mutton was sent back to the kitchen, then broughtout to our table again for a little visit about five minutes later.finally we got our beef. we each got about five slivers of beef andfive mushrooms. the tea was good.the beer was ridiculously cheap, about 25 cents for a large bottle atour youth hostel. so people would sit in the lobby and drink andchat. one night when i went down there we played cards with a deckof chinese emperors. the chinese had included chinggis khan in thedeck. i explained that this was unacceptable and bart said, themongolians should be proud that the chinese deigned to includechinggis as one of theirs because mongolia is such a nothingcountry. i tried to explain that this was not how such a thing wouldbe thought of in mongolia, but he kept insisting on the superiorityof the chinese. i desperately wished for a few good herders to be atmy side at that moment.i shopped and bargained and got ripped off and bought a purse thatfell apart at pretty much the exact moment my train left the chineseside of the border to enter mongolia.i shared my berth back with an older chinese couple that kept tryingto feed me and tucked me into bed at night. i got off the train inchoir to give a seminar on hiv/aids and we all smiled and waved wheni got off.so i’ll stop the description now. of course far more and far lesshappened than detailed in this email. suffice it to say, i lovebeijing and am going to seriously consider trying to find a jobthere. and i definitely want to go back to china with far more timeand money in order to see more of the country.
5/15/2004
not much is up in good ole ub lately. another foreigner was stabbedto death in their apartment last week. fabulous. the only thingmissing from his apartment was his cell phone. they think it was awoman, too. that makes two foreigners stabbed recently. threecashmere dealers were shot in one of the ger districts and theperpetrator stole about 2 million tugrigs from them. two of themsurvived the incident with one dying in the hospital and the otherone is still hanging in there, but can’t speak or anything. weird.though i used to really like living in ub, lately i’ve been wantingto get out of the city.in june there will be a month-long buddhist festival. richard gereis coming to participate and host the concert. me and my co-workerenkhee are going to go and see if we can talk to richard. she loverichard gere more than anyone really should and is quite excited bythe prospect of his visit. i think the only thing that could makeher happier than a visit from richard gere would be a visit from thedalai lama.was sick for about a week with a double ear infection and a sorethroat. not so fun. but, people came to cook for me and give meice cream so that was nice. watched a lot of bad television.finally got my leave approved and so will be going to china in twoweeks for about 13 days total, with four of those days justtravelling days. am going by train. i’ve heard the ride isbeautiful. and it is certainly much cheaper than flying. i’m goingalone, which should be an adventure. all i want to see is theforbidden city, the great wall, the summer palace, and a garden withpretty flowers. not so much to ask, i don’t think. am very antsyto get away from mongolia for a bit. the whole thing has beenwearing on my lately. my director seems to think i’m only good forfundraising and english lessons. i’ve been grabbed by random men onthe street/in public like four times within the past month. whichis more than i was grabbed by random men the entire time i lived inthe states. i plan on buying an ‘i climbed the great wall’ tshirt,just because it is so tacky. everyone is asking me if i’m going toeat at mcdonalds and i dont’ think so now, though that could ofcourse change once i get there and see mcdonalds… especially ifthey have good toys for their happy meals.after my vacation, in fact on the way back from ub, i’m getting offthe train in choir and staying for three days to give six two-hourworkshops on hiv/aids/sti to tenth graders. i’m really lookingforward to this and it will be much more interesting than the otherwork i’ve been doing. i always get nervous giving presentations,but i like doing health education with actual people rather thanjust writing up proposals and such. we’re going to act out skitsand practice putting condoms on things and dispel myths. have heardsome lovely weird myths they have here. such as, your nose willfall off if you get syphilis. and, you can get gonorrhea by peeingoutside. or if you get really cold. which frankly, if that weretrue, the entire country would have gonorrhea right now. butgonorrhea, when translated into mongolian, also sounds like coldpus, so it makes sense, i guess. i may not be able to speakmongolian, but i can sure talk about sti with mongolians til thecows come home. or rather, i can ask them if they have sti. whichisn’t always a good conversation starter.the weather is damn beautiful right now. so nice to be able to walkaround without a coat and hat and mittens and scarf. and to wearsandals! amazing.not much to say, i suppose, though i did manage to ramble on for afair bit. will send an update from china. am sure to have anadventure on the train and in beijing. am sooo glad to get out ofhere. was about to crack.
3/09/2004
greetings all. we have just experience tsagaan sar. it is themongolian celebration of the lunar new year. you celebrate byvisiting the houses/gers/apartments of your elders and eating a lotof food and drinking a lot of vodka and wine. then, when you leave,they give you presents. in the countryside, tsagaan sar visitingtime can last a couple of weeks. in the city, it takes up aweekend. i was imagining something like christmas, with the streetsquiet as everyone is going visiting. that was dumb. how are theygoing to get to the many houses? walk?!? lord no. saturday was thebiggest visiting day and the traffic was horrific. went for a walkand was just saddened by the amount of humanity out. we heardeverything would be shut down but that wasn’t the case at all. wewalked to the area near gandan temple to a hill where there isnothing at the top but a series of ovoos. on the walk up the hill,we passed by several bags that had dead frozen dogs in them.apparently, when people no longer want their dogs, they pop them in alarge bag and through them on that hill. on the walk we were also onthe lookout for dead people. i saw some people passed out, but wheni looked closer to see if they were breathing, most were noticeablyinhaling and exhaling. a couple i couldn’t really tell for sure.was a very lazy day, saturday. played monopoly that night withfriends and watched dead calm. sunday went to my counterpart’s houseto do my tsagaan sar visit. was actually her parents’ house. her dadis an airline pilot and speaks very good english. they told me allabout tsagaan sar and showed me a lunar calendar that says all thedays that are good for cutting your hair. if you cut your hair on aday that isn’t good for cutting hair, all sorts of bad things canhappen. you might get sick, you might become poor. but if you cutyour hair on a good day, you could have everlasting happiness or lotsof money come your way. i need to get my hands on this book so thatthe next time i get my hair cut (it will be a while, i’ve heard toomany horror stories of people getting bad haircuts lately) i can getit cut on an auspicious day. turns out the kitten i took in that ithought was a girl is a boy and named batbaatar now.
1/06/2004
11/20/2003
all here is good.weather is getting colder. my friend tinsley already got frostbiteon her ears. i ahve so far avoided that, but i think i’ll have toget a new winter jacket as i’m already cold in mine and thetemperature isn’t much below zero.thanksgiving was nice. even though we aren’t supposed to haev anynon-mongolian holdays off, my office gave me thanksgiving to ‘rest’.i didn’t do anything of note, just slept in, cleaned, and went for awalk. we had a dinner on saturday and then jen and evan and i wentice skating at a flooded field near their apts.last week was MATA’s (mongolian anti-tuberculosis association) tenyear anniversary. we had a two-hour conference, watched a mongolianmusical comedy, and had a dinner. a fact of mongolian life is thateveryone has a cell and no one turns them off for any reason. duringany meeting or event you can expect to hear a chorus of rings and theaccompanying “Baina uu? Baina uu?!?” we foreigners often comment onhow rude that is. i became a member of the chorus at the meeting. inever get phone calls because everyone uses text messages. but forsome reason, 3 people called me right in the middle of the meeting.so embarrassing.after the official meeting, we watched the strangest movie. 3musical comedy vignettes that featured a lot of drinking, fighting,and mongolian circle dancing (which is how mongolians dance in clubs–picture a junior high dance with uncensored hip hop, less rhythm, andworse fashion) i fear that i was laughing for different reasons thanthe rest of the audience.the dinner was interesting. everyone sat around the edges of theroom and didn’t mingle. the master-of-ceremonies kept throwingrandom “woo!”s and “Thank you!”s into his announcements. he had thelowest hairline i’ve ever seen on a man, so i spent the vast majorityof the evening trying to determine if he was wearing a wig. (he was)a mongolian opera singer, wearing high-heeled shoes and a silver 80’stux jacket with black pants sang o sole mio. he had a mullet. and ispent about twenty minutes trying to figure out if a motionlessgrandmother in a dell with her eyes partially open and blanklystaring was dead. just when i had decided that she was, her fingersmoved spasmodically as they announced the second feeding. next thingi knew, she was up across the room sucking down wine. this even wason my birthday and when my colleagues found out, i was forced todance with one of teh older women in front of everyone at the event.then i got kissed/sniffed by everyone and given flowers and wine.after the event, everyone else went back to the office to continuedrinking and i went to play pool at the lenin museum with my friendevan. it is no longer a museum, but has a pool hall, a snooker hall,a cafe, and 2 bars in it. the best is that in the ground floor poolhall, you play as a 30 ft head of lenin looks on. we were both sobad that the 13 yr old smokers at the table next to us wereconversing about our lack of skill. then one of the kids, as tall asa 10 yr old with the face of a 25 yr old, tried to teach us how toplay. nothing helped and by the end we were each hoping the otherwould finally sink a shot. from now on we’re going to stick withbowling, because for some reason you aren’t as sad when you are badat bowling.also went to MONGOLIIN SAIHAN BUUCGUI 2003, or miss mongoliapageant. it lasted forever but was fabulous. we got there at 630,sat down at 7, and it only started 40 minutes late at 740. the onlyqualifications were that you had to be a single woman over 5 ft 8in. they had a talent portion, but talent was NOT a prerequisite. iwish i had a tape of the show. 24 women competed in talent, eveninggown, swimsuit, and interview. one girl was a complete disaster fromthe beginning. her sash fell down almost causing her to trip and shenever regained her composure. i almost don’t know where to begin.the talent was almost painful to watch/listen to. 2 girls who hadobviously shown up not having talent had a drawing competition–onedrew a cartoon goldfish and the other drew a picture that looked tosome to be a stork, others to be a chicken, and still others to be awoman holding the world. while thy were drawing, another girldazzled us with her talent on the keyboard. the majority of hertalent came from the preprogrammed beats. two contestants competedfor worst talent ever. one was a girl in a little bo peep outfit whohad seriously the worst voice i’ve ever heard. this would not be SObad except she brought out a very famous mongol male singer to do herduet. it was so obvious she was trying to ride on his talent, but heonly served to show exactly how bad her voice was. then the lastgirl was a horror show. she was the main dancer/singer (or personattempting to pose in a provacative manner) and had three of the mostuncoordinated, rhythmically challenged men in bad tuxes as her backupdancers. at the end, she dropped her mike and lifted her arms up andafter a few beats, they ran forward to pick her up. then she raninto one of them and it all ended after the music. mongol crowdsaren’t kind. during the interviews several girls cried and they musthave given some DUMB answers because people were hissing andlaughing. one girl finally looked at the audience and said “yacanbe?” which means, “What’s up? or What’s wrong?”. everyone justlaughed harder. and i don’t know WHAT the question was, but one girlgot up and just said, “Chinggis…Chinggis” for about five minutesbefore running off stage in tears.the highlight for everyone was the swimsuit competition that wasfollowed by a salsa dance. the swimsuits were high-cut thongs barelysecured at the top by a single strap. the women in the audience allhad sympathy for teh contestants’ painful looking thongs projected on30ft high video screens that made even the tiniest woman look likeshe had a ginormous behind. but when the salsa dancing started, allsympathy was lost to thunderous laughter and much speculation as towhose breasts would fly out of their top first. the girls weretroopers and kept going even after they saw the trauma happening totheir comrades in dance. some of the male dancers who were partneredwith the contestants tried to be gentlemen and place the flyawaybreasts back into the tops. one male dancer eventually just smackedhis palm over the contestant’s breast after it fell out twice. myfriend chris was sitting next to me. one might best classify hisexpression during this interlude as one of childlike delight andawe. he’s a fidgety fellow normally, but this scene sent him intosuch paroxysms of glee that he fell into my lap several times. he’salready pencilled next year’s competition into his schedule.then while the judges deliberated, we were treated to a variety ofpopular mongolian musical acts. my favorite mongolian band, mcx,entertained the crowd in leopard-print skirts and with much punchingof the air and gutteral yells. my favorite member of the band hasbleached blonde hair that is strongly reminiscint of a mop and hisskirt has a picture of the tazmanian devil on it. my top personalgoal for the next two years is to meet him. hopefully i’ll besending a picture of me and the mopman home soon…the other acts mainly consisted of people wandering aimlessly aroundstage in an attempt at choreography and interspersing bad pop withworse rap. this one group, ice top, had obviously seen an old rundmc video and let that be their style guide.9 of us went and 6 of us left at 1130. it ended almost an hourlater. the winner got an suv.what else?oh, we had a competition amongst 5 military units on hiv/aids forworld aids day. that was interesting. lots of bad talent on displaythere, too. the strangest was a group that did the MOSTunenthusiastic dance to shakira that one can imagine. and for somereason, they decided that if everyone wore white gloves, that meantthey all matched.
11/02/2003
not much has been happening here in UB. haven’t hired a mongliantutor yet because i’ve been lazy. and i know that i will continuteto be lazy after i get the tutor, so i don’t know if i’ll do that.paid my bills last week. they don’t send notices or anything–youjust haev to magically know when to pay and where to go to pay. andjust take a bunch of money because you don’t know how much you’llowe. the landlord/owner of my apartment building is a horrible man.i’ve had to pay for all repairs and he hadn’t paid his last phonebill so i had to pay that, too. he owes me 6000T, but i know i willnever see it. and for electric and water, they charge you for howmany people are registered in your apartment, not how much you use.he didn’t change the registration so they think four people live inmy house, not one. and teh cable company thinks five people live inmy house, not one. all very strange and annoying. he’s supposed tochange the registration and pay me back today, but i doubt it willhappen. my apartment has roaches thatpeek out at me from behind thesink, and a gang of flies that i swear are trying to run me off ofthe property. and of course, 101 dalmatians wallpaper. besidesthese minor annoyances (and yes, i realize they are minor ) i still like my apartment. finally bought a setof six cooking pots–and only one doesn’t match the rest of the set.the lid matches, just not the pot. i’m curious as to how thathappened as it was in the box with the others and on the bottom. italso had a crusted over colony of dead moths stuck to the bottom–curious as to how that happened as well. finally bought a comforterso that i can save my needs-to-be-washed-due-to-cat-pee sleeping bagfor guests. the comforter is peach with green dragons on it. i callit the asian comforter of love, because it matches the rest of mypimp 70’s bachelor pad apatment. next will be redoing the wallpaperand sewing new curtains. i wanted to just paint the apartment, butno one thinks the owner will let me. so i’m currently on the huntfor good wallpaper.as to the cat pee reference–i am sharing a cat with my friendtinsley. she’s orange and fiesty as all get out. when she sleeps atmy house, i wake up to her staring intently at me then poking my facewith her paw or walking on my head. then, she’ll try and attack myhands or feet. she stalks me while i’m cooking or cleaning, too.some of my coworkers came over to help me winterize my place and theywould run screaming everytime she walked towards them. they made meshut her up in the bathroom. apparently, mongolians think all catswant to kill and eat their owners. because i’m evil, i picked up thecat and wiggled her at them. based on their response, i think thatif i ever became so destitute as to need to rob people on the streetsof ub, i wouldn’t need a gun or a knife. all i’d have to do is pullthe cat out and hold her towards my victim. i’d get all their moneyand probably their clothes, too. her name is randall batinkoff.extra points to anyone who can tell me who that is.work is okay. i’m slowly revamping project proposals and a website.and of course, teaching english, which i hate. but i am teaching funwords and phrases to the advanced students. yesterday we went to amilitary base. so strange. no metal detectors, didn’t have i.d.they assure me that no one can get in without proper authorization,but i’m pretty sure i could have taken down the 15 year old lookingguard. without warning i was asked to introduce myself inmongolian. so i blushed and introduced myself. as we were leaving,unuruu asked me why i turned red when i introduced myself.apparently it was fascinating. even though mongolians blush, theydon’t turn as red as i do. turns out i’ll be teaching some of theclasses at the base. that’ll prove interesting. translating hourlong sessions in rh can only help my mongolian.just got a heaping cup of airag. i thought everyone got one, but asi look around the office, everyone else’s desks appear to be airag-free. i’m trying to figure out how to dump it in my nalgene bottlewithout anyone seeing. it has white chunks and dark lint in it.everytime i’m given airag i feel like i’ve been handed a cupful ofmt. everest–i feel i will never conquer it. if at the end of twoyears i can successfully drink a whole cup of airag, i will havetruly accomplished something.went to the children’s park the past 2 weekends. it is ratherdecrepit and scary looking. more the setting for a bad horror filmthan an afternoon of magical fun. they have a few rides, some ofwhich work. my favorites are the twin bicycles of death and theroller coaster of death. the ferris wheel of death is too slow forany real fear to build, though the creaking and groaning it makes asit tries to haul your fat foreigner ass up and over makes for a fewappealingly nervous minutes. the bicycle of death involves a side-by-side sort of tandem bicycle and a monorail abuot 20 feet off of theground. as you corner turns, either you or your partner are quitecertain you will fall off. invariably, the people behind you willslam into you at least once, causing a bit too much shaking forcomfort. and the safety measures? a nylon strap looped at both endsis casually strung in front of you. as i peddled, i kept slidingdown in my seat and would have to try to scooch back up. thank godfor the nylon strap!!! the bike is my new exercise program. betweenthe scooching up and peddling the mammoth bike, i’ll have thighs ofsteal in no time.but kristin, you say, you can’t neglect your arms! never fear, thisis where the roller coaster of death comes in. for a mere 600T(about 50 cents), i get quite the arm workout. the cars for the rcodare individual, with enough seat room for 2 mongolians to squish or 1foreigner to sit in relative comfort. i was quite happy to ridealone in relative comfort (thank you! my european ancestors andtheir european hips!) until i saw the huge disadvantage. there wasno belt or bar to strap snugly across my lap. nothing. bars weretacked to the front and sides for me to grasp in an attempt to keepfrom being whipped out of the car. thank god for those. two peoplein the car keep each other stationary because they are squished inplace. one person in the car slides around and holds herself inplace with a death grip on the side bars. hence the strengtheningand toning of the arms. it was fun, but had the ride been muchlonger or faster, i would have peed myself with the vision of theheadline in the next pc mongolia monthly newsletter, “kristinmaimed in perhaps the most stupid way possible. all pcvs banned fromchildren’s park”. after the freeze, the lake at the park is supposedto have ice skating. and there is a ‘hiphop disko’ at the park.amazingly, they even sell cotton candy, which is white and hasyellowish chunks in it, but still a fine deal for 100T.shall i depress you with visions of a pet store in ub? it is mostdisturbing. the gerbils and squirrels were quite happy and healthylooking. the puppies and kittens were another matter entirely. theyhad obviously been taken from their mothers far too early. thekittens were curled around each other in a big gall of grey fluffwith four drowsy eyes blinking out. the puppies, 2 of them, wereeach huddled in their own little corners, heads down just shaking.one puppy’s paw had gotten stuck between the metal bars of his cageand he was just crying softly. it was horrible. i wanted to beatthe pet store owner man about the head until he could do nothing buthuddle in a corner shaking and whimpering. there’s no aspcaequivalent in mongolia. my friend evan and i both wished we hadn’tgone in there.and on that note, i should get back to work. there are proposals towrite and money to beg!
9/30/2003
got my cell phone the other day. have beentxting my friends like a mad woman. going to the black market onmonday afternoon to buy needed things for the house. starting tocover up the 101 dalmations wallpaper with posters from work, whichis a little offputting to those who do not work in the reproductivehealth sectore… yes, i have many many posters of condoms on thewalls now. and a poster of eminem and a poster of chano, a guy froma korean soap that is very popular here. went to the hash househarriers thing on tuesday and met lots of folks. everyone wasexchanging cell numbers, very interesting. realized that living hereon a western salary basically makes you a king/queen. went to thebritish embassy for happy hour on friday. yes, happy hour at thebritish embassy. i love the british people. they have a pub calledthe steppe inn and they sell drinks for $1 U.S. or 1500 tugs,definitely a better deal if you pay dollars (and if anyone wants tosend spare dollar bills to me in their letters so that i can donatethem to mongolian charities through the british embassy, that’s okayby me!!!). the embassy pays for all of the liquor and pretzels (andocassionally barbecues or indian food) and uses the money we pay forlocal charities. everyone wins at the british embassy. after wedrank and mingled and met lots of folk, a guy from usaid and a guywho is helping to start a pine nut industry here took us out tochinese food. i think they felt sorry for us because we were alltalking about how poor we are which really we aren’t compared to mostmongolians in ub, but when you are running around with expats, youcan see a significant difference in lifestyle, which is okay butsometimes makes it hard to socialize. then the usaid guy took us toour respective homes in his truck. the seatbelts worked. i feltlike i was in the lap of luxury, working seatbelts. six of us piledin to a car that normally holds maybe five, yet we were all quitecomfy, having become accustomed to riding in vans that seat sixnormally but in mongolia seat twenty. not much else is up. this hasbeen a fairly mellow week… OH!!! i got my official job title atwork, very exciting. i am the organizational development officer.i’m supposed to help to reorganize and restructure the offices andtrain the staff in reproductive health trainings and how to writeproposals and of course, teach english. i reminded them that i justgraduated from university and they all have quite a bit moreexperience than i do, but i still have the title… i imagine thatmy resume will be quite impressive once i get back home. anyway,gots to run. have to buy a few kilos of flour and sugar on my wayhome.
i’m hoping they become less interestingand more routine as the weeks go by… so i’m in my apartment in ub,though not settled yet because i haven’t been able to get to the bankto get my money and so have not bought certain essentials. i’ve beenliving off of bread and peanut butter and dry frosted flakes. fridaynight we had a gaadad girls night (foreigner girls night) and hadstir fry vegetables, mashed potatoes, and macaroni and cheese. thatwas yummy.so, my apartment. i have one room, a bathroom, and a separatekitchen. the room has one hundred and one dalmations wall paper,which is cheerful, if a little disconcerting to think that an adultput that up there… my bathroom is gorgeous, a huge bathtub and atoilet with the seat attached and a separate sink. the walls andfloor are tiled in a greeny black fake marble that is stronglyreminiscent of a seventies bachelor pad. the kitchen is pretty goodsized with a lot of cabinets and a nice wooden table and bench thathas extra storage space. my fridge is almost normal sized and thefreezer is decent. my agency bought a tv and hooked up cable for meand got me a phone and hooked up that number as well. mycounterpart’s hobby is watching tv so she didn’t think i should gotwo years without tv. i don’t have an actual bed but a fold outcouch that slants sharply to the floor. so i have propped it up withmy thermarest and a pad that was hanging around the house. i stillhave to clean it out before i feel all settled in, but i’m wellpleased with the apartment. i even have hot water!!! all thetime!!! it is amazing!!! one of my friends heard about my apartmentand kept telling me and tinsley (because she also has a niceapartment) to just go back to america, we weren’t really in mongoliaanyway. he’s just jealous because he doesn’t have running water or abathroom in his apartment and has to get a pushcart to go and getwater.i’ve had plumbers at my house all week, trying to fix the hot waterin the kitchen and the leaky faucet in the bathroom. that isdefinitely like being back in the states. they said they were comingat 11 and didn’t get to the house until 3, which was annoying to mebecause i had to get to the bank before 330. that didn’t happen, soi have to try and go today. the one day i actually got to the banklast week, they had a power outage and couldn’t access my account.the lady kept feebly looking through random boxes of accountsscattered around in what appeared to be no particular order but saidshe couldn’t find mine. i wasn’t surprised.work is okay. the first day we had a going away party for david, avso from uganda who just got done working there. he was an aidscounselor in uganda for 10 years and really helped the organization alot. at first i was intimidated, but now i figure i can only do whati can do and let it go at that. they had wine and random salads andcake. it was nice. then a few days later my boss brought in airagand we all had a big cup of that, which was odd to me becausedrinking during work just doesn’t seem right. i didn’t drink it allbecause i’m not a fan of airag. my counterpart is very nice andsoftspoken. there is a translator who was hired through the vso towork there for david. i don’t know if she is staying or not. i hopeso, but they’ll get another one if she leaves because all of theirproposals have to be in english and i certainly can’t translate frommongolian to english. i don’t realy know what i will be doing yet.we are going to make my work plan tomorrow and i’m a bit concernedbecause i still have no idea what i can help them with. i’m going tojust kind of do whatever it is they want and then as time goes by tryand come up with my own projects. there seems to be a lot of readingof newspapers at the office.i live in a very central location, right by several good markets andnice restaurants. my building has not one but two scary elevatorsand a stairwell that smells strongly of pee. i apparently live rightby the minister of internal defense, which is nice. my apartmentcosts $150 a month. anyone who wants to retire early should justcome to mongolia. seriously. anyone who makes an american salaryhere (like the embassy staff) is just ridiculously wealthy.i’m going to go to a hash house harrier outing on tuesday, if i canget off work. it is an ex-pat running/walking group. they takebuses out of town and go for outings. it is supposed to be afun/interesting group and it will be a nice opportunity to meet morepeople. and apparently on friday nights there is a happy hour at thesteppe inn by the british embassy and it is a good place to meetother development people and hook up for projects and the like, soi’ll be going to that on friday as well, i think. it will be nice tohave things to look forward to until i get an established workschedule and so on. also, i’m trying to find a mongolian teacher tomeet with once or twice a week. it would be nice if i could say morethan, i like milk. alistair, a guy who works at the office aroundthe corner from mine, has language classes two days a week and worksthree days. that would be a nice schedule! he doesn’t know it yet,but he’s my new friend.this weekend a group of us went to the black market. that’s a scaryplace. i didn’t get robbed or anything, but there is just so muchhumanity in there! at some points it was like being on bourbonstreet at mardi gras, you just go where the crowd takes you. andpeople will put their hands to the small of your back and use you tobarrel through the crowd. they do have absolutely everything there.it was all a bit overwhelming. i ended up just buying a poster of amovie star that was in a tv movie that is very popular here. theywere selling puppies and kittens in the entrance to the blackmarket. the kittens were only a month old and the puppies were aboutsix weeks and they looked like st bernards. i’m going to get a cat,i’m just waiting for someone to give me a free one. they were tryingto sell the kittens to us for $40, which is ridiculous because thereis no way a mongolian would pay that much for a cat.that’s about all. i slept all day yesterday like a complete sackbecause i think i’ve just been overwhelmed by everything this weekand needed to not think or anything for a day.
8/22/2003
blistered hands and swearing in
hey there everyone. a very quick note. swearing in is tomorrow!!!thank the dear lord above. i’m so sick of waiting waiting waiting icould vomit up sheep guts. i burned my hand last week, a seconddegree brn on my left palm. it was ratehr painful, bt i have thebenefits of never having to carry my own luggage, everyone else hasbeen very helpful. don’t worry, my hand is healing fine. i was dumband put my hand on a burner to see if it was warm. it was hot. myhost brother gave me a tibetan buddhist charm that is supposed tobring good luck and good health. i got it the night before i burntmy hand. hmmmmm…. don’t think it works. this has been a fun weekthough, connecting with the other pcts and actually getting to knowthem. i’ve already invited myself to several homes across thecountry in the coming two years. and of course, as i live in ub, ihave many people keen to stay with me, which is fine of course! wehave to sing the national anthem for swearing in and it sounds likecomplete crap on stage, , so i can’t imagine how lovely it sounds frothe audience. they want us to sing it with feeling. i’m not reallycertain what it means. can’t have feeling without meaning. no funnyfood stories thisweek, except i went to a chinese restaurant and hadkung pao chicken and it was actually mildly spicy, which was aplaesant surprise!!!
that would be dumplings made out of sheep stomach. t hat’s what myfamily had for dinner last night. i had eggs and bread. now thereis leftover chopped up sheep stomach hanging out in the fridge,uncovered. so everything is starting to take on a slight taste ofsheep stomach. they don’t cover any food in the fridge. and, theyput sugar and coffee in the fridge, but not leftover soup or buuz.that goes in the cupboard, of course! a little disturbing, frankly.in other news, i’m leaving on sunday!!! yay!!! i’m so ready to havemy own place without sheep stomach in the fridge or my host dadloudly banging cups and pots at 2 in the morning when he comes homeintoxicated. and i’m looking forward to living in ub, where theysometimes have feta cheese for sale!!! i’ve been honing my breadmaking and noodle making abilities and am constructing a drying rackto dry apples and tomatoes to have in the winter. have learned thatcamel meat is the cheapest and leanest in the winter, so will likelybuy that to eat. it is called the poor man’s meat and as i will bepoor, i think it appropriate to eat it. i ghaven’t had horse yet anddon’t know if i can manage, but we shall see. beef is the mostexpensive, then sheep. my family gave me a mongolian jacket to wearat swearing in. it is beautiful. it is a pale fawn color (which ialready got a blue stain on after wearing it for five minutes, thankyou) with black accents and amber buttons. i’m planning on wearingit with my black skirt. i will send pictures as soon as i am able.my friend chris was supposed to hel pme send them at last centerdays, but we never got around to it, so maybe next week… anyway,i’m well pleased with my jacket. everyone else got dells, but myfamily thought that since i will be living in ub, i will get more useout of a jac ket than a dell. and i will be ab le to wear it inamerica, and i wouldn’t wear a dell in america. why not? becauseeveryone, no matter what their figure is like, looks like a completesack of potatoes in a dell, and frankly i don’t nee dto look like asack of potatoes with a disco belt. i saw children torturingpuppies yesterday and ran after them and yelled a tthem with my hostsister translating. they didn’t stop, but at least i tried. theydon’t kmnow how to be nice to dogs here, it is really sad to watch.the weather is getting colder and i’ve been wearing a sweatshirt orfleece everyday and wish heartily that i had brought more clothesbecause i am incredibly sick of everything i own. i’ve been breakingout like a thirteen year old boy lately, too, and that is no fun.tonight ouru teacher is making us dinner and that should be very fun.i’m going to miss sharyn gol a little b it, but i’m going to lovehaving my own apartment. they give us oney to set it up, but i havea sneaking suspicion that i will be spending my mon ey on kazakh wallhangings and not on plates. people can bring their own plates whenthey come to dinner. tinsley and i are going to share a large tin offlour and are looking into buying a sheep or a goat for slaughter.i’m going to make all of our bread items and she is going to cut upthe meat, as i hate touching raw meat. heather is going to providethe seasonings until ours arrivce in the mail. i’m so glad that iwill know people at site. i couldn’t handle being by myself, i don’tthink. my language is c oming along and i can now harrass my familyin mongolian, which is fun. and i’v e learned quite a bit of slangso i dont’ sound like a textbook come to life. but, thepronunciation is still difficult. the other night i was reading arecipe to my family and i accidentally said ‘human meat’ insteadof ’sheep meat’ because the ‘o’ sounds are very similar. they keptmaking fun of me un til i made them say three hundred and thirtythree, because mongolians in general can’t make the ‘th’ sound.then tehy stopped laughing at me.well, i should go. just wanted to send one last eamil from sharyngol, though i imagine in darkhan next week i’ll be able to sendmore. i’ve got to go and eat strange animal parts now.
7/20/2003
we are waiting for the microbus to take us home to sharyn gol so ithought i’d write a quick email on my impressions of ub. i reallylike it! i am surprised because i figured i would think it okay, butnothing great. it is very busy here, traffic everywhere and peoplerunning all over the place. there are tons of clubs and internetcafes and many many foreigners. when i saw them i felt a littleoverwhelmed and freaked out, especially when we went to the embassyand saw and spoke with the americans. it was very strange. we’vebeen to many mildly boring meetings with people who do a variety ofhealth development work in mongolia. we went to millie’s for lunchand had milkshakes (not really shakes like in the states, but prettydamn close) and some had burgers and i had a cuban sandwich. todayfor lunch we went to the taj mahal for yummy indian food in arestaurant that had actual ambience. nice. a tour group offoreigners came in and we all strained our ears listening to theirconversation, as eavesdropping is something we don’t often get thechance to do. we went to teh state department store and it remindedme of a low-rent mitsukoshi–food on the first floor, a floor ofelectronics, a floor of clothes, a floor of furnishings, and a floorof souvenirs. i almost bought a gorgeous wall hanging but decided itwas better to save my money for food or furnishings once i get to ubthan to splurge on such a luxury item. the traffic here is veryscary and no one seems to recognize right of way of anything—cars,people, cows. the taxi drivers do not try to overcharge you though,which is nice. there are no pay phones, but sometimes you will seesomeone with a table and a white phone on it. those are portable payphones and you can use them to call cells for 200t or landlines for100t. we went to an austrian bakery today and i went a little insanewith purchasing things. and, peace corps office has a library fromwhich i liberated five thick books. tomorrow my plan is to eatpastries and read books all day long, since our teacher is in aconference in darkhan. and, i have to write a lesson plan and a twohour presentation on monitoring and evaluation. the ride to ub wasokay. right before you hit baruunharaa you reach paved road, whichtheoretically should be better than dirt road. not so much. ithought i would finally be able to sleep but this was patently notthe case. you get jounced around regardless. i can’t imagine takinga seven hour car ride as some of my friends have had to do. lessthan four weeks until we are sworn in as volunteers and begin toserve in our agencies. i’m excited to cook my own food and get toknow my organization. i’ve heard nothing but very positive thingsabout mongol vision from the other agencies that we have visited.they are supposed to be very active, which is nice. i shouldhopefully have a lot to do then. i have to run. take care and i’msending love.
7/13/2003
i sure hope the house doesn’t smell like burned boiled head
that was a comment one of my friends made the other day before she went home for dinner.all is well. we just had naadam festival this past weekend. we watched the opening ceremonies and saw a bit of wrestling and a bit of archery. we were offered airag which i drank a little but not too much.
then, we all piled into almost roadworthy cars and went out to the country, where the hosts built a fireout of crap and we heated river rocks. the river rocks were put into a metal canister with hunks of meat and left to stew for awhile. before we ate the meat, we had to toss the hot rocks back and forth in our hands for our health. after that, we drank some of the broth from the canister, which tasted like fatty meat and a bit like charcoal, but in a good way. that night, daphne and i went back to our house and found out that an american had come by, which was strange because all of us had been at the picnic. turns out one of our friends from baruunharaa had come to town with his host dad because his host dad races horses. we ended up finding him at the naadam field and then we all went out to the sauna bar, with hisd ad. his dad thought our friend heather was very pretty and told me in russian that he loved her. then a few of us decided to go to a second bar. on the way there, i got a little fiesty and ended up wrestling my friend in the street, which slowed our progress. i ended up with countless bruises, a ripped-off toenail, and damaged pride. and filthy clothes.
at the second bar, my friend tinsley was asked for 5000 tugrik by heather’s host brother. tinsley has no money. the next day, we watched our friend bird wrestle in naadam,which was fun. then i took a nap and ended up meeting up with everyone for a brief visit before chris had to go back home. yesterday we had wind and rainstorms and the movie satisfaction was on tv. odd, but i never thought my peace corps experience would include watching sex and the city or satisfaction, you know? it just doesn’t jibe with the whole feel of peace corps, does it? my family keeps eating the food that i buy, which is annoying. oh, and we were blessed by a buddhist lama the first morning of naadam. he’s my host dad’s older brother. you would never suspect that a lama drinks bad vodka, would you? but they do, and quite a bit, if my host dad’s brother is any indication. i’m so done with seeing raw meat hanging out on the counter and on being pushed to drink , but other than that, everything is just dandy!!!
this is a very exciting weekend!!! naadam is tomorrowand saturday and we just got internet today in sharyn gol. it costs1000T for an hour ($1) and so i think i will only check it once aweek. but still, moreso than before!!! my host dad brought a sheephome yesterday to slaughter. it spent the night on th ebalcony,which i don’t think pleased it very much because sheep aren’t used tobeing five floors off the ground. there was sheep crap all over theplace. i went to school and came home for lunch and my dad is therewith his older brother and two random friends. they had already hada fair bit of vodka and were celebrating having slaughtered thesheep. luckily, there weren’t sheep bits all over the house likei’ve seen at other’s homes. they aren’t going to offer me the bloodor innards, because i’ve already informed them that that is againstmy religion. is it? my personal one, at least. tomorrow we arehaving a blessing ceremony and we are burning juniper to have a happylife. then we will wathc wrestling and archery, then we drive off tothe countryside in order to watch the horse races. my dad’s olderbrother races horses and so it should all be very exciting. they’veincreased the age of te riders to seven, which still seems prettyyoung to me, but okay. we are about to go to our mongol helteacher’s house to make an apple cake. last night a few of usexperimented and made some damn fine onion rings. tomorrow i willtry fermented horse milk for the first time, which should be funseeing as everyone gets the runs every time they drink it. great.will i never have certain bowels in mongolia? i don’t think so. incase anyone was wondering, it takes about 2 weeks for a letter to getto me, it will take about a week and a half once i’m in ub.packages, i have no idea as i haven’t gotten any yet. i imagineabout a month and a half or two months. but i don’t know. i’ll letyou know once i get one.
7/01/2003
found out my site and heard many disturbing stories
hey there. i will be working for mongol vision in ulaanbaatar.mongol vision is an ngo that works with men, sex workers, and streetkids to improve reproductive health and reduce rates of hiv/aids. inaddition, i will work with the same people under a different grant toreduce rates of tb in mongolia. i’m very excited about my assignmentthough i fear i may spend the next two years showing boys how to puton condoms. our organization apparently works closely with buddhistmonks and nightclub owners, an interesting mix to say the least.there are quite a few of us who will be in ub, including two otherhealth vols, a small business vol, two environmental vols, and atefl. in zuunmod, a town about 20 minutes from ub, a teacher trainerand a tefl. i know that sentence is far fromcomplete, but completesentences don’t always come to mind. one of my friends who will bein ub has a laptop and movies, as does one of my friends who isliving in zuunmod. and apparently a guy who runs one of theguesthouses magically gets dvds of new movies. yay!!! there aredrawbacks to ub, but a lot of good benefits. i’m probably going toget a cell phone, which just sounds weird but i will apparetnly beable to call the states for 30 cents a minute, which is unheardof !!! and, if people call my cell, the call doesn’t cost meanything!!! woohooo!!! so starting in september, i will be sendingmy cell number. most of the ub vols and some of the choibalson volshave them. technical training has started and it should proveinteresting and vague, like most of training, though most of trainingisn’t necessarily interesting. but it is nice to see the othervolunteers. my friends chris and pat brought their laptops todarkhan and a group of us watched clerks last night, and some southpark that actually had mongolians in it!!! and they spokemongolian!!! and we understood some of it!!! it was hysterical.i’ve heard some pretty messed up stories, too. many about eatingdifferent bits of animals, quite a few about bathroom issues, and themost disturbing from eric. his host brother is called squirrel andhis host sister is called goat girl. he has a very fat host dad withman breasts. to make a long story short, his host brother and hostsister suckled his host father one morning while eric was eatingbreakfast. his host siblings are thirteen and fifteenrespectively. it is much funnier than the way i tell it, but i’mrunnin out of internet time. i should have plenty once in ub becauseif nothing else i can go to the office and use theirs.there are many bets going around about hooking up and couples, butnothing has really happened yet, which is a bit disappointing asfaras i am concerned. what else what else??? oh naadam is next weekendand then two weeks after that we have ub days then three weeks afterthat we go to darkhan for our swearing in ceremony. i’m getting myfirst progress report tomorrow and yesterday we had our firstmongolian test. there was a whole lot of ‘medegui” which means idon’t know. eh, i have time to practice. anyway, i have to run.everyone take care and WRITE ME!!!!!!!!!!! i know some are on theway and i appreciate it because there are some guys who haven’tgotten anything and everyone feels very sorry for them. oh, and et’dmeans early terminated, as in went on home before the two years wereup. statistically speaking, that leaves four more people to go homebefore august 2005.
6/12/2003
i live in sharyn gol, a small town of about ten thousand peopleaboiut 2 hours away from darkhan. it is an industrial town with acoal mine and a gold mine. it is a pit and rather ugly, but thereare some nice areas around it, hills and such. cows wander throughtown and there are tons of dreadlocked dogs that run hither and yon,mainly from people throwing rocks at them. i only bathe once a weekbecause we don’t have hot running water. so, we go to the localsauna and pay 1500 togrog for the pleasures of a mildly warm shower.i will never get used to my greasy hair or my dirty self, so ifanyone wants to send me some nice perfume, that would beappreciated. what do i eat??? i eat mutton and noodles and potatoesand cabbage (which i have discovered does not agree with my digestivesystem at all.) and sometimes tomatoes. i have had a little bit ofwatermelon and an apricot, whi ch i was quite excited about. mygroup is pretty close and we get together once a week to make foodthat rem inds us of home. so far, we have had pizza and fajitas(ghetto, both) and we ac tually had chicken one night, which wasspectacular!!! there is no shortage of c hocolate or sweet spreadsto put on the bread here. i crave granola and dried peaches andapricots like nothing else. i have gotten used to nescafe. thelanguage is coming along pretty well. my host dad is a fan of makingme speak mon golian and him speaking english. my host sister is tonsof fun and we read magazines and sing pop songs and learn dancestogether. we start the technic al training next week and we willfind out our site placemetns today. for the health vols, fourof us will be in ub and one of us will be elsewhere, so we are allcurious as to who is going weh re, and a little anxious fo rthat oneperson. last weekend our group hired a car and went to baruunharaato visit the vol gropu there. they have an ac tual river you c anbathe in and gorgeous mountains to hike iun. however , they were allquite jealous when they heard we had real toilets that flush andrunning water in the apartments.so far, i like it. it is very difficult here sometimes, especiallywith how drunk people get and how mean people can be to animals andteh complete frustration of not being ab le to communicate very wellat all. i ave c ried a few times, but nothing major, more justletting the build up of emotions out. in many ways i really love mongolia and the people i have met here. i will write again as soon asi can so that i can tell you w here i am going. i have to go and eatlunch no.
6/05/2003
really quick because i only have ten minutes. hope all is well with you. after much travel and much moving of rather heavy luggage, we are in darkhan, mongolia about a five hour drive from ub. it is very harsh and beautiful in a mean way. We stayed at a ger camp the first night, have already seen many horses and cattle and young contortionists. Have not eaten mutton yet, but I go to my host family on Tuesday and expect to eat mutton and airag on that day. We have already been told by many people to expect diarrhea, which should be fun. All of the people I have met are fairly fun and intelligent, except for some that annoy me, but what can you do? You can’t like everyone. I’ve already learned how to tell people that they are crazy, which is always a fun word to learn. I have to go because I don’t have enough money for more time, but I will try and write again before I go to my host family. If not, I will be back in darkhan in about three weeks and will write then. The name of my town is shayan-gol, about ten thousand people. Talk to you later. Love you all. Send letters, please!!!
