Thursday, June 30, 12:05 pm

Marta moved into my room this morning. She needed to move out of her guesthouse room and since we are taking off together on Saturday and I have an extra bed, it made great sense. We are busy making plans for the weekend. Not much else to report. I read a lot last night and was lazy getting up this morning since I had to be in my room to meet Marta at 11 am. I usually leave for school between 9 and 10.

Wednesday, June 29, 11:15 am

I met with Marta yesterday afternoon after class and then we went to an Indian restaurant for dinner. I had paneer, a solid cottage cheese curd, that had been breaded and fried. Really good, although I am completely unfamiliar with Indian food. My only other encounter with the cuisine did not rate as highly. As I recall the food was heavily flavored with rose water and I didn't care for it at all. We've made plans to travel to a monastery this weekend on the train together. Should be fun. She just got back from a 16 day trip to central Mongolia and the Gobi and is eager to go exploring again. She's also moving into my dorm room for a couple of days, until we take off on Saturday. It will be nice to have company, although I hope I can keep the insomnia that has plagued me for the past 2 weeks under control. I've had trouble falling asleep, in spite of the 1-2 hour walks I take most days.
There isn't a lot to report. I get 4-5 students per class, just enough to keep it worthwhile to keep coming to school. These loyal students have invited me to a Korean restaurant on the day of the last class, so I think that I've made at least a small impact on their lives.

Monday, June 27; 11:10 am

Saw the strangest thing this morning: a little girl about 1-2, wearing cuffs that buckled around her ankles, with a 12" strap between the cuffs. Looked like something you would hobble a horse with. I assume it was to keep her from running, but I found it as reprehensible as I do leashes on kids. Very strange.

Lessons learned about Mongolian motorists:
The person quickest on the horn gets the right of way.
There is always room for another car, whether between lanes of traffic or while turning the corner.
Just because there is only one turn lane painted on the road, that doesn't mean that 2 or 3 cars in parallel can't make the turn. It's more fun to do things with friends!
If I want to park here, I can.

Sunday, June 26; 2:45 pm

Not much to report today. I'm at my favorite weekend place, Cafe Amsterdam, finishing my tomato and cheese panini, enjoying the free WiFi and watching the people from the lovely covered patio here. I expect to talk to Marta sometime this week. She called on Friday, saying she would be back in UB on Sunday, so I hope to see her soon. Only 2 weeks left and I have to say I'm ready to come home. This has been a very interesting time, full of ups and downs, but all-in-all, I've enjoyed it. High on my list is my friendship with Haly, who has been such a help to me and has become a very good friend. She says she feels as though we were destined to meet and become close. I've been so lucky to know her.

Friday, June 24: Happy Birthday, Bill!

Yesterday was actually fun. As a result of my asking about leaving early, the director of the department sent around word that anyone in the building was to attend class, so I actually had people show up! I did a lesson on the subjunctive and had a blast. Then, Haly asked for my help with a paper she has to turn in today, Friday, at noon. So, we were here until 7pm working on rewriting her research into real English, which you all know I LOVE to do. We were back here at school at 8am finishing up. It's now 11am and we are basically done. She's just finishing up tables and figures and then should be able to send it off. It concerns a project done in western Mongolia regarding veterinary inoculations and subsequent increases in animal weights, chest circumferences and a decrease in neonatal mortality. At least I could understand her thesis, conclusions and recommendations!

The other news is that this morning the water came out of my shower visibly ORANGE. I showered and washed my hair anyway since I didn't have enough bottled water in the room to revert to my former method of showering, but when I emerged I had orange streaks down my calves and thighs like a badly-applied layer of self-tanning lotion. My hair feels kind of stiff, too. At least I know I'm getting my RDA of iron today.

Wednesday, June 22

The bathroom at the school is kept locked, although I can't figure out why, for the life of me. You have to supply your own toilet paper, so there's nothing to steal, not even any soap. The keyhole on the outer door goes completely through the door and when you insert the key, you have to fool around with it to figure out how far in to stick it. You could, conceivably, push the key all the way into the room. It's an old-fashioned skeleton key, so you have to find the exact spot where the "works" of the lock are inside the door.

No students again yesterday. This is becoming boring.

Tuesday, June 21

I picked up a new kind of juice yesterday at the grocery store. It is Korean and has a drawing of an ear of corn on it, so I was intrigued and had to try it. Well, I opened the bottle and got a whiff of the scent of corn (yeah, what did I expect?) and the taste, but not strong, of roasted corn. Strange, not awful, but that's hardly a good advertising slogan.
My days are long and boring. Yesterday no teachers were in the building for class. Today is another quiet day, and it remains to be seen if anyone shows up.

Burberry plaid

I have never seen so much Burberry plaid as I do here. I had noticed it last year but never commented on it then. Burberry is everywhere: in men's shirts, umbrellas, purses, raincoats, etc. I saw a plaid shirt yesterday at the Black Market but since it had the words "BRURBER PLAID" plastered across it, I suspect that it is not authentic. Whattya think?

Monday, June 20

On Friday one class had a lesson about food and restaurants, etc. The book had photos of various American foods, including a sandwich with alfalfa sprouts on it. (The book is intended for ESOL students living in the US). We spent time discussing the food and examining the photos, talking about the ingredients of each item. One of my students pointed to the sprouts and exclaimed "plants?!". As I've discussed earlier, there is very little green in the Mongolian diet.

Sunday, June 19: Father's Day

Hot day again, today. Finished my gift shopping today with the purchase of 3 cheap watches for Bill's dad; cheap because they get stolen so often in the nursing home.

My dormitory is right on the border of where the buildings stop and the ger district begins. There's a gravel road on my side of the building that leads to the gers and to a construction site in the next valley where several apartment buildings are being built. The strange thing about this situation is that trucks and heavy machinery goes down this road at all times of the day and night, especially in the dark hours between 9 and midnight. I can't imagine what they are doing in the dark and there are no bright lights on at the site like you sometimes see at road construction sites at home.

I caught a taxi to take me to the Black Market this morning and the woman driver was very happy to practice her English with me. At one point she asked me if I liked Jesus. I assured her that I did and she said she did, too.

Saturday, June 18

I walked into the city center today and stopped at Cafe Amsterdam. They have an outdoor patio on the top floor and I sat there under an awning and ate my sandwich. Got caught on reading my emails and just enjoyed sitting and relaxing. Things are winding down around here and a lot of the teachers are taking off on vacation, so attendance at my classes is dwindling. I'd like to just cancel things because it's just too hard to teach 1 or 2 students at a time, but don't feel I have the authority. Just a few weeks left, but I'm ready to come home now.

Marta

Anita contacted me several weeks ago about a Swiss woman who was coming to UB in June and would be in and out of the capital for several weeks before returning home. Marta contacted me last week and we met on Saturday and immediately hit it off together. She is a big-hearted person with a tremendous laugh and we had such a wonderful time together. We started together with a coke at Cafe Amsterdam and then went to the State Department Store for her to do a little shopping in preparation for the tour she was to begin on Sunday. After that we were having such a good time talking that we decided to go to dinner. She introduced me to a restaurant across Peace Avenue from the department store called the Geneva Club where we both had wonderful salads with lettuce, chicken and raisins. The salad was so delicious and so welcome after weeks without much green in my diet. Marta is 66 and takes off every year for 4-6 weeks on an adventure such as this one. We made plans to get together after she is back from the Gobi. Can't wait! Everyone Anita has introduced me to has been an exceptional person with whom I would like to stay in contact for the rest of my life. She is from Canton Turgau in Switzerland and says she knows several Hiestands there.

Chinggis Monument, continued

After seeing the sights from the horse's neck, we got back into the car and drove to a restaurant nearby where we got out of the car and TOOK OUR PIZZAS INTO THE RESTAURANT!! Unbelievable! This, of course, was about 3 hours after we picked them up, but they were still good. I have no problem eating cold leftover pizza so there was no problem eating cold untouched pizza, either. The pizza here is strictly un-Italian (carrots, corn, cheddar cheese and I have no idea what the meat was and don't want to ask), but if you give up your expectations and just take it for itself it is pretty good.

Yesterday I went with Altansukh and a new Japanese friend of his to the Intellectual/Puzzle Museum. It was wonderful. They have 4000 3d wooden puzzles, the biggest of which has 673 pieces and requires 56,831 moves to disassemble. (No, I didn't try it). It is a privately owned museum and the founder joined us and did some magic tricks for those of us in the tour. The museum also includes his collection of chess sets from around the world, including some ancient ones that had boards that are 10x10 and 11x11 squares instead of the 8x8 boards in use now. I wonder what kinds of moves the extra pieces made and why they dropped out of use.

I had had some plans for the day yesterday which went completely changed as the day progressed. Altansukh had texted me about the museum on Tuesday and I replied that, yes, I wanted to go and could we go in the morning? He always texts because he doesn't trust being able to understand me over the phone, I think. Anyway, it turns out that he left his phone in his car and didn't get back to me until late Wednesday am suggesting a 3pm meeting.. OK, so I took off for the central city, deciding to walk and do an errand and then head over to Cafe Amsterdam, a favorite place for ex-pats that has WiFi, thinking I'd get up-to-date with my email and this blog. Last week two of the teachers took me to a jeweler because I had the idea to have a necklace made with my name in the ancient vertical Mongolian script, not the Cyrillic script in use since 1940. He had indicated the necklace would be ready on Monday, so I thought everything would be copacetic by Wednesday. Hah! I got there at 1:30 pm and he showed me the piece of brass with the name on it....but absolutely no progress had been made on it. Not having any way to communicate with him, I decided to sit and wait. He took out his jeweler's saw and proceeded to begin
sawing. He finished cutting out the figure at 2:30 when his shop was visited by two guys carrying some sort of tripod with a strange object attached on top. He turned his attention to them and started working on a bolt that apparently had had its head broken off. About that time Altansukh called and put off our meeting until 4. At 3 the jeweler finished with the 2 guys and began polishing my name. He was done by 3:30, so that's when I started walking to meet Altansukh. So, there went my plans for lunch, emailing and blogging. Luckily I really love the necklace and it was incredibly cheap, so I guess I paid for it with time and inconvenience as much as with anything else.

When the teachers took me to the jeweler and we were negotiating the style and price, etc., the fees were itemized for me. One of the items listed was "human salary".

I saw a man yesterday wearing a bright red t-shirt that read "I'm a Gleek.".

A billboard on the street for a new gym advertised "Diet Dance".

I'm baaack

These have been crazy, frustrating days since the Internet here has gone south. So much to tell that has happened in the last two weeks. I'll start off with my day off, June 1. Two of the teachers here who are best friends invited me to go with them to the Chinggis Khan monument that is about 50 km out of the city. The teachers, Tsegi and Zolaa and Zolaa's husband, Bataar, and their 2 year old son, Dimbe, picked me up in Bataar's car and we went to buy a couple of pizzas. We drove for two hours until we reached the monument, which is a 40 meter aluminum statue of Chinggis on horseback, really quite attractive. You can walk up inside the statue and come out onto the horse's neck as an observation deck. The crowds inside the statue on the stairs were crushing and everyone had a small baby or toddler with them. In some cases people even had scooters or crutches with them. I could scarcely breathe and of course there was no order or orderly line getting up the stairs. People just pushed and shoved and eventually someone just popped through the crowd out onto the observation platform.