MUSINGS ON MOGOLIA

Mal-adjusting in Mongolia: Where nose-diving into open manhole covers is a sport.

So these are just excerpts from my old myspace blog. I know this is a long post but really would you expect anything less from me?:) I thought they were funny and wanted to share them...they're in completely random order so enjoy

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I had to take a taxi (coughhitch-hikecough) to a department store on the other side of town as I was in a time crunch. It was only a 10-minute ride over about 3 kilometers. It should have cost about 1000 Tugrik, which is roughly a dollar, but the 2 guys that drove me were trying to charge me between 15 and 25,000 tugrik. No problem, overcharge the foreigner 15 times the normal amount and she'll be too stupid to notice! When they told me the price I started laughing uncontrollably…which did not make them happy. They tried to make me pay but I just threw them 2 bucks and slammed the door as hard as I could and ran – hoping to break their damn car. So that was fun too.

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The other day a bus decided that it didn't need to use the street anymore and it came onto the very sidewalk I was walking on causing me to nearly jump off the bridge onto the frozen river….but it avoided me and I'm fine. Earlier that same day an electric bus had come off its top rails and was stranded in the middle of the busiest intersection in UB. That wasn't the bad part…oh no! The 12 foot long poles on top of the bus were swinging wildly in the strongest wind I'd ever seen in UB. I didn't see sparks but I wouldn't put it past the UB transportation system to leave the power on.

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The Pros and Cons of Winter in Mongolia (Mostly involving bodily fluids)

PRO: Frozen spit is less messy and easier to chip off pant legs and shoes.
CON: It's still spit

PRO: Frozen puke is less smelly and less messy.
CON: Alas, it's just as slippery

PRO: Frozen mucous membranes are mildly less disgusting than the regular kind
CON: Frozen mucous membranes are entirely more plentiful than the regular kind..frozen spit does not equal evaporated spit.

PRO: Anonymity is easier to come by with a scarf wrapped around 85% of your face, leaving only the eyes to see
CON: 85% of what makes me look different from Mongolians are my eyes...cruel irony

PRO: Emerging from between the plumes of car exhaust and smoke from the ger camps into an awesome beam of Mongolian sunshine make for a mildly romantic and beautiful picture that happens daily.
CON: The poor visibility resulting from the aforementioned fumes and smoke coupled with radiant beams of sunshine blinding the already crazy Mongolian drivers leads to my life flashing before my eyes at least twice daily.

CON: Walking to work sucks when it's this cold.
PRO: The cold has made me walk faster. This, coupled with a look of "get the hell outta my way I'm cold" has made sticky-fingered Mongolians keep their hands to themselves.

PRO: Elderly men and women roam the streets in beautiful traditional winter clothing, complete with embroidered boots and fur hats, creating postcard scenes on every corner.
CON: The spell is broken when the elderly couple plug one nostril and blow their noses, sending a lovely fountain of boogers spraying in either direction.

CON: Sounds of men "hocking a loogie" litter my walk to work.
PRO: I get more use out of my i-pod..I knew it was a good investment!
CON: Constant use of i-pod means I can't hear people sneaking up on me, or cars honking at me.
PRO: Can't hear cars honking at me.

PRO: More people are sick which means less people in my classes...whoo hoo!
CON: More people are sick which means more mucous build-up and a greater need to expel said mucous onto my oncoming path.
PRO: My reflexes have become phenomenal!

Well if you're still reading and I haven't thoroughly grossed you out, then congratulations. Hey, I ended on a PRO! Shout out to Mongolians and their bodily fluids, without which I couldn't find the humour in my walk to work!


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Where to start....hmmmm, Well, ITS FRICKIN COLD! And I have to walk to work and live in an apartment with suspect heating. But I'm learning to live with having to dress the same to go outside and to go to bed. We joke that if we ever need ice for our drinks we can always go and chip it off the inside of our windows! I'm slowly getting used to all these crazy Mongolian things...like walking out of my apartment and nearly falling over a big bloody animal carcass sitting on the bench that is usually inhabited by some old men surrounded by their own personal mucus pool. So..maybe the carcass was better..ha who knows! It's also SOOOOOO SMOKY here! The air pollution is really bad. UB is in a valley but it's also surrounded by ger camps that go up the slopes of the foothills. The only way for the gers to be heated is with fire stoves. So of course, the thick smoke settles in the valley and chokes everyone to death. Lovely.

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All in all, life is cold and good. Lee and I caused a traffic accident the other day when we tried to hail a taxi home. A car went to do a U-turn to pick us up but ended crashing into the car traveling behind him - directly in front of us! No one was hurt, thank goodness, so it was kind of funny. A little bit. What else to say..nothing as of yet..but I'll let you know soon.

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So I've had an amazing couple of days. I'll just get right to it. Now there are some of you out there, my family included, that probably don't want to hear this, but I'm gonna go ahead and say it anyway. I'm averaging one attempted mugging a month. It's not as bad as it sounds. When I catch them coming up from behind to steal my bag, they just go away. I give them dirty looks or smack them with the bag they were trying to steal. I don't even feel angry; just sorry that they have to actually do that to survive.

So just after the third foiled attempt, as I was cursing the sneakiness of Mongolian thieves and wondering what the hell I was doing in this country, I got a nice little shock of the brighter side of humanity. As you may know I have to cross a 6-lane highway on my way to work, with no stoplights or crosswalks. It's a scary 30- second dodge of traffic, and if you're not paying attention, you will become road-kill. A grandmother and her small granddaughter were beside me about to cross the street. All of a sudden the woman grabbed my arm. I nearly jumped out of my skin and smacked her, given that I had just been accosted not a minute before. But then I actually looked at her face and saw the complete terror of having to cross the street with the little girl. She wanted me to keep her safe in crossing. Which, of course I was glad to do. The little one managed a shy "goodbye" before we parted ways. So this little anecdote just goes to show how fast things can change and how the world can right itself (at least in my eyes) and maintain that shaky equilibrium. Just when you think life sucks..life well,..happens!

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Things Seen on a Menu in a Chinese Restaurant in Mongolia

-Restorative Mutton
-Delicious Elbow of Pig
-Filamentary Meat Meat with Ketchup
-Thin Noodles
-Thinner Noodles
-Soup With Acid

After we stopped laughing uncontrollably, we decided on none of the above and went with stir-fry chicken.


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Things Heard in the Mongolian Classroom

- I'm a fresh Mongolian.. (said when trying to explain that she was a pure Mongolian
and of no other national background)


- Teacher: "What are you wearing?"
- Student: "I'm wearing a living room"

- "My grandmother's delicious!" (he meant to say his grandmother makes delicious food)

- Me: "What did you do today?"
Student: "I had 2 hours of Fed-Ex today"
(She meant to say Phys Ed. and for the abbreviationally challenged that's Physical Education .. otherwise known as Gym Class. And that..s another abbreviation .. so "a class held within a gymnasium consisting of a plethora of exercise activities resulting in unpleasant and unmanaged teenage body odour along with 'friendly' games of dodgeball that end in uncontrollable nosebleeds for the less able to DUCK DODGE DIVE!" Ahhh highschool! Nerf hurts.)

- Me: "So -I've got- is the same as -I have-"
- Student: "Ahhh, same shit different pile, I understand"

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Deep Thoughts

So I was watching National Geographic cuz that..s the only English channel I have, and they said that it takes 1 second for radio waves to reach the moon.

Why then do I have a 2-second delay every time I call home from Mongolia?

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As we rounded the corner tonight we saw a man buttoning up his pants. This is never a good thing, as you know you..re about to walk where someone has just peed. This is a common occurrence in U.B. as someone is always relieving them self somewhere. But all things have a bright side as Bridget so decidedly pointed it out that seeing a strange guy coming toward you and zipping up is a whole helluva lot better than seeing him come toward you and zipping down!

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However, anything bad that happened at the restaurant was more than made up for by a Rod Stewart sighting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok before you start breakin' into "If You Think I'm Sexy" or "Wake Up Maggie" and reliving the old days, it was really just some dude that REALLY REALLY looked like him. Hair, nose and all! Except he was much taller than Ruddy Roddy. We were going to send him a drink and request a song but by the time we had finally realized this ingenious plan, Elvis had already left the building. So sad.


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We were at the bar after work the other night and some Mongolian guy comes up to our table. We look expectantly at him as he..s obviously wanting to say something profound and interesting. What comes out of this man..s mouth is none other than.. ..I..m sorry, Fuck Off... And then he walked away as we stared at each other in shock and then burst out laughing. Ah, good times, good times. Not long after that on the way home in a taxi, we were busy trying to tell our driver directions to our apartment when a throng of young men in military uniforms rounded the corner marching and singing at the top of their lungs! What an interesting site considering it was almost midnight and they were in the middle of a residential area...hmmmmmmmmm Not so covert military tactics there huh?

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Some interesting things have been happening though. One, is that I've moved apartments. After my roommate decided there were bigger and better things for her (yay Bridget!:)) I had to move into a single-room apartment across the street. It was actually a friend of mine's old place, so I knew it well.

It's quite nice inside. The bathroom has the sink, the shower and the toilet in the same room!!! Also, it being 500 yards east of my old apartment, it gets about 5 more English channels! Wha hoooooo! Oh God that was so exciting….as much as I love NatGeo! Also the shower was built for people with serious growth problems. It also has 6 jets coming out at you from all sides and this killer nozzle on the top that looks like it could double for a cheese grater. Not so bad…except if your head and hands graze the damn thing every time you wash your hair! I never liked being tall this much before! Seriously, I need medical attention as soon as I get out of that death trap…and it's absolutely impossible to get anything but extremely hot devil water. shooting at you….not fun not fun.

My washing machine is a nice little Chinese model with a separate spinner thingy that you have to load all your sopping wet FREEZING clothes into uber carefully so that they are balanced and don't shake the apartment into rubble when you turn it on. Of course, it only starts spinning after you've rearranged everything so many times you can't feel your hands they're so numb from the cold and the incessant shaking.

And the elevator (as I live on the 6th floor and walk up 10 flights of stairs everyday at work) is sometimes necessary with bags and stuff. But the elevator sounds like 9 cats are dying every one of their lives in 10 seconds…and it resembles what the elevator must have looked like after it crashed the 30 stories to the ground in the beginning of Speed…remember? Ahhhh…Mongolia.


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He he he. So Bridget and I went to see the Don Quixote ballet this evening. I am a huge fan of MR Cervantes so I was so excited to see it. At the beginning of the second act the power to the building went out…which it often does in Mongolia. The orchestra kept playing for about 10 measures and the dancers kept dancing until both performances kind of just peeteeEd out. Suddenly a light show featuring the hidden talents of random people and their cellphones started illuminating the concert hall. This didn't seem so unusual except a couple of lights were actually coming from the stage!

We could just picture the dancers reaching down their bodices for their cellphones! We also thought, quite dirtily, that perhaps the cellphones are what make the male dancers look so "endowed" when they're in their tights! Snicker snicker. Anyway after contemplating putting on a shadow-puppet show using the awesome strobe-light power of Mongolian electronics - we thought the audience might appreciate a little duck, dog and butterfly action courtesy of Bridget and I's hands – the power came back on to the pit and the orchestra started back up again…but there was no light on the stage and yet the dancers went on the dark for a couple of minutes until the conductor looked up and realized he was sans lumiere. Finally the power and show resumed without incident....only in Mongolia.

Unfortunately Don Quixote showed up for only a total of 5 cameo appearances in the whole bloody ballet! Come on! We want more Quixote! I implore you – what could be more entertaining than a middle-aged man past his prime riding a donkey and falling in love with a prostitute as he slowly spiralled into a void of madness – and all of this done in tights?! I mean seriously he rumbles with a windmill people!


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There is a growing trend among teenage boys here that involved them shaving their heads and leaving a little Mohawk bit on top and a full-length braidable mullet in the back, which if the mood strikes, they will decide to curl it…WHY? why? why?


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A Canadian and an American sitting in an Indian/Mexican restaurant in Mongolia talking about Italy – situations like this are my life.


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Deciphering Australian slang is best left for a time when no alcohol has been consumed...dirty boots and canoodle doodles and chuks and something about swallowing cards????? Ahhhh!

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Tomorrow there's a 300-meter high heeled race in Suhkbaatar Square! I hope to have pictures!


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And the age old question...When you can see wires, duct tape, rope and what is possibly an intricate matrix of chewing gum protruding from a hole where the engine is supposed to be on one of the city buses...do you get on or hail a taxi?


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Also, as a side note, I found mac and cheese. This excited me to no end....although I made Bridget open the first box because the last time I opened a box...in Korea...out crawled about a bazillion ants and I ran screaming to the bathroom! Of course that did absolutely no good because there were ants in there too, and in my bedroom and just about everywhere else in the apartment...looking back, I think we might have had an ant problem....whaaaaa??????


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Some Advice

You know you live in Mongolia when you overhear a conversation about the redeeming qualities of yak milk, closely followed by the disheartened cry of, "oh, is there only ONE yak festival every year?" And please note this conversation didn't have a trace of sarcasm or humour about it…in fact it didn't even occur to me as being weird while the conversation was happening...oh so sad.


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Oh and I totally heard a farm animal in the apartment above us the other day….niiiiiice.


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Also as an aside, never get drunk and go dancing with your students when you still have to teach them…you seem to lose credibility as an instructor…..whaa??? JK, JK! And, when a 6-foot 3-inch, 300-pound Mongolian wants you to dance…you don't have a choice, especially when this person has just downed 6 LITRES of beer! Also, punching games for Mongolians are fun…especially when you can actually see the guy's jaw dislocating in front of you. Also, never underestimate a Mongolian's ability to hold their alcohol…even if this person is seemingly "kaput."


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Whew...after the bar we thankfully decided to check out my student's art gallery, which turned out to be really cool. Then, my other student's family owns a dance club so we went dancing. And the awkwardness just kept coming. First off, I was THE ONLY foreigner in the whole bar…and it wasn't that big. You might think that, well duh, you live in a foreign country…but it's fairly unusual to be the only one, especially in a club. Now, I had to dance, which is fine…but most of the people who were their looked like they needed permission to stay out past 9pm. To top it all off, I was THE tallest person there. I could see over everyone's heads. Talk about sticking out like a sore thumb. But some things don't change no matter what country you're in. I think I got asked when I was getting married about 4 times, and we talked about how men are only mildly prettier than monkeys. Girl talk is all the same.


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As for excitement here, last weekend a group of us went to the outskirts of the city for CAMEL RACES! How awesome does that sound? It was a really great time. First we spent the morning back at the Lotus Children's Center playing with the children and becoming a human guinea pig for about 5 aspiring 3 year-old hairdressers! I was looking pretty fine let me tell you! Then we walked about 3 kilometers to the races where we spent the afternoon. That particular Sunday was also Soldier's Day so we had the opportunity to see some beautiful traditional costumes and, of course, a buttload of camels!

Some high-school girls persuaded one of the jockeys to let me ride one of the camels. So I had to get up and ride around – BY MYSELF – in front of about 1000 Mongolians. It was really fun and in case you're wondering, I managed NOT to make a fool out of myself…except when the camel wouldn't move and I had to say pleeeeassse….and then everybody laughed.


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Also on a very exciting note….today Bridget and I went grocery shopping and there, in between the potatoes and carrots, was…wait for it..LETTUCE!!!!! OH WOW! It was wilted and old but it was lettuce and oh did we feast! We actually made a salad….complete with home-made croutons! It was so amazing. We even managed to find a non-rotten eggplant and I made a pretty good rice dish. Oh yes, there was even wine. We were both dorks and took a picture of the meal because there hasn't been a time all winter where our homemade meals haven't included potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. I will also upload a picture of this feast soon. So the next time you are in your local grocery store and see all the wonderful fresh-looking produce, be thankful how far away you are from acquiring scurvy…and think of me getting unbelievably excited about wilted lettuce.


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On the way home we had to hurry as we had classes to teach. Unfortunately it had started to snow while we were there. After about 2 weeks of beautiful warm spring weather we suddenly found ourselves in 3 inches of snow in about 2 hours. None of us were prepared and I promptly fell on my ass in front of a group of teenage boys. And then on our way back to the city, our taxi ran out of gas…although he was loathe to admit it and tried to pass off the gradual slowing of the car to the bad road conditions. So we had to get out in the blizzard in the middle of the highway and hail a new taxi. We got to school late.


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SEEN AND HEARD

Instead of Boy oh Boy – Girl oh Girl!

Me: "Does anyone know what adorable means?"
Student: "Yes teacher, it is a door's ringer. You know, when you want to come in a house."
Me: :Uhhhh, that would be a door bell."

Me: "I'm broke."
Student: "Why don't you fix yourself?"

My 16-year old male student: "What is, you know, a breast box?"
Me in uncontrollable fits if laughter: "That would be a bra, and why do you want to know?"

Student: "My girlfriend is disgusting."
(I still don't know what he was actually trying to say)

Nostrils = Nose holes
Toes = Foot Fingers
Hand Necks = Wrists
Foot Necks = Ankles
An apostrophe = An up comma

Teacher: "What do you need?"
Student: "I need to buy a new car. I need to buy a pink car, I need to pimp my ride."

Seen in an essay: "I will not swerve from my purpose."
(For the record, this sentence is awesome for level 2)

In a phone conversation with one of my students:
Me: "Ha Ha! You are so funny Jay!"
Jay: "Are you sucking me?"
(Yikes! How do you deal with this one? He meant to say, "Are you sucking up to me?")

After one of my students broke up with her boyfriend I struggled to tell her that time heals all wounds. I was failing miserably when she looked at me and said, "Yes teacher, I know, time is the best doctor."

Yep, so 10, 50-year-old ladies trying to impress me with their English skills by singing the whole first verse to…. (welcome to hell)….My Heart Will Go On.

Later on that day I left my i-pod and speakers in another classroom with a different set of ladies, and when I came back in they had 50 Cent's In the Club cranked and they were rockin' out.


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Most Mongolians are none too fond of Chinese people given their country's violent history. So, when one of my Level 6 private students told me of a conversation he had with a man from Lao who told him he looked Chinese, I was really apprehensive about how he was going to answer. After a pause he said, "No, the Chinese look like me. The race is Mongoloid – not Chinesoid!"


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My pilots didn't know that you could find out the sex of your babies before they were born.


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Okay, so this weekend is Tsaagan Sar, which is basically another name for Chinese/Lunar New Year. We have a 4-day long weekend and NOTHING is going to be open! Thank God I have another disc of Battlestar Gallactica to fall back on....yes, I know, I am a huge nerd. I'll try to write again soon.


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We're in the thick of it now. So aside from the suspiciously yellow frozen pool(s) outside my apartment door, winter in Mongolia is pretty much the same as winter in Canada. The cold still bites, the streets are still slippery, and the crunch of snow under car tires and feet still sounds the same.

Today was interesting because right as the sun was setting the power in our building decided to go out. So I had to teach my class in the dark. It's happened before, but there was always still enough light outside to do minimal bookwork before the power came back on. Tonight was a different story as it was off well past sunset for about an hour. I couldn't even see the other side of the classroom or my watch! My students had to light up their faces with their cell-phones (the one time I was grateful for those stupid things!) just so I could see whom I was talking to. As it turned out, it was one of our best classes as we were forced to do nothing but talk and not rely on any visual aids. My students did an excellent job. I was so proud of them. You don't realize how much of your understanding when communicating comes from physical gestures and even lip-reading! Anyway, as I was feeling my way down the hallway, trying to not fall down the stairs in the darkness, I couldn't help thinking about how perhaps a seemingly unwanted happening like losing power might have actually been a good thing.