The end of another week.

October 6, 2008

Well, I still didn’t get my computer fixed this weekend, so I haven’t been able to write in a few days. It’s Monday morning now, and I’m at work, with nothing to do. So let’s see if I can catch you up on a few things.

Friday night found me celebrating Brother Baasan’s Birthday. He’s an alright fella, and everyone seems to like him, so I drank a few beers in his honour as I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith, with Spanish subtitles. Do you guys know about the Rosetta Stone language company? Well, I have the Latin-American Spanish version and had studied it some before I came to Mongolia. I actually had had the entire set for a couple of years, but a good bit of lackadaisicalness never allowed me to learn Spanish as good as I could/should have. Anyway, during the movie, the local English teacher came over. Her English is pretty good, but she still doesn’t understand all the slang. So that, along with me reading the Spanish subtitles and getting a kick out of them changing the words to make it rated PG, had her confused about what was being said.

Saturday, I woke up early to go into the city. Instead of riding the meeker (microbus), I rode in a friend’s car. He only charged me 500tg more than the meeker, for a total of 3000tg, and the extra room was worth it. When I got into the city, he took me across town, for the same freaking price. I guess, since we were in the city, he decided to be a taxi-driver all on a sudden, and started charging accordingly: 500-600tg/km. Sheesh!

My first stop was at the hotel restaurant that is right next to the Peace Corps office. I had been craving tsuivan, so I ordered some and told them I would be back to pick it up. When I went back, they gave me four slices of bread, an egg, a small serving of chocolate spread, and a packet of tea. “Um, this is not what I ordered,” I told them. She looked at me like I was the one in the wrong, and then told me they didn’t have what I had ordered. Well, why in the heck didn’t you tell me that in the first place?

After an uneventful stop at the PC office, I set off across town in search of tsuivan. I don’t know how many places I went into that told me they didn’t have it. How in the heck can a Mongolian restaurant in the capital not have a traditional Mongolian dish? I was getting frustrated, but my craving for tsuivan drove me on. I eventually found a place that was charging 3,700tg per plate. That’s about 1,200tg more than it should have been, but I was really ready for it by that point, so I just paid the price. I won’t say it was worth the expense, but it was good and fulfilled my craving. For a few days, anyway.

From there, I went to Cafe Amsterdam for my usual chocolate mocha and free wi-fi. Only this time, I found that my wi-fi catcher isn’t working. Grr! This computer thing is really starting to get on my nerves. I left there and went to the State Department Store and bought mushrooms and tomato sauce. Man, that stuff ain’t cheap. It will be worth it, though, when I make some spaghetti.

When I had left in the morning, I told my boss that I was going into the city and asked her to find out what time the last meeker would be coming back home. She told me, “Three o’ clock, I think. I’ll find out for sure and let you know.” At 2, I asked her what she had found out. Her response: “Oh, the last meeker just left. I’ll see if I can find you a ride.” Luckily, there was a lady from my town who was still in the city that drove to where I was and picked me up. The best part was that she didn’t charge me anything for the ride. I was really grateful for that. I don’t know how many times we stopped before we made it home, but I remember waking up at least three different stores. I kept dosing off during the ride. I went into one of them and found what I thought was a neat looking computer game. At 6,000tg, I thought it fairly cheap, so I got it. That’s where more troubles began.

When I got home, I was in a bad mood and wanted nothing more than to zone out in front of a neat looking video game. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I can get addicted to those things if I’m not careful, wasting away an entire day. Anyway, I began installing the game on my computer and made it about this far [_____]. It asked for a key-code. “Key-code?” I asked. How in the heck am I supposed to have a key-code when I bought an illegal version of a game from some vendor in a shop who probably bought an illegal version himself and made several copies of it to sell to unsuspecting people like myself? Dang it, man! By that time, it was close enough to my bed time, so I hit the sack, deciding to go to my office the next day and see what I could find on the internet.

Sunday, I got out of the bed just in time to still be able to say that it was morning when I did. I brought my laptop, all the installation discs, and the game that I’d bought, just to see if I could figure anything out while I was here. As expected, there was no way for me to just unplug the internet cord from the back of my work computer, put it into my laptop, and make it work. I don’t know why, but it just didn’t work. I did find a key-code on the internet for the game, though. I used it and finally got the game installed. Does that make things work, though? Nope, sure doesn’t. There are two discs to the game, and no matter which one I put in, it kept saying, “Wrong disc,” even though, at that point, I shouldn’t have had to deal with a disc at all. After further internet research, I found that the game (even a legitimate version) is a crappy one; and everyone I saw, on every forum that I came across, had the same problems I did. So, if you come across a game called Empire Earth III, I advise you to not even pick it up – no matter how cool it looks. I read that there were some patches I could download to make things work, so after some more research, I found what I thought I needed and put them on a thumb drive for when I went home.

Somewhere during all of this, Tsegii came to my office. She had some free time, and as always, was looking for some free tutoring. She doesn’t know the least thing about computers, so our lesson consisted of setting up an email account for her and sending an email to someone she met in S. Korea, whom she isn’t sure will even remember her. Because of all the frustration I was experiencing, it was nice to have some company.

When she left, I got on the internet with Dell to see what I could do about getting all the components of my computer to work like they did when I first pulled it out of the box. I had always heard that Dell had such a great support team, so I was eager to get my problems fixed easily. Yeah, well, don’t believe everything you hear. On Dell’s website, there is a way to chat with a live person, 24/7. I was connected to, and talked to, five different people and was disconnected five times, and nothing got fixed. At this point, I have nothing but scathing remarks about Dell’s support team. Maybe if I were able to call them and spend a million tugrogs trying to figure out how to get things fixed, they might be better at their job. As it was, I’m left with the impression that their online chatting service sucks. All I found out is that there was a disc that was supposed to have been included with my computer for one of the programs that came installed. They told me they will mail a copy of the disc, but only to a U.S. address. Argh!

Finally, I got tired of messing with them, so I went home to try to install the patches I’d downloaded for my game. Click-click-click…things seemed to be going alright. I clicked on the game: nothing. Ahh, soog! About that time, a bunch of malware and spyware warnings started popping up, along with automatic icons being added to my desktop for Gay Fetish Porn. Nothing against Gay Fetish Porn, if that’s your thing; but it ain’t my thing. And, of course, since I had recently formatted my computer, I didn’t have any kind of virus software. I tried to ignore the pop-ups, resolving to work on it today, but it wouldn’t even leave me alone so I could watch a movie. So, again, I formatted my computer last night.

Grrr! That has put me in such a bad mood. During training, we were told that there would be highs and lows of our Peace Corps experience. Sometimes they can be set off by the most random things, and in either direction, they can be extreme. I think, being a little lonely, on top of dealing with this stupid computer crap has me at a low. What a stupid thing to get down about. For me, that makes it even worse. Please pray for me. I know that I will be alright before long, but for the moment, I can hardly think straight.

And I get/have to teach an English lesson today. Blah!

It’s easy to see how some Peace Corps Volunteers across the world could become alcoholics. If you’ve ever gotten drunk, you know that alcohol can make you forget all your problems, for a while. “For a while” is the key phrase. Luckily, I know that alcohol is a depressant that only makes things worse, during and after its effects have taken place. Still, the allure to go buy a two litre bottle of Borgio and see how fast I can drink it is there. Good thing I’m poor. Good thing I live in a fishbowl, where everyone knows everything I do. The last thing I need is for all the Mongolians to be talking about “the American who likes to get drunk all the time.”

So, again, I ask that you please pray for me. As I said, I know I’ll be okay before long, but still.

Oh, and it was very dreary when I walked to work this morning. I think I’ve written before how it’s unusual for it to be that way, with there being an average of something like 280 sunny days per year. I was expecting rain or something. Luckily, or not, it’s too cold for that. I did see a few snow flurries, though. A very few. From what I understand, it doesn’t snow very much here, since there isn’t much precipitation; but when it does snow, it stays forever, since it is so cold.

October 7, 2008

Last night, before bed, I got a text from someone here in town telling me that it was going to snow today. I thought nothing about it, figuring it would be much like yesterday’s flurries. On my way to work, it was just as dreary as yesterday, but there was no snow to be seen. Less than an hour later, when I was on my way to do my thing with the social workers, it had begun to snow in earnest. The flakes are really small, like flurries, but there are millions, billions, even trillions of them on the wind. I think I’ve mentioned before how windy it is here. Looking out my office window, the snow seems to be moving at right angles to the earth. (Ha, all on a sudden, I’m reminded of that scene in Forrest Gump, when he’s in Vietnam, talking about the rain coming from all directions.) It’s a good thing I got the coat I did recently. There is a hood on it, and when I pull it up, in comes down almost to my nose. Any other time that might annoy the heck out of me, but it’s been alright today. It’s keeping me warm, and that’s all I’m worried about.

Today, before I could get out of the building, I was whisked away with no idea where I was going or what I was going to be doing when I got there. I was taken to the police station, put into a room with a chalkboard, and was told to teach them English. Drat! I spent right at an hour going through the alphabet and a few words for each letter. Exactly like the English lesson I taught last week, they had the same problems with letter combinations. “Th” came out as “t;” “W” and “V” were often interchanged; “F” was often, but not always, pronounced like a “P;” and several others that I mentioned before. The worst part of the whole thing was the rag I was given to wipe the chalkboard. A long time ago I was taught the difference between a rag and a towel when I worked at Red Lobster. “Rag” is often used by lower-class, uneducated people, I was told. Don’t fuss at me: that’s what I was told. When I was raised, I learned to call it a rag and thought nothing of it. It seemed a bit hoity-toity to make a big deal out of the distinction between a rag and a towel. Also, a rag can be a towel that is really worn out. Today, I had a towel that was really worn out, which totally made it a rag. That wasn’t the bad part. The bad part was that whatever water it had been dipped in made it smell like it had been used to clean toilets. I didn’t realise where the smell was coming from until about half-way through my lesson. By that point, it was all over my hands, too. Yuck! I was taken straight from there and went to a place that, I think, has something to do with water facilitation. I didn’t really understand what was said to me when I asked where we were going. I taught the same lesson, and had the same problems – minus the smelly rag.

After my lunch, I went to the social worker’s office. They all seemed engrossed in whatever they were doing. When I asked what they wanted me to do now, they just looked at each other, had a verbal exchange, shrugged their shoulders, and then went back to whatever it was they were doing. I stayed there for a few minutes, and then went in search of the lady to cut my hair. I’ve already been there once in the last week, and neither time has she been there. Like before, I got my boss to call her and set up an appointment. I still haven’t learned that language, but I think I can get her to not cut it the way I don’t want to.

Speaking of, it’s about that time. I will step gingerly through the muddy snow to get there. Mongolians place a lot of importance on having clean footwear. I’m very surprised about this, since barely anything is paved; and what is paved has as much mud on it as if it wasn’t. It’s a chore to miss all the mud puddles and keep your shoes clean. Maybe I’ll be adept at it by the time I leave here. We’ll see.

October 8, 2008

I finally got around to finishing my laundry last night. I have just felt so lazy lately that I’ve let it pile up. Do you remember back in the summer, when I was living with my host family, how I wrote about one of my favourite shirts getting stained and messed up? My host-mom had put a new, gold towel in the wash, and it must have been right next to the one shirt. The baby blue polo shirt now has gold splotches on it. Well, I washed that same towel with my laundry this time, thinking that it would be okay. Nope. Once again, one of my favourite shirts has gold splotches on it, along with some of my white undershirts. Drat! The undershirts, I’m not too worried about; but my favourite shirt…. Grr! I really really liked that shirt. I guess I have learned my lesson about putting things like that in the wash with my nice clothes. I’ve always been one to learn a lesson the hard way. Once I learn it, though, you’d better believe that I’ll get it right from then on.

Today, I went to the other part of town. It took a while to find a ride over there. For over an hour, I taught half of the alphabet and accompanying words to the social workers. It was 45 minutes past my break time when we were interrupted.

I went with one of the young guys to have lunch at his place. While we were eating, he told me, “I like fat.” We had been talking about whether we were married or had girlfriends, so I knew he wasn’t talking about the piece of fat that was in his food. I figured he was talking about women. I looked at him funny and thought of a few friends back home who like their women “big-boned,” also (at least one fella I’ll call Alpha Krappa, and another I’ll call Gambling Gary like their women on the hefty side). After asking a few questions, just to make sure I understood him, I figured out that meant that he wants to be fat. Now, this was a new concept to me. “Why do you want to be fat,” I asked. He said, “Mongolian women like fat men.” Hmm, curious. I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but I smiled big, smacked him on the back, and said, “Well, you’d better finish your plate and get another, if that’s what you want.” Later, I asked a Mongolian woman (the English teacher) if it is true that Mongolian woman like fat men. She cocked her head to the side and looked at me like I was asking something obvious and answered in the affirmative. When I asked why, she said, “When I hug him, I like to have my arms all the way full. If I hug a skinny man, maybe his bones will poke me.” That gave me a good laugh, which in turn made her laugh. She basically explained it like this. If you’re fat, it means you have plenty of money to eat good; if you’re skinny, it probably means you are poor. Hm, sounds familiar to the old way of thinking in the West, don’t you think? Back in the days when royalty and leaders were fat, and the peasants were skinny as sticks, with their ribs poking out. I explained to her how it is the opposite in America, today, and all the sociological reasons that I could think of. She seemed to understand, saying that in the city, where they are more influenced by Western ideals, women might not like their men as fat as women in the countryside do. So, if you feel that you are fat, and you can’t find a spouse in America, come to the Mongolian countryside. Someone will love you.

In the afternoon, I hung out with the other part of town’s English teacher in her class. One of the other teachers is running for some political office in the upcoming elections, so she has taken over an extra subject. I think her class consisted of kids between the ages of 10 and 11 years old. When I walked in, they all immediately stood up, and said to me, in unison, “Hello teacher!” I gave them a big smile and the Mongolian greeting in return. With them standing when I walked into the room reminded me of my fraternity days, when we were in a meeting and some ladies walked in. We would all stand up until they took their place in the room, as a sign of respect for them. It was weird for me to be the recipient of that kind of treatment: I felt like a proper lady. Haha. Now I’m just being an idiot.

Around 4:30, we started looking for a ride to bring me back to my part of town. It was almost 6 when we finally found someone coming in this direction. The car I got into was plastered with Communist party logos and propaganda. Good thing the windows were tinted and I didn’t have my picture taken.

The snow from yesterday is still on the surrounding hills and far-away mountains. I expect it to be there for several days. As I have written, once it snows, though you can get sunburnt like on any summer day, the temperature is low enough for it to not melt.

Tonight, Tsegii’s English lessons continued, though she was so tired she could hardly stay awake. More than once, I would be explaining a word to her, looking it up in the dictionary, and look up to see her eyelids drooping. I was surprised she stayed as late as she did, knowing how tired she was. I think she works with kids 6 months to 1 ½ years old, and they wear her out every day. And, just like in all aspects of Mongolian life, Mongolian time comes into play with her job, too: parents often don’t come to get their kids til almost 7 or later, some nights. Whew! What a day she must go through. I couldn’t handle it.

October 9, 2008

I have finally figured out why it is that I will see random kids running around during the day, when they should be at school. They are broken up into two groups and go to school in shifts. The young ones go in the morning; the older ones go in the afternoon. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I can never figure it out. Either way, there are two girls whose parents work in my building that are always coming into my office to visit me. I think they are about 7 years old, and they are as cute as can be. One of them has her two front teeth missing, with a faithful snot trail hanging from one nostril. I don’t know what it is about kids in Mongolia, but they just let snot run out of their noses without the least bit of care. They don’t even try to sniff it back into their nose. And I’ve only seen parents wipe their kid’s noses less than a handful of times. It’s pretty gross looking. I can only imagine what it feels like. Could you imagine going around all day with a thick line of snot hanging from your nose to your upper lip? Bleh! The other little girl has some of the biggest ears in town, and some rotting front teeth, but she is as cute as the other. They always bust into my office, blabbering about something, 90km/h, all the while giggling at me and each other. Hm, 90km doesn’t translate: that’s only 56mph. Better make that 145km/h (90mph). They talk about all kinds of stuff and ask me all kinds of questions, and I hardly understand a third of what they are talking about. They sure seem to like me, though. Sometimes I have to shoo them away, cause I feel like a babysitter, but they always come back later, their feelings not having been hurt at all.

This morning, I went over to the school to get a white-board for my English lesson. I taught English to about 7 or 8 people that work in my building. Though I hate teaching English, there are some aspects that are fun/funny. Everyone I teach is adults, so when they make mistakes in pronunciation, I correct them. Why is that funny, you ask? Well, it’s cause sometimes, instead of saying “six,” they say “sex,” other something else similarly risible. Whenever they say something wrong, or odd, I’ll get them to say it in Mongolian, so I’ll be sure to know what they mean, then I’ll write the word they mean, alongside the word they said. Everyone got a big laugh at the fella who said “sex” when he meant “six.”

Before we finished, the boss came in two or three times to hurry us along. Something was going on, and he was anxious to get started. When we finished, everyone corralled me with the herd of people going to the Culture Centre. When I asked what was going on, I didn’t really understand what they said, other than that I should go with them. When I got there, though, I saw my boss and figured it out. It was a big political rally for some of the local candidates. The main attraction, though, was famous singers, poets, and musicians, and two of the Olympic boxing medallists. The hall was filled with people and the excitement was electric. Everyone cheered handily at the least mention of any of the stars or their accomplishments. Sometimes, you could tell when everyone was just overwhelmed with elation by their clap. “How?” you ask? Well, Mongolian clapping is one of those things that still has a strong Russian influence. When they clap as a group, everyone claps in unison. It’s almost creepy. It’s like the epitome of brain-washing. There seems to be no warmth in it at all. But when they were excited, everyone’s clapping was incongruent with their neighbour’s, and you could hear their joy in their hands. Just looking around, most everyone had big smiles on their faces. I shook hands with the boxer that won silver. I was only one of a million people he’s shaken hands with since he has returned home from Beijing, though, and I could see in his eyes and body language that his mind was anywhere but where his body was. I bet that he will be glad when things finally settle down and he can go home and just be lazy on the couch for a couple of weeks. I guess that’s part of the price you pay for being good at what you do, though. I also spoke with the political wanna-be for a few minutes. Her English was excellent. I think she worked as a CEO somewhere in America for a few years, so that explains her good English. She seemed to be a very nice lady.

At the end, there was still some time left for the work day, but no one had any thoughts for working. Most were still standing around, outside the building, hoping to get in a word or two with the redoubtable artists and athletes. I saw more than one drunken guy pulled away, by security or his wife, because he demanded more attention than he was getting. None of them meant any harm. They were just drunk. If you’ve been around drunken people before, you know how they are about wanting your attention when they feel like they have something to say. They didn’t seem to taken it poorly when they were reprimanded. They walked away with smiles just as big as they had worn when they were vying for attention.

Amongst the commotion, I slipped out and left work a few minutes early. When I got home, I pulled out a jar that I had recycled (recycling anything and everything is the name of the game in Mongolia) and began cutting up cloves of garlic and peppers, so as to make my own garlic butter. I just minced it all together, put it in the jar, and then filled the jar with melted butter. It took a couple of hours to cut it all up by hand. After a few days of sitting, that will be extra good on whatever I decide to use it for.

Tsegii was supposed to come over for more tutoring. Our planned lesson was to be in the kitchen. She was going to teach me how to properly make tsuivan, and I was going to teach her how to say it in English. Because the Olympic guys and artists went to her work, (for the opposing political party’s rally, no less) she got there much later than she’d planned. She stayed only long enough to say that she was tired and would not stay. Well, shoot. By this point, I was hungry. Luckily, the English teacher was there. Somehow, I talked her into cooking me some tsuivan. It’s not exactly easy to whip up a meal in Mongolia, so I’m not sure how I got her to do it quite so easily. Either way, I was thankful. The tsuivan was good, and there was enough left for my lunch tomorrow.

October 10, 2008

It’s Friday! It’s the end of the day on Friday! It’s the end of the week! I’m glad it’s finally here. This weekend, I plan to catch up on my rest. Though I’ve been getting a full eight hours of sleep each night, I still wake up feeling enervated. I plan to go to bed early tonight and wake up late tomorrow, and not doing anything all weekend.

I hope you all are doing good. I’m doing much better than I was earlier in the week. Though I haven’t even posted this, I can feel the effects of your prayers for me. Thank you for that. I miss you all. Some more than others, and I think you know who you are. I miss you and pray for you every day.

Take care.