Only two days late this time.

December 26, 2008

Surprisingly, the play that was supposed to begin at 1 o’ clock started before I got there at 1:30. I could hardly believe it. The little bit that I missed wasn’t a big deal, though. The play was pretty much the same as the past three, but with different people. I didn’t have any qualms about leaving a little early.

This evening, at 7 o’ clock, I went to the Culture Centre for our work party. I’m coming to find that whatever time I’m told something is to start means that that’s when everyone will get there to start setting up. There were about seven tables, for about 10 people each. After about an hour and a half, when everything was set up, there was enough food, snacks, and alcohol for about 20 people at each table. There were all kinds of vodka, beer, champagne, boats, fruits, and candies. I ate before I went, and I ate more when I got there. It’s a good thing, too. It wasn’t long before someone opened the first bottle of vodka and started pouring shots. Man, I really dislike vodka.

At the same time everyone was drinking and socialising, there were random groups of kids that would come in and do some entertaining. During all that, I think I had an epiphany about why all the kids were dressed as random animals. I think the animals are the ones of the lunar calendar. While looking and them, pondering the meaning, I remembered walking through the park in front of my apartment, where there are statues of all the lunar calendar animals. Since Mongolians put only a little bit less emphasis on the lunar years as the Chinese do, it only makes sense.

Santa was there, too, and he called out everyone’s names and we went up to receive a bag of goodies: juice, cookies, cakes, and candies. Later, our names were called and we all took turns drawing numbers for gifts. I drew my favourite number – thirteen – and got a yellow veggie peeler – my favourite colour. People played games, too. For one of them, guys dressed as women and blind-folded women had to guess who it was. It was pretty funny.

December 29, 2008

As predicted, there was hardly anything going on at the office today. The most exciting part of my day was trying to find out who had my bag of goodies, my veggie peeler, and my scarf from the other night. Somehow, I forgot them there. I was really worried about my scarf. I bought that thing in Amsterdam and I really like it. Luckily, after the usual confusion of conveying my message, we figured out where they were. All except the veggie peeler, that is. I think it might be gone. Oh well. I never used the one that I had in the U.S., so it’s really not a big deal that I don’t have one here. I’m so forgetful sometimes. My grandmother used to tell me that I’d lose my head/butt if it wasn’t attached.

This afternoon, I went to pay the bill for my internet at the bank. It was due yesterday, and since yesterday was Sunday, there was no way for me to pay it. When I woke up this morning, I found that my internet is cut off. Drat! When I got to the bank, I took my bill with me and asked the ladies to help me. They looked at me like I was stupid, started saying something as fast as they seemingly could, and then handed the bill back to me. From what I was told at Skytel, I should be able to just transfer money from my account to theirs. So, I went into the bank manager’s office and asked her to help me. She speaks just a little bit of English, but apparently it wasn’t enough to understand what I wanted to do. She had one of the tellers try to call Skytel as I waited outside, then she called me back into her office. She had my boss on the phone, who asked me what I was trying to do. After I told my boss, she asked me to go to my office and wait on her so she could help me. I waited much longer than I felt like waiting before I left.

There was a dress show at the school, for teachers and students, and I was invited. When I got there, the lights were low and a disco ball was shooting rays of light around the room. Everyone but me was dressed in their finest. After just a few minutes, everyone started dancing. That raised my suspicions immediately and I got nervous. Moogie came over and I asked her what was going on and she told me it was a mask show. Finally, I figured out that it is basically their equivalent of a prom. They would vote for a king and queen later. Sure enough, as I’d feared, one of the high school girls came over, grabbed my hand, and tried to pull me onto the dance floor. She was persistent, but I protested, saying that I couldn’t. I was not about to dance with high school girls. I knew it was only a matter of time before someone else, student or teacher, would try to get me to dance. I acted like I had a phone call and dipped out. I’m one of the dumbest people you can imagine when I’m with a group of friends, but I can’t tell you how shy I am when it comes to dancing in public. Yikes!!

Um, never mind about the loss of my veggie peeler: I found it in the sport jacket that I wore the other night. Like I said: I’m forgetful.

This evening, there was a New Year’s celebration for the entire district. It was at the new Sport Centre that isn’t even finished yet. I went there during the day, just to check it out. The floor is all kinds of warped. I’m sure whoever plays basketball, or whatever other sport, will have fun on that. I think the only reason that the celebration was there, instead of the Culture Centre, is because the area was bigger. That’s nothing to say for the seating, though. They had lined the walls with seats, but that was nowhere near enough for the amount of people that were there; or that were to show up. The people who didn’t have seats just stood up and blocked everyone else’s view. I was close to leaving when the people on the row of seats that I was on had the ingenious idea of moving them further from the wall. That made things bearable for a while. It wasn’t long before I realised that the same play I was watching was the exact same one that I’ve already seen four times now. Goodness, you’d think they would change it around just a little bit. Surely they know that some of us have been to absolutely every play that has been put on in the last couple of weeks. It finally did change a little bit. When some of the dancers started asking people from the crowd to dance with them, encouraging everyone to hit the floor, I decided to make my way toward the door. I came home and watched Juno. Have you seen that movie? It’s pretty good. Check it out if you get the chance.

December 30, 2008

I remembered a story about the last time I was in UB. A few of us were at Big Burger, getting our fast food fix, when a couple of homeless kids came in. I don’t know if they’d been to other tables first, but they ended up at our table, begging for food. From what I understand, some places let them in to beg. They started asking us for food and we told them to go away. When one of the employees saw them bugging us, she came over and fussed at them and tried to push them away. They were persistent and wouldn’t leave. One of the kids actually grabbed one of my friend’s fries and slowly starting picking them up. The kid was slow and just watched us. My friend just watched, so I reached across and grabbed them back, delivering a few harsh words all the while. Eventually, the manager came out and sent them scurrying. We talked about that for a while, surprised that they were as brave as they were.

Just cause there was nothing else to do, I came to UB a day early. I figured I would enjoy it here more than I would at home, being bored in front of the TV. I went to my friend Shuree’s place and helped her translate some documents so a guy could get a UK visa. She didn’t need any help translating, but she needed a little help with editing. It took much longer than I thought it would. When we finished, the guy took us to an awesome dinner at a Korean place. There were three of us eating, so he ordered three different meals. On top of that, the first thing they do is bring out all kinds of small dishes of different things like fried bean curds, slaw, anchovies, a couple different kimchis, eggs, and a few other things. I enjoyed the heck out of all of it and stuffed myself. Yum!

When I left there, I went with Shuree’s brother to his parent’s home. Her brother is a monk at one of the monasteries in UB. He’s really cool, and apparently, he’s a little bit important. He hangs out with the Dalai Lama whenever he visits Mongolia and America, and a few other countries. I got to check out his monastery. It just so happens to be the one that I saw right before I went to my site. It’s really neat. His parent’s place is outside UB. His parents were gone to China, and no one was home, so it was very cold at first. We didn’t do much that night but get a fire started. It eventually warmed up.

December 31, 2008

Surprisingly, I got to sleep late. Not long after I woke up, I had a new meal called “jones.” It’s a soup with some noodles you add to it. I told them how that is someone’s name in the U.S. and they got a kick out of it. After we ate, I was hot, so I went outside. What a scene! It’s been snowing lately, so absolutely everything was covered with it. There were mountains around the entire village. It was beautiful. There was a short pagoda-like thing on top of a nearby hill, so I walked up there. From there, I could see the entire valley. It was really cool up there. I took some pictures, so you’ll see them eventually.

When we got back to UB, my first stop was to pick up my dry-cleaning. My suit pants had a stain on them since before I went to my site, and I wanted to wear it tonight. I was worried about the place not being good, but they took care of everything. Since New Year’s is a big family thing in Mongolia, we called around to find out which places would be open for how long. Eventually, we decided to just walk and find one. We found one that was fairly close called Moon Pub. It was really cool and ritzy, belying the run-down look of the outside. They said they would stay open til midnight. Right before then, though, we decided to go to Sukhbaatar square. We weren’t sure what would be going on, but we thought there might be something. We made it there just in time for 12 o’ clock. There were all kinds of people there, drinking champagne and shooting fireworks. You know how, in the U.S., the fire department will oversee the fireworks, just to make sure everything is safe? Well, it’s nothing like that here. Random people had fireworks and were shooting them off. It was really cool, but just a little bit dangerous. A couple of times, some of the fireworks shot through the crowd. Luckily, I didn’t see anyone get hit. It was nuts. We also saw some random PCV friends. They had talked us into going to a club with them, but before we got there, everyone started splitting up, so we just went back and went to bed. It was a fun night.

January 1, 2009

After waking up late, I went to visit Mendee. When I got there, I asked where his wife and son were. He told me they went to her parent’s house. When I asked why he didn’t go with them, he told me it was because I was there. Doh! I felt bad, but he assured me it was okay. His wife had made some kind of chocolate cake that I had some of. It was the best cake that I’ve had since being in Mongolia. Maybe part of it was because it didn’t have any of the usual, crappy icing on it. When I left there, I went to the State Dept. store and bought a few things. One of them was chili. It’s a regular size can that was a bit expensive, but it’s totally worth it. I love chili and I can’t seem to get mine to come out like I like it. Maybe I’m not putting some crucial ingredient in there. Hopefully, I’ll figure it out.

On Thursdays, Shuree has a radio show. Partly, it’s to promote her training centre. There is always a native English speaking guest, and for a whole hour, they speak English. Today, I was that guest. I talked about my name, hip-hop music, what a New Year’s resolution is, and why I decided to come to Mongolia. I was nervous at first, but I soon got used to it. I’d always wanted to be on the radio. Kind of cool that I got to experience that in Mongolia for the first time. We had called earlier in the day to tell them my name. I found out later that they’d ran out of forms they have to fill out for the front desk any time they have visitors. It’s a state-ran radio, so they don’t allow foreigners for some reason. At first, the guard was giving the lady a hard time, so she had to get special permission from the higher-ups, then get them to call the front desk. Kind of funny. When we left there, we had pizza for dinner. Did I tell you that they have Tabasco sauce there? They do, and I always put lots on my pizza. That kind of makes up for the lack of tomato sauce. I don’t know why they don’t put tomato sauce on their pizza.

January 2, 2009

This morning, I went to the Peace Corps office. I think I’ve told you before that all of us Volunteers have a box in the lounge. In my box was two letters from the kids at the school that I correspond with in the U.S. I’d forgotten to tell the teacher to send them directly to my address, not the one that she was given by One World Classrooms. It was good to finally get them. The first one was sent over two months ago. The first thing I did was to sit down and read all of the individual letters that the kids had written. They were cute, to say the least. I’ll write back to them soon.

While I was there, I met James. He’s a PCV that lives next to the Gobi desert. He was in town because he’d just gotten back from the U.S. He’d brought back two cases of Guiness, and he gave me one. I drank it later that evening and it was awesome. When we left there, we went for lunch at Cola & Kabob, where I had a doner kabob. It was pretty much the exact same thing as the shish kabob, but it was in a pita instead of a tortilla, and a lot messier. They are both delicious and messy. I told James about my grandfather always telling me that if it wasn’t messy, it wasn’t good. He got a kick out of that. When we left, we went to the State Dept. store and I bought a new clock. I used to have this sweet little clock that was perfect for traveling, but I somehow lost it the last time I was in UB. I think someone at the guesthouse I was staying in took it. Of course, when I asked the owners and cleaners, they knew nothing about it. The one I got isn’t quite as cool as the old one, but it will do what I need it for.

When we left there, we went to a place called Level and had a few drinks. That’s the first time I’ve had some whiskey since I had what I’d gotten for my host-dad’s birthday, back in the summer. It was good. The billiards was free, so we entertained ourselves with that. There was only one table, so we had to write our name on a board and play the winner of the current game. At first, there were only two other Mongolian guys there. They were pretty nice guys. They told us that this was their ninth day of drinking. It wasn’t long before one of the guys couldn’t do much more than sit on the couch and try to keep his head up. When we started talking about what we would do when we left, James suggested going to get a massage. Only this morning I had contemplated getting a massage, so I eagerly said agreed that that’s what we should do. He took me to a place a few blocks away that I’d not have noticed had he not led me there. When we went in, they gave us a menu and he ordered for us. We paid 30,000tg for an hour and a half of awesomeness. Man, I think I will have to visit that place again.

January 3, 2009

This afternoon, I went to a bookstore and found a calendar and a couple of kid’s books. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to improve my Mongolian, so I figure that kid’s books will be a good way to do that. One of them is like a comic book, so that’s kind of cool. After that, I went to Cola & Kabob, slammed a shish kabob, and then went to find a meeker. I waited for almost an hour for it to leave. Not long after getting home, Moogie brought “boats” that she had made, frozen, and eaten for days. She said she was tired of them. I told her I don’t think I will ever be tired of them. As I ate half of what she brought, we watched Flags of our Fathers. Have you ever seen that movie? It’s pretty good.

January 4, 2009

You know, it’s weird to be writing 2009. It always takes me forever to get used to writing the new year. I haven’t done much at all today. I’ve watched TV, washed dishes, watched Pan’s Labyrinth, and washed clothes. Tomorrow will start about a month of a semi-regular work schedule, so I’m trying to make sure that I don’t have anything else to worry about. At least for a little while. I say it’s for only a month because the big lunar holiday Tsagaan Sar (White Month) will be in February. People pretty much take off the whole month. I hope that you are good and had a good New Year’s. Write whenever you like. I always look forward to hearing from you.