Slump City II

Pushing Buttons

It was 10 pm, it was 10 degrees, and my girlfriend and I were locked out of our apartment building—barred by a closed door and a set of buttons, four of which required pressing in some unknown sequence.

“We’ll systematically try combinations,” I told her. “There are only eight buttons—it’s just a matter of time before this works.”

Bijani suggested we go to the Emergency Services Department next door and ask for help; I started pressing buttons. Ultimately, I couldn’t keep track of the combinations I tried, so we went to a restaurant, hoping some longtime resident would open the door meanwhile. 20 minutes later, we returned. I pressed more buttons.

Eventually, my fingers froze up and we walked over to the Rescue Station. I found the words for ‘lock’ and ‘building’ in my Mongolian phrase book and after some pointing and smiling, two uniformed men very kindly agreed to accompany us.

Rescue… Men

Our new friends walked purposefully to our apartment and got out their flashlights where they looked the door over. They began trying combinations.

Neither one wore a jacket, but they stood there pressing buttons, and when that didn’t work, they walked around to nearby buildings, asking people if they knew how to get into our wing of the complex. A little after 11:00 they went back to the station, returning minutes later with three guys in orange jumpsuits. The six of us (Bijani had gone back to the Police station) shone our flashlights on the door. After a lengthy discussion, the newcomers started trying combinations, systematically.

When this tactic failed, we all started pulling on the door really hard, and finally we hit on an idea with some promise. One of the officers ran to the station, quickly rejoining us a hammer. As the rest pulled, he wedged it into the latch and with a pop, pried it open.

I went upstairs, comforted by the heat and the impression that guys everywhere are all the same. Bijani suggested we buy our rescuers some vodka, but they were on duty. I ran to the grocery store below our apartment and bought them a cake.

B-lighted

This event was the week’s highpoint. Later on we were briefly fired and my visa, which showed no potential for an extension, was set to expire. I felt bad for myself and, for the first time since I tricked her into coming here, I felt bad for Bijani for the following reasons.

A) I’d become a miserable cheapskate

B) Fun is a 14-hour workday, for me

C) She’d be alone here when I got deported

Then again, nobody is perfect. I set about looking for a loophole in the visa regulations. My original plan was to overstay my visa and go into hiding, but Bijani pointed out that the odds in favor of disappearing in a three-million person country are not great. Plan B, a train-trip to China, fell through when I couldn’t get a Chinese visa in time, so I booked a last-minute flight to Korea.

One of the advantages of living in a small country like Mongolia is that airfare barely costs more if you buy it the day of a flight. One of the disadvantages is that all the local currency you bring with you hoping to exchange it at Seoul International airport becomes worthless the minute you leave Mongolia. No one would touch it.

Redeemption

After two days in Korea, I flew back to Chinggis Khan International and received another three months on my tourist visa. Of course, this whole expedition was costly, but then, it turns out, I’m only a cheapskate when it comes to going out to dinner.

In order for us to stay and to pay for my expensive mistakes, we’ve both had to get second jobs as teachers, which hasn’t made things easier. And then we still face our share of problems at the paper and in day to day life.

But then, I tell myself, living in a foreign country, on your own for the first time, isn’t really any different than camping. Nothing goes the way you expect; there’s always work to be done and you constantly have to improvise and make do, but then, that’s the fun. Most days, I believe this, and in the end, I like it. Every so often, however, it requires some convincing .

Slump City

Beauty Beheld

I came to Ulaanbaatar intending to like it. A friendly reception and a job I enjoyed made that easy for the first few months. And then, the city has its own merits. Despite housing something in the neighborhood of one million people, Ulaanbaatar feels negotiable; surrounded by hills, even its worn soviet architecture, interrupted by an occasional skyscraper, can be very appealing.

I grew accustomed to seeing the best in the city, overlooking or accepting what might repel me in urban America. Traffic, garbage, dirt, 20-degree handicap ramps, walkways for the blind disrupted by ledges and poles: I ignored these things daily. Smog? Well, the city kind of smells like camping all the time.

Cold Shoulder

Then it got cold—not so cold, but enough to make life generally less pleasant. Then things started going wrong. Previously I laid out the UB Post, wrote four stories a week, and ensured the paper had sufficient, reasonably correct, English content. After the editor-in-chief returned from the countryside and I relinquished some of these responsibilities, I found that I now struggled to finish two articles-an-issue.

Every sentence I wrote looked like a slug trail. I spent lunch hours staring at blank pages, and making matters worse, I suddenly couldn’t land an interview. An official with Mongolia’s Olympic Committee canceled on me and then disappeared to Korea. A teacher and a professor I’d counted on delayed our meetings. I went to the US Embassy and the Vice Consul fainted at a press conference before I could interview him.

Better Luck Next Crime

These events made for a few slow weeks, but then it looked like I’d have a pretty nice recovery. Snow arrived, as did my girlfriend (and now co-worker), Bijani, from America, and I prepared for things to start going my way. They didn’t. Within a few weeks of her arrival, I impressed Bijani by getting robbed twice.

First I hung my jacket on a restaurant chair and my wallet disappeared. A few days later, I stowed my backpack under a seat at an internet café. I was speaking with my mother and father via webcam when I looked down to see my bag was gone. I ran out the door. My parents sat at their computer for half an hour, staring at the Russian guy who filled my seat.

My bag had a spare key and the address of my apartment. After some reflection, I sprinted home and sat on my floor until getting through to my editor. He called a locksmith. In addition to the usual difficulties of living with someone for the first time, these few days didn’t allow me to give Bijani the best introduction to life in Ulaanbaatar.

Writers, Lock

It got worse. Returning home from a late dinner, we found the main entrance to our apartment locked. The door has a combination: push the right buttons and it opens. I don’t know what they are; it’s never closed. Normally in these situations, one simply presses the most worn buttons. Workmen had painted our door the day before.

(To be continued)

Two Measures of Modern Mongolia

Nowhere Was Never Closer

In many ways, a city is as modern as what you can buy in it. Ulaanbaatar’s streets are dusty and its sidewalks are uneven, but you can find a floor of designer perfume vendors at The State Department Store, the city’s most famous mall.

Mongolia borders no oceans, but a country isn’t really landlocked when a sea of Chinese food, DVDs and Houston Rockets t-shirts sits to the south. Cars with California license plates regularly make their way to Mongolia via China, shipped three-at-a-time in crates, then run by rail to Ulaanbaatar.

What Mongolia does not get through China comes from Russia, which provided virtually all Mongolia’s imports before the USSR’s collapse (those Socialist days are long-gone; citizens tore down UB’s Stalin statue and sold it to a bar). Today, Russia’s two most relevant contributions seem to be petrol and vodka, not necessarily in that order. In terms of recipient appreciation, there’s a clear favorite. Everyone complains about Russian fuel prices; few protest vodka imports.

“It’s the one good thing they gave us,” UB Post editor Sumiya said during my first week in Ulaanbaatar.

Printer Malfunction

Now, of course, Mongolia makes its own vodka. The most popular brand, like many things here, is named Chinggis. I got my first taste at an office party on a Wednesday, printing day. Sumiya had returned from the countryside, but he still had two weeks of vacation left, so Togoo, a veteran from our parent company’s daily, joined our staff to make four. If he, Kirril (Australian reporter), Bulgamaa (Mongolian reporter) and I worked non-stop, we’d get the paper in just after the 6 pm deadline.

That was good news. We sent the paper to press closer to midnight than 6 the last two weeks and now the printers hated us. At 10 pm the week before, at least one guy got fed up.

“He went crazy,” Bulgamaa told me. I thought of some spectacled guy throwing type everywhere. Well, we’d make this week different.

Our staff clicked along until afternoon when a woman entered the office. After saying hello, I recognized her as Sumiya’s mother. She too had returned from the countryside bringing provisions for the office. That meant there was a party upstairs. Bulgamaa told me to bring a cup.

A Shot of Modernity, Tradition

All four of us joined the cast of photographers and sports writers in an advertising office. Sumiya’s mother handed Kirril and I bowls of clear liquid: horse vodka. It’s watery and less alcoholic than vodka, and comes out of a horse.

Drinking in Mongolia is tricky because finishing too fast prompts someone to immediately refill your container—drink too slowly and someone yells at you to chug.

“I’m going to be sick,” Kirril said, “You have to drink this.”

He had a bad experience visiting countryside gers, drinking three shots at every residence like a well-mannered guest. He’s never recovered, but I couldn’t help him. We looked around without lifting our containers until Khastagara—the second coolest person who comes into our office—spotted us. “Faster, faster,” he said.

Hahaha, we laughed, and pretended to drink faster. Sumiya’s mother filled the cups we still held in our free hands with airag: fermented mare’s milk. Earlier, a Mongolian told me not to drink it if I’d had surgery. It’s the sourest thing I’ve put in my mouth on purpose.

“Drink, Drink,” said Khastagar. His name means hawk, and he wears a bright red helmet while riding his moped around. He’s a great photographer. He’s also a jerk.

The coolest guy who comes into the office is Gray Wolf. Nobody knows what he does or where he comes from, but he’s sinewy, ambiguously ethnic, and has a long ponytail. Every other week he storms into the office demanding to see the editor. Sumiya is never there when he stops by.

I finished my horse vodka too quickly and Sumiya’s mother refilled my bowl with regular Chinggis vodka. I had to leave. Stuffing some cake into my mouth, I grabbed Kirril and we headed downstairs, apologizing that we had a lot of newspaper to finish. I felt light headed, but back at my desk, everything seemed more manageable, except the airag—that went down the sink.

This episode proved easy enough. I figured I could handle some drinking on the job. I soon learned it’s during vacation when drinking becomes mandatory and serious and much more difficult.

Make Mine a Dribble

A week after Sumiya returned to work, the Mongol News Group held its two-day staff retreat. Each year, the company charters twin city buses and lugs its employees to a company in Terelj national park, several kilometers east of Ulaanbaatar. Everyone goes: the administrative staff, the doormen and women, the printers, the advertisers and all the various papers’ journalists.

I sat in the back of a bus next to Sumiya, four other adults and two dead sheep the company bought for lunch the following day. We left around 10:30 in the morning. At 11:00 we opened a second bottle of vodka.

“I never drink before noon,” I told Sumiya, but that wasn’t an option. I wanted to join the fun and Sumiya was persistent. I also wanted vodka to stop spilling on my pants from the sippy cup he had me hold while he poured—Mongolia’s roads are not well suited for pouring or drinking and driving.

Intermittently I packed rolls into my mouth, and felt only slightly nauseous by the time we reached Terelj. I had to learn from mistakes made by the last English Editor to go on this trip; Sumiya said he found him passed out behind a ger covered in stomach acid. At the hotel, we sat down as a company for lunch, rested for an hour, then headed to a nearby field for an office Olympiad: tug of war, sumo wrestling, soccer, and a relay.

The Team that Thinks Together Drinks Together

We divided ourselves into three teams. The UB Post joined Five Rings, the sports paper with which we share an office. Onoodor, the large daily and administrative/other personnel formed the second and third teams respectively.

“Who are those huge guys?” I asked Sumiya.

“I think those are the printers,” he said.

Oh. Printing is not an academic profession here, and those four giants formed the administrative team’s core. Any notion that teamwork is more important than strength in tug of war is not true. They killed us. I didn’t know fingers could hurt so much. Sumo wrestling ended badly too, but the white collar journalists got revenge during the beautiful game and a crazily complex relay. It was fun, but people took this stuff seriously; there were cash prizes for the winners. Our team made $10 per person and the administrators earned the same (hapless Onoodor won nothing).

Afterwards, it was time to drink in earnest, so the UB Post staff sat with the sports guys and women and passed around cups of vodka. Unlike parties in the US where people get their own drinks and gather in small groups, everyone sits in a circle drinking from communal cups in Mongolia. The cup stops when there is no more vodka. We had a lot of vodka.

So What’s Old?

One Mongolian guidebook said that the introduction of beer decreased drunkenness in Mongolia because the human stomach can only hold so much liquid and beer has so much less alcohol than hard liquor. Everyone here seemed to drink superhuman quantities and hold it together. Then there was dinner. Then there was a disco.

We spent the night in a ger outside the hotel, and the next morning Sumiya and I got up and went to find some horses. He had said something about drunken yak riding earlier, but today I was willing to settle for less. We climbed a ridge and looked down on a horse herd, some vehicles, and power-lines running toward a ger encampment in the next valley.

It was getting late so we headed back to the busses and then to Ulaanbaatar. Sumiya said this is the best day of the year. It’s a lot of fun, but for relaxation, I prefer work in the city, where if you want alcohol, you usually have to go out and buy it.

Reporting: it’s been a privilege

Go for the Gold, Stay for the Silver

When a journalist friend told me Mongolia’s Olympic athletes would come to Sukhabatar Square for an award ceremony, I expected mania.
“Yavtsgaay,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Saihkhna didn’t sound keen about the idea. She doesn’t seem to care much for athletics, but she agreed to come along. At least I could promise her dinner out of it. I owed her for teaching me some Mongolian, translating a press conference, and convincing a bank employee to take my money and keep gas and electricity coming to my apartment.
It was a frigid Tuesday, and rain fell as Saikhna and I headed toward Ulaanbaatar’s main square. Police had cordoned off a section of the plaza directly in front of Mongolia’s Parliament building—and its imbedded Chinggis Khaan statue—where a recently erected platform stood. Officers lined the no-go zone and a cluster of people surrounded this protected area. The speaker-laden stand, however, remained empty, and the crowd looked generally sparse.

Fair-weather or Not

I thought officials had canceled the event. Mongolians can handle -30 temperatures and biting wind, no problem, but people here don’t cope well with damp cold. Looking around, I was disappointed, until I saw hundreds of people sheltered beneath overhangs of nearby buildings. No drizzle could keep Ulaanbaatar from welcoming home its Olympians. A believer again in Mongol sports culture and heartiness, I searched for a good spot to view the event.
My plan was simple: tuck in behind some spectators, take photos of people applauding, speak with bystanders, and write an article from ‘the common man’s’ slightly restricted point of view. Saikhna had a different idea. She worked for Onodoor (Today), the big daily owned by the UB Post’s parent company. A year my junior, she was her paper’s only female reporter covering Ulaanbaatar’s post-election riot. (She used to work seven days a week, but recently her student-employment contract expired; now, as she enjoys reminding me, she wakes up at noon and spends all day eating or at the gym while she prepares to return to school).

Plough Bella

Instead of hanging back, she grabbed me and we barreled through a column of surprised onlookers until we arrived at a rope barrier and a police officer. “We’re reporters,” she said several times over the shouting group into which we had wedged our way. Wow, I thought. This is journalism.
After more pushing and yelling, the officer directed us to the press entry point. We headed in that direction, and while Saikhna discussed our situation with another journalist—I had no press credentials—I looked around at the swelling assembly. The rain had stopped and people streamed onto the courtyard from nearby buildings. Many ran toward a road on the square’s east side. Over a mass of heads, I saw the object of their attention: a convoy slowly progressing toward the Parliament House.
In a hulking military truck-bed, judoka N. Tuvshinbayar—Mongolia’s first gold medalist—gripped a guardrail and waved to admirers reaching toward him from the street. 100 kg wide and about 5’10,” he looked just a little larger than life. With some encouragement, people cleared the road and his vehicle sped up, driving onto the square in front of me, bypassing the police guard, and stopping near the platform.
Another truck and two busses packed with Olympic athletes and personnel followed. I recognized the faces of boxer E. Badar-Uugan—Mongolia’s second gold medalist—and shooter O. Gundegmaa—who won silver in Beijing—as they cruised past.

Paths of Story

Saikhna and I followed the vehicles to the entry point. She explained our situation to several officers, and eventually one lifted the rope for us. I had luck before using the phrase ‘I’m a journalist’ with police, but man that was easy—this is a country where the press has power.
Of course it was too easy. As we approached the platform, a man wearing an earpiece and black coat stopped us. He wanted to see my press pass. I have no press pass. He looked at Saikhna’s Onodoor ID. “You can go,” he said. He pointed at me: “You stay.” Saikhna argued, but this guy did not look like the flexible type.
We stood there, inside the restricted area, but as far from the ceremony as everyone else. I looked at the crowd. An older agent approached us and Saikhana rapidly gave him our explanation. “He’s with the UB Post,” she said. This silver haired gentleman turned to me and asked in perfect English, “do you have your passport?” I hadn’t brought my passport.
“Do you have any ID?” I didn’t think so. I rifled through my wallet. There was an Energy gym membership card, other peoples’ business cards, a Visa card. I handed him the later.
“This isn’t an ID.”
“I know.” I gave my wallet a last, sheepish look. There was my California driver’s license (I thought I’d taken it out for safe keeping). He checked the picture, handed it back and then waved us through. God bless the Golden State.
Saikhna and I walked up to 20 other reporters, photographers and cameramen parked beside all of Mongolia’s Olympians. On the platform stood Mongolia’s president, its Prime minister, Ulaanbaatar’s mayor, and other dignitaries.

Memo to world: Blue Cravates = Mongol Spot

Most importantly, the nation’s four Olympic medalists stood before the temporary structure, each holding a corner of a Mongolian flag: silver medalists in the rear, gold medalists in the front. I got my first live look at P. Seremba, the light-flyweight boxing runner-up whose heroics and boyish looks charmed Mongolia. At 48 kilograms, he made Tuvshinbayar look like a mail truck, but from where I stood, I could have easily beaned either one, slender of stocky, with my camera.
All the athletes looked sharp in their yellow jackets, white trousers, and blue ties (added to the ensemble, after 12 hours of deliberation, when someone discovered China and Mongolia had identical Olympic outfits), but silver and gold attracted the most attention.

Green for Gold

Everyone wanted a glimpse of Mongolia’s decorated Olympic heroes, and while politicians spoke, the crowd jostled against one another, the ropes, and police officers to get a better look. Sometimes the view is just better away from ‘the common man.’
I couldn’t tell how many people crowded the square, maybe a few thousand, but a combination of weather and formality seemed to tax the crowd’s enthusiasm. Polite applause rather than wild cheers characterized the ceremony and it was hard to imagine that among these people stood the rambunctious individuals who scaled Sukhbataar’s statue immediately following Mongolia’s Olympic victories.
With the final speech concluded, the nation’s four medalists ascended the platform and Tushinbayar presented Mongolia’s President with the flag. Then, he and his three compatriots received oversized checks modeled after Mongolia’s 20,000 togrog bill. Gold medalists received about US$1 million and silver medalists received $500,000.

Frenzyless Media

Some sparklers lit up the stage and a military band played Mongolia’s National Anthem as athletes and politicians filed off the stand and up Parliament’s steps to the statue of Chinggis Khaan. After posing for a group photo, athletes waded through members of the media toward their buses.
I had juggled a video and regular camera for the last 30 minutes. My cold hands stopped functioning and my machines ran out of batteries just as the athletes boarded their vehicles. A concert began on the square, but I had the story I wanted.
I had not experienced another episode of mass communal elation, however, I had seen reporting privilege and I felt, as a journalist, I better understood my duties. Packing it in, I went home to watch the news give me a close look at events most people see from far away.

Worth its Wait in Gold

The Strongest Day

Work’s hard as the day is long, but one advantage to staying busy at the UB Post is 24 hours never seemed to end faster. It can be disorienting. I’ve lived in Ulaanbaatar seven weeks now, but 14 days ago I was telling everyone who asked that I arrived in town months ago. Occasionally this distorted sense of time passing makes me feel like a city insider, but I’ve gotten reminders that there’s plenty to discover about life in UB.

Most notably, near the end of week one at the Beijing Games, I found out how to celebrate in Mongolia—I had one million teachers. On Thursday morning, August 15, N. Tuvshinbayar, a stocky Mongolian wrestler turned judoka, began an improbable run toward Olympic glory. In his first 100kg judo match, he slammed a Japanese competitor who won gold in Athens. Then he beat everybody else.

At 8:00 pm, I walked into my gym to empty equipment as the ten patrons and two staff members had gathered around the facility’s TV. I joined them; everyone looked exceedingly happy. “It’s a Mongolian in the gold medal match,” two male spectators told me several times. On the screen, Tuvshinbayar grappled with a blue-eyed Kazakh giant. The Mongolian had just upended his opponent for a 100-point lead.

Golden 100 kilograms

Judo can be nerve-racking because no matter how big one’s scoring advantage, suffering a devastating throw can cost you a bout—any judoka pinned by an opponent for thirty seconds or tortured into submission by arm lock also automatically loses. The gym atmosphere remained tense, even as Tuvshinbayar expanded his lead; but, with five seconds remaining, people started celebrating.

Objectively, it appeared they never had much to worry about. The Kazakh had a better chance of throwing a shipping crate than Tuvshinbayar, whose strength, low center of gravity and square frame made him an impossible target.

As the final seconds ticked off the clock, the small gathering cheered like Americans whose underdog team just won a playoff series. Some people gave me high-fives. “Mongolia’s first gold medal!” It was pretty exciting to see. I thought I knew how they felt (2007 Golden State Warriors … we believe…nobody?).

Tuvshinbayar tied his black belt, pumped his fists as the referee declared him the winner, then burst into tears while hugging his coach. “Za za za,” said the spectators (“So, so, so” in English) and politely turned back to their exercises, reassembling a few minutes later to watch Mongolia’s anthem play and flag rise as the now composed judoka accept his medal. A few more people told me Mongolia it was Mongolia’s first gold.

Stare to be Stupid

Back in my apartment at 10:00 pm, I noticed the city’s perpetual honking sounded unusually consistent and loud. I looked out my window to see the street packed with cars. Every other vehicle had a Mongolian flag and drivers laid on their horns, whooping and hollering along with their passengers, who leaned out windows and sunroofs to high-five passing motorists and pedestrians or heedlessly sat atop their rides.

Fireworks exploded nearby and a loud hum now accompanied the general racket. Later that evening, I turned on the TV and saw politicians making speeches before a buzzing crowd at Sukhbaatar square. This was a bigger deal than I expected. I should go check it out, I thought, but it’s probably over now. Besides, if I want to see grandstanding politicians, I can watch C-SPAN. I went to bed and spent the next week kicking myself for it.

The Unflaunted Country

At work the next day, I learned 10,000 people more-or-less spontaneously filled the square, celebrating Mongoli a’s first Olympic triumph. Most stayed there until 4:00 am; many didn’t leave until late that morning. Throughout the countryside, people watched the final match in gers with generators or electrical hookups, later throwing their own raucous celebrations.

I’ve never seen a country, or an entire city, unite in celebration. Maybe it happens in Europe and South America when a team wins the World Cup, but I can’t imagine anything like it in the U.S. It could be the country is too big and diverse (by contrast, Mongolia has three million people, mostly Mongols), however, it seems like people in the States simply believe everything worth doing has been done. This year, Michael Phelps won 8 Olympic golds, but he was just breaking a record of seven held by Mark Spitz, another American. I didn’t hear about the nation running wildly into the streets. Eventually, we must think, some other U. S. citizen will swim to nine.

Even on a smaller scale, in a great sports city like New York for example, people don’t celebrate like they did in Ulaanbaatar that night. So the Yankees win the Pennant: that’s happened 65 times; there are plenty of New Yorkers who just don’t care much about baseball, and then there are those thousands of ravenous, bitter Mets fans.

Undivided Attention

In Ulaanbaatar, it looked like each of the one million men, women and children in the city celebrated in some way. The country united like young Mongolians had never seen and the nation hadn’t experienced probably since independence from China. Tuvshinbayar became an immediate national hero. His face appeared on billboards all over town Friday morning. However you saw it, Thursdays night’s celebration was incredible: a testament to Mongolian national identity; to the power of sport; etc.

Seeing it from a window wasn’t great, but it still made a decent story. Weeks before an angry mob protested Parliamentary election results in Sukhbaatar square. During an ensuing fray, rioters burned down the ruling People’s Revolutionary Party Headquarters, calling into question the country’s political stability and national cohesion. After maintaining allegations of election fraud Thursday morning, Thursday night, MPRP and opposition Democratic Party leaders drank vodka and sang the national anthem together in that same square before a mass of overjoyed spectators.

Square Dance

Well, I thought, that’ll never happen again. What a remarkable moment to sideline myself in an apartment. 10 days later I was proven wrong. Mongolia’s boxing prodigy E. Badar-Uugan won his gold medal match and the city erupted for another party. After waiting its entire Olympic History for one gold medal, Mongolia saw no problem holding a second celebration for a second Olympic Championship.

The match ended at 2:30 pm and the horns, high-fives and shouts didn’t end until early the next morning. I had learned my lesson. When something important happens, go to Sukhbaatar square. That evening, a raucous crowd surrounded the courtyard’s statue of Sukhbaatar, Mongolia’s great revolutionary hero.

People climbed on top of one another, danced, and sang as they waved Mongolian flags and embraced. An old, intoxicatingly happy man approached me. “This is a great day for Mongolia,” he said. “I am very happy.”

There weren't 10,000 people, but I saw a Mongolian Olympic celebration, and that took some sting out of my earlier abstention. More importantly, it gave me a first great look at a city I’m starting to know.

Gainful Employment

I do it for the…

How does working feel when it’s not for the money? As a reporter, sometimes, pretty good. A few Fridays ago after printing a respectable issue of the UB Post, I sat with my colleagues drinking a cold Chinngis ale at a beer garden. Journalism can’t get too much better.

We passed around photos, talked about travel and I heard the story of the UB Post employee who went on vacation and never came back. “He’s probably fixing roofs somewhere,” Sumiya (my editor) said.

However, as a journalist when things go badly, you find a calculator and add up how much you make. Assuming I work 50 hour weeks, I make $1.26 an hour. My Dad made $2.25 an hour at his first job, but he told me, back then a quarter bought a gallon of gas. He reminded me that my mother and he make much less than that working at our family café.

Mislead

Plenty can go wrong at an English-language weekly newspaper in Mongolia. I nearly sent my first rewritten UB Post story to the edited file with a newly added introduction: ‘Malaysia’s deputy Prime Minister (whose name again appeared in connection to a Mongolian model murder drama) is on the lam.’ I thought the author buried the lead, but I had actually invented it.

Malaysia’s number two politician probably sat in his office or spoke at a press conference while I wrote—the private detective who accused him of ties to the murder, then quickly recanted, was the missing man in the story. Somehow I confused the two. Thanks to this article’s international implications, some time on google revealed my mistake. For stories pertaining exclusively to Mongolia, however, English sources are rare and facts often difficult to check.

From Worse to Worser

Articles with less globally significant content can present other problems. Three weeks ago I reviewed a Mediterranean restaurant in Ulaanbaatar where the all-female kitchen staff tried their best, the owner took pride in her work, and the food just was not very good. I wrote a luke warm review. The meal cost $40 and now there’s a city block I avoid.

Then occasionally you get a stretch like two weeks ago when nothing seemed to go right. I missed a concert after failing to get an early ride back from a sporting event I covered; the internet went down; the office network went down; the printer didn’t print. I finished two of my four stories and we turned the paper in three hours late with less than half of it copy edited.

I looked at it the next day and realized that the front page’s weather, currency exchanges and teasers for stories inside the edition were identical to the week before. I felt grateful that journalism is a dying profession.

I Amar(k)huu I am

But, with a little distance, I forgot about what went wrong. Did I get to ask interesting people questions last week? Did I watch Mongolia’s fourth national triathlon championships? Did I to listen to and not understand a press conference with Russian Idol winner Amarkhuu? Yes I did. You can read about it in the UB Post.

Maybe things never go smoothly at a weekly and at least that always keeps life moving. If it ran at an even pace, I’ probably complain about boredom.

The Best things in life are 3 (uneditored)

This week Sumiya took his annual holiday, which left three of us (Mongolian journalist Bulgamaa, Aussie English Editor Kirril, and American reporter and layout person me) to put together a newspaper. Once Sumiya tastes freedom he may never come back. Luckily the newspaper owns his apartment.

I’m finishing this post at 10:30 pm after sending the paper to the presses. It wasn’t a disaster. We had mishaps, some heated exchanges, and 13^th hour layout help from the photo department. We sent the issue off 3 and-a-half hours late, but I’ll deliver papers tomorrow at noon just like last week.

Working over 40 hours the last three days, time never passed faster. Admittedly I was beat every night at home, but thinking about it now, I felt really good to accomplish something—maybe all the more when that something landed me a dollar and a quarter per hour.

A flat search and fees

Baby Steppes

I graduated from college and then realized other people had done a lot for me. With toddlers, parents love to applaud ‘first words,’ ‘first steps,’ ‘first teeth.’ If they’re the type that doesn’t like to see their children leave the nest, they continue this behavior through college. But, I thought, that’s when it ends. After you graduate, you’re on your own and you rely on numero uno for support through a second nascent progression, from first job, to first bills, to first plumbing mishap.

I wish this expectation turned out true: that I could say I’ve managed for myself here in Mongolia; that I braved a foreign country and a language barrier alone; that I’ve independently made a comfortable and productive life. Everything is fine, but I haven’t done much on my own.

This fact came into clearest focus when I rented an apartment in Ulaanbaatar.

Thanks… Thanks a light

Apartment hunting consisted of telling my editor, Sumiya, that I wanted to find a place. He took me to buy a classified paper, scanned it for apartments near the office, made the phone calls, and accompanied me to the one we selected.

There, he did the talking.

My Mongolian is not good. I can say hello. I now know the Cyrillic alphabet. I can count to 10. I know how to say thank you too, but I don’t use those words anymore because I botched them the first 15 days I was here. “Bayar laa laa” I said — ‘Thank you candle’ or ‘happiness candle candle’ depending on how people choose to interpret it. Now I just wave.

aPARTment of Darkeness

Heading toward the apartment, Sumiya and I traversed the square in front of the office and then headed north-east, dashed across a wide, shrubby median-divided road and passed a movie theater, a police station, a fire department, and what looks like another police station. Seven minutes later we arrived in the rear of a faded-orange concrete building, run down but appealing in its own way: a flat roof that looks like an extended summit of a Greek column gives it some class.

A perpetually-open metal door guards the entryway, which smells somewhat strongly of urine and leads to a dark stairwell whose walls contain undersized windows and a collection of knee high hooks. On the third floor, we entered another large metal door and I looked inside apartment number 34 or 36 or maybe 32 (Street names and apartment numbers are not always clearly marked in Ulaanbaatar and people generally navigate using landmarks).

A room with a loo

Chipped wooden cabinets, a dangling light bulb, and a small hallway with a smaller bathroom/shower/toilet complex at its end greeted me, along with the little family who owned the place. Before me stood a spectacled gray haired man in a rockets shirt, a spectacled girl about my age, a toddler playing with blocks, and a matron. I looked around. “I can’t live here,” I thought.

I said a Mongolia hello, and then spoke some little English with my age-mate. Peering into all the rooms, Sumiya asked several questions, but I was busy imagining sitting alone, away from a hostel, for $300 plus utilities. That started sounding pretty good.

In the largest room I found a sizeable, gold sheeted bed with matching gold pillow cases, a child’s desk, a dresser, a glass case with a Middle Eastern tea set, and a TV. A half-wall punctured by an arched window and arched doorway separates the kitchen into two rooms. I love this feature. In one half of the room there’s a sink, a pantry and a chair. In the other you there’s a fridge, a Bunsen burner, and a table tucked into a corner near a large window.

I’d get to keep all the furniture. “I’ll take it.” I told Sumiya. For the price and the location he didn’t think it was that bad. “What about a vacuum cleaner?” he asked. Oh yeah. He negotiated a vacuum cleaner and I have an option of getting a phone. “What about the laundry,” he asked. That I do in the shower.

Admittedly the place has a few quirks. There’s a smorgasbord of real and linoleum tile in the kitchen and the bathroom; there’s fake wood on the ceiling and the floor; there’s a giant picture of osh-kosh wearing white children that I need to hide. Water drizzled to the toilet bowl ran continuously until I shut off the valve. I flush the toilet by filling the tank with a tea kettle. It had character and I decided to call it a fixer upper. I agreed to return the next day and sign the papers.

Sumiya and I headed out the door. “Bayar laa laa,” I told family: “Benevolence candle candle”

“Goodbye” said the English speaking daughter.

Bank Run

Sumiya did not come with me when I signed the lease. I had enough money for one month’s rent (about 320,000 togrogs or $300) and I figured I could handle this transaction.

After making the short walk from work to the apartment, I looked blankly at the Mongolian contract before me. Selenge, the girl I spoke with the day before, provided a summary; it sounds like, as long as nothing breaks, I’m fine. I took out my wad of cash, but Selenge explained her family needed the money up front. No problem, I said, I’ll run to an ATM.

It took three days to collect it. $1800 is just over 2,000,000 togrogs and Mongolia’s largest bill is tg 20,000. ATM cards, I discovered, limit the amount you can withdraw from any one machine and the amount you can withdraw on any one day. Some machines only give 10,000 togrog notes and as I ran around the street near my apartment, I stuffed my wallet and pockets and backpack with dozens of bills. I looked like a money scarecrow or a large, walking, money piñata. Someone just had to beat me and gather up the prize and if I had known how much I was carrying, I would have done it. It would have been so easy (I later learned that you can go to a bank teller to make a large transaction).

Supper Man, who can live on the third floor, all by himself

In the end, things worked out robbery free. I installed myself in the apartment, organized my belongings, and bought some dish soap. I make use of the fridge and the burner and manage to feed myself regularly. So far, I’ve kept things simple with Russian spaghetti and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but soon I plan to venture out into the wild kingdom or oils, spices, packaged dumplings, and animal species.

Accomplishing something I should be able to do—albeit in an inefficient and dangerous way—is at least a relief and at most a hidden source of pride. Now it’s time to take a break from baby steps and go to work: that is until I have to figure out how to pay my first bills.

Khan's Country

The Luck Doesn’t Stop Here

So far my expectations for Mongolia and my life here have found little common ground, not that that’s necessarily bad. This trend continued during my first trip to Mongolia’s countryside. Saturday morning I planned to catch a press bus to go see—and then write – about Chinggis Khan’s Calvary, an exhibition of 14th century Mongol warfare. Instead, I spent the day visiting the ruins of a Buddhist monastery, a lama’s (the human kind) home and tourist ger camps.

As I waited at wide and empty Sukhbaatar square for a press bus that never came, I thought, “this is just my luck. I can never do things the easy way. Now I have to hitchhike like a crazy person, asking to be taken to the Monol Hordes.” Moments later my editor called me and after some deliberation, decided that he and his family would accompany me to the countryside. I realized that, no, this is just my luck. Something goes wrong and I get bailed out.

I don’t really have a problem with this pattern. It has served me well to date, but I am embarrassed to admit that I’ve relied so heavily on other people, especially Sumiyabazar my editor, during my first week. I am doing fine here. I have an apartment; I have a registered visa; I know how to find my way to work; I even know how to order soup now, but I couldn’t have done any of it without help.

I was anxious enough about my first story not to reflect on the debts I owed, I was just glad to get a ride however. Sumiya—I called him Sumi until it became obvious that it wasn’t his name—, his adorable two-year old daughter, his wife, and her sister picked me up at the square. We stopped for breakfast on the way. I never made a habit of eating mutton and drinking mutton flavored tea for breakfast, but after Saturday I’m kinda used to it.

Buuz Cruise

We chowed down on Buuz, steamed dumplings with mutton, and I was reminded that men in Mongolia should eat fast. Mongolian Mother’s train their sons to eat rapidly, because if you’re a slow eater in the army, the officer stop giving you food. Mongolian women and children have adopted speed eating as well, and I should’ve fit right in, except that cooks here server their food piping hot. It’s so hot I think you can still here it crying in pain, or maybe that’s just me. I salvaged my pride with a heroic last minute gobble to clear my plate before the toddler, and then we went on our way toward the countryside’s rolling green hills.

All air pollution disappeared half a mile outside Ulaanbaatar, and I got my first sense of what most of Mongolia looks like. A closer view of the hills reveals that I half-dreamed their uniform green beauty on the cloudy day. They have more rocks, more color variation, and more character than I originally thought. They remind me of slightly pointier versions of California hills in winter. Unlike home, however, grab-bag herds of gorat, sheep, cows and horses, and white tents called ger dot appear regularly.

First Ger, It’s All Right

We rented a ger outside a hotel to rest before going to the Calvary show. About eight feet tall at its highest point, a ger looks something like a more compact circus tent. Inside they’re surprisingly well insulated. The proportions of ger furniture won’t accommodate your average fat person, and the table and stool inside approach play house dimensions. The door to every ger ever erected faces South, because as Sumiya said, “that’s where the Chinese come from.” Mongolians do not generally care for the Chinese.

As another pleasant surprise, my editor’s parent’s joined us. His mother is a boisterous longtime employee of the Mongol News Company. She introduced herself to me as the woman who sometimes comes into the UB Post office screaming “SUMIYA, SUMIYA!” His step father is a mild mannered seventy year-old professor of biological sciences at a university. They make a cute odd couple. He carries an umbrella with him and sits in the back of the car while she drives.

The Show Khan Wait

After more Buuz and milk tea (which is part mutton oils, part salt, and part milk, but I don’t think any tea) we headed to the Chinngis Khan spectacle. The price was unfortunately out of our league, however, and the owners were not accepting press passes. We slunk off and parked our group’s two cars about thirty meters away from the exhibit hoping to catch a peak from a distance, but a diligent parking attendant shooed us away.

Deprived of a spectacle of war, we headed to a peace spectacle, an old Buddhist monastery that once housed hundreds of lamas. I got to drive the parents on the familiar right side of the road, but in a Japanese car with the wheel on the right side. I was not great at judging the cars dimensions or avoiding potholes, and, even though Sumiya’s Mom seemed like she got a kick out of my driving, I think both elderly people were relieved when my time at the wheel ended.

Lama Drama: The Russians Came

For a peace spectacle, the monastery had a violent history. Russians burned it down and killed the lamas in the 1960’s, but the area now serves as a national park and wild life preserve with some ruins and some newly constructed Buddhist buildings.

Situated in a partially wooded valley, the area houses evergreens and gabby brooks. Eagles love this place and their presence borders on infestation, albeit a magnificent one. Walking around the place my Mongolian Companions helped decipher the history lessons on display. An old bark tepee provided an example of the housing northern reindeer herders use while giant, intricately detailed Caldrons once held the boiling meals for any number of lamas.

A little museum contained taxidermy from the area (mini-bears, lynx, eagles, wolves, and marmot) and some native art (feather collages, carved roots, and rock drawings). The three men braved the midday heat and trekked to the ruined monastery, adjacent to the one remaining original building from the religious compound. Inside the standing structure, statues of Buddha and other relics sit, waiting patiently for visitors to put money and bow in front of them.

The nearby remains—the Russians did a thorough job—now look like many other destroyed brick buildings which nature reclaimed, though pictures suggest it was once beautiful in a man-made way.

The Old Man and the Tea

Proof that Ruskies didn’t exterminate every lama in the area during their occupation of Mongolia emerged when we visited a cousin of Sumiya’s stepfather, the oldest lama in the area. He looked his 95 years, but as we walked into his ger just a mile away from the nature preserve he greeted us actively. Seated on small stools, we faced the old man in the ger back as he said some prayers. Mongolian’s reserve the northern ends of gers for the most respected objects and things like books, TV, Buddhist relics, family photos, and men. The fronts are for everything else.

As the lama chanted, his wife served up steaming hot mutton soup and of course as much milk tea as we could drink. The lama burned incense, on a tray, handing it to his guests who then passed rotated it around their backs in a circle two to three times. He also passed out snuff, which I scooped onto my fingers but never tried, before returning the bottle with my right hand.

More Than Appealing

Our last excursion took us to a tourist ger camp where we stayed just long enough to eat a final mutton meal, with vegetables some vegetables this time. We walked briefly around the camp, looking at the numbered, nicely decorated gers, and the often impressive wheeled platforms they stood on. I thought that these were just for show, but Sumiya said Mongols would hitch these massive structures to ox and then sneak up to China.

I arrived home just after sunset. My pores smelled of mutton and I had nothing to write an article about, but I’d have to say that the day was my favorite in Mongolia.

Quiet on the inner Asian Front

Delivery (oh) boy

Another nice thing about working for a weekly is that occasionally you deliver newspapers. The job harkens back to old people’s childhoods, when those once young and industrious Americans woke up early, grabbed their bikes and threw papers at neighbors’ houses. But, with my editor’s model sister out of town for the week, I did my harkening in the passenger seat of her air-conditioned Lexus SUV.

With UB Post editor Sumiyabazar at the wheel, we took to the wild roads of Ulaanbaatar (the publicity lady normally does deliveries, but she called in sick). We dropped off eleven papers at an English book/wine store, 10 at a crazy German lady’s café, 3 for international clients at the post office, and five at an Indian restaurant in a five star hotel (one for which the UB Post’s parent company owns a controlling interest). At 400-500 Togrogs per paper—a little less than 40-50 cents—we covered the cost of gas for the afternoon.

Burn noticed

Each stop was interesting in its own way—complete with haggling and the calling of mangers— but the luxury hotel stop proved the most memorable because next door to this grand building, inside and outside of which everything seems to be functioning normally, sits the burned shell of Mongolia’s People’s Revolutionary Party Headquarters.

A week and a half before I arrived in Ulaanbaatar, a riot erupted in the city following nationwide parliamentary election results that showed the ruling MPRP retained a majority. Some members of the opposition Democratic Party declared the election tainted and took to the streets. Somehow, what started as a non-violent demonstration turned bad.

Protest, Mr.

Rioters attacked the People’s Party headquarters and then looted the neighboring Modern Art Museum. Neither of the hefty Russian-styled buildings have any windows left intact. Their concrete facades are singed from Molotov Cocktails, and the front of the party headquarters is splattered with blood-red paint in several places at various (sometimes impressive) heights.

During the riot, outnumbered police officers called the Army for backup. At least five people died, many were injured, including a photographer for the UB Post, who members of the staff visited in the hospital today. I saw B.Byamba-Ochir or Mr. Protest (a nick-name earned from previous protest coverage) smile and laugh with his guests, but he admitted that it made him tired. It took three days of surgery to put a plate in his head and he still wears a white bandage around his head; he doesn’t remember anything, but it looks like a rock hit him.

Nothing out of the ordinary

By the time I arrived in the city, however, there were almost no signs of the recent violence (only the damaged buildings and the continuing media coverage). All told, 700 people were arrested during the riot, but if turmoil still simmers on the streets of Mongolia, I have yet to notice (protests have occurred in Mongolia before: a famous one ended peacefully in the 90’s when a tragic hero of Mongolian democracy, Sanjaasuren Zorig, stood on a friends shoulders and reasoned with an angry mob as it tried to enter the parliament building).

Various election monitors have issued reports regarding the legitimacy of the election (some say fair and some say foul) and the Democratic Party has threatened to boycott the creation of a new parliament. As these stories unfold, there may be more overt signs of political and civil action, but until then it looks like business goes on as usual in Ulaanbaatar.

Work starts again in earnest on Monday and it looks like I will have my first assignment writing about the Calvary of Chinggis Khan.

Weekly Vocation

A Weekly Journalist’s Life and Crimes

There are lots of things I’ve come to enjoy about working at a small weekly newspaper. For one, I can’t get enough of the crazies who work these jobs, and I like that staff is so limited that I can get my fingerprints on almost every story. Most of all, I like the desperation.

It’s always a mad rush to meet a deadline, but more than that, these news organizations, and the people who run them, assume the traits of men on the lamb. The UB post steals its English-language horoscopes from some hippie web page (it doesn’t have sufficient personnel to write its own). At the weekly where I worked before, journalists pretended to be regular guests at a hotel to get free breakfast.

Weekly papers always seem one slip away from not making it to print; the writers one slip away from bouncing a check. Despite this pressure, all non-student journalists I’ve met exhaustively fact check mundane details and prefer an accurate, objective story to sleep. I aspire to be like these poor malnourished people.

Day one on the Job

Toward that end, I set out an hour before work started in search of the Mongol News Company building and the start of my career at the UB Post. Heading north past Suhkbatar square (Ulaanbaatar’s expansive mall dedicated to government and independence from the Chinese), I quickly found that stones and pavement no longer cover the sidewalks, while the number of pot holes, uncovered manholes, and regular holes increases dramatically. In this city you very literally have to watch your step, and I almost took a few body length plunges into garbage and rocks when I forgot this maxim.

After a lot of walking, turning around and then more walking, I arrived at the Mongol News Building. This gray structure was unfortunately not the Mongol News Company building, and to keep this short, with the help of some very nice Mongolian citizens, I found a stranger who drove me to the right place for 1,000 tugreg’s (a little less than $1).

I walked into the office 5 minutes late, just after 10 a.m. (If you’re an ex-pat you call this Mongolian time, or as some British lady told me, “a damn civilized time to start your day”). The Mongol News Company building sits at the edge of a promenade with a beer garden in an oversized ger (tent) and a baragian market under blue cloth tarps. On the tall side for UB, it looks like a mid-sized gray hotel and houses a television station, an ad agency, at least 4 newspapers, and a photo shop all owned by the company.

Colleagues: Room in the office

The office reserved for the UB Post is a good sized room, but we have to share it with the sports paper whose employees watch music videos and snore throughout the day. Our half of the office has five desks which means, following my employment, the paper has a 1.25 to 1 desk to person ratio.

At the desk with the layout computer sits Sumiyabazar, the 29 year-old editor who loves t-shirts, pops his collar, and resembles a Mongolian Dilbert. I like him already. I sit at a desk facing the clock and behind me is Kirril, the friendly Australian who followed his “crazy American girlfriend” to Mongolia and works part time as a journalist and part time as English teacher. Across from him is Bulgamaa who speaks English diffidently, likes to laugh, write about economics, and gave me a cookie today.

And that’s it. That’s the whole staff. On my first day I worked for 9 hours editing stories and making a database for contacts so that the UB Post can do away with its cache of business cards. Editing can be brutal, especially when some of the non-native speaker English needs extra polishing. I wrestled with this sentence for a while before giving up.

All in a day’s work

“Since 2003, every Mongolian family was allowed to own land, but no more than 0.7 hectares would be granted free. After the amendment, every citizen would be granted land from the day they were born, but only 0.7 hectares would be free”

If you have suggestions, please let me know. In spite of some frustrations, I really enjoyed my first day. One of the best things about working for a paper is that you feel like an expert on a place after a short time, in this case apparently, one day. Sitting at my desk, I didn’t realize that I was hungry or tired until I looked at the clock and saw that it was a few minutes before 8:00 p.m. Those who know me well will think this is a small miracle. If I have to work for a living, writing and reading may not be such a bad way to do it.

UB Arrival

Pre-trip

Six months ago, I decided that after graduating from college, I would seek my fortune, or more realistically a subsistence livelihood, as a journalist in Mongolia. Securing a job* at the UB Post,a small English-language weekly in Ulaan Baatar, I put all of my warm clothes in two suitcases and a backpack and prepared to travel to a city, country and continent that outside of books I knew nothing about. This all seemed like such a good, exciting idea (I even convinced my lovely girlfriend— and future co-writer of this blog—Bijani to abandon her job at a publishing house and join me in September) until two days before my departure when I panicked, imagining life in a post-soviet industrial city where I didn’t speak the language, knew practically no one, and where, by all accounts, it would get monstrously cold. I was not ready to go, but I already bought the ticket and I had told enough people about the trip that I couldn’t chicken out. Besides, I’ve managed to wing things before, so why should this venture prove any different?

On the way to town

Riding toward Ulaan Baatar in the backseat of a private Hyundai turned taxi cab, a ring of green hills caught my very red, very jet-lagged eyes before everything else. Cedar look-a-likes garnish these hills, standing dark and thick in defiance of my expectation that Mongolia had no living trees (Coal and Manure are famously burned for warmth in Mongolia and I mistakenly assumed that if you are going to burn these things, it must be because you have not trees). The sky was gray, the clouds were big and gray, and the bright hill grass blanketing the narrow river crevices and modest crests stood out beautifully.
These hills and their color also provided a contrast to the second thing to catch my eye, the outskirts of the city itself: a series of brick, cinder and wood buildings, shadowed by power plants whose large stacks puff out coal smoke. The roadside scenes looked like a union of Green Bay and Chinatown, with many structures that could’ve fit into a PBS special documenting the depression-era Midwest (some of the larger ones even have the distinctive shape of an old red barn), except for the ubiquitous, green, somehow Asian looking, corrugated tin or tile roofs.

The good, the not so bad, the not so ugly

Looming almost as distinctively as the smoke stacks over Ulaan Baatar are dozens of yellow cranes accompanying dozens of construction sites throughout the city. Foreign investment and increasing local wealth, largely from mining, has launched a construction boom in Mongolia’s capital, with several sky scratchers (they’re tall, but not that tall, and yes I would like you to help me coin this phrase if haven’t stolen it) nearly completed in the city center. Smack in the middle of downtown, there’s a large square sprawling in front of the elaborate parliamentary building which combines elements of a parliamentary building, the Lincoln memorial, and a green house. Most impressive about this building is a massive front and center statue of Chinggis Khan, who sits upon a throne, looking calm and just, yet impossibly wide and imposing.
I had heard that Ulaan Baatar was a city influenced by Asia, Russia and more recently Europe and America, and so far this appears to be true. In terms of architecture, the Russian’s did worse in East Berlin as far as ugly Soviet-bloc housing goes (perhaps these buildings improve with age and minimal maintenance), and there are many interesting and beautiful buildings in the city, which in spite of dust and some unruly city green spaces, has its own cosmopolitan feel.
So far, I like the city, but Ulaan Baatar has presented some difficulties and unpleasantness. In the early morning hours at Chinngis Khan international airport, I had a little trouble finding a cab driver who didn’t smell like a Smirnoff distillery. Anything pertaining to cars has proved harrowing as Mongolian drivers love to pass, do it constantly, and have sworn an oath to prevent pedestrians from confidently using their right of way. Deciphering the Cyrillic alphabet has also proved a challenge, as has deciding which way is north, in part due to fatigue, in part due to poor signage, and admittedly to congenitally poor directional sense.
Enough people speak enough English that I’ve had no trouble procuring food and water despite my complete ineptitude in Mongolian, and the few local people I’ve spoken with at length have all been remarkably friendly. As far as winging it goes, so far, so good. I begin work tomorrow when the real fun begins.

*This job may not be secure