First Few Days

So I promised my brother and myself that I would start a journal about my stay here in Mongolia for two main reasons: to get back into the habit of writing regularly, which I’ve been meaning to do for a while now, and to keep my family and friends informed about my life here seeing as this will probably be the only form of communication besides an odd phone call here and there. So, laat ons begin.

I left my family and friends at 7am on Thursday, Sept. 10, 2009 for the first flight to LAX with Delta. I did not get charged for my luggage, I found out, because it was an international flight, and the lady was kind enough to transfer my luggage all the way to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It was uneventful and took only 5hrs. I got to LA and it seemed the people were pretty much the same as Miami, about as warm, and if you replaced the Cubans with Mexicans and people of Asian descent. I finally found the China Eastern Airlines booth after searching for a while and was happy that I had a 4-hr layover. When I got there, they scanned my passport and then the guy took a little too long and then called over his manager and I had a feeling something was wrong. She asked if I had a visa for China, I said no, seeing as I’m going to Mongolia and would only be stopping in Beijing for a 7-hr layover before heading off to Ulaanbaatar. She told me that the flight actually goes from LA to Shanghai and then Beijing. I didn’t see the problem, seeing as I knew that a traveler had a 24-hr grace period in China if transferring to another country, and I would be there about 10 hrs maybe. Then she replied that that only counts for one entry into the country, and I would be entering Shanghai, then leaving Shanghai, then entering and leaving Beijing, and that would technically count as two entry-exits. And I thought I was screwed. She said she would call China and try to sort it out, and so for the next 20 minutes I prayed and was brainstorming about how to solve this, or how to get back to Miami and borrow some more money, get a Chinese visa and hopefully be able to go to Mongolia within the month. She came back and asked me if I would like the window or aisle seat. And I cried on the inside, thanked God, then cried a lot more.

China Eastern Airlines was a cheap ticket. So I didn’t expect much, and really didn’t get much from the experience. It was uncomfortable, the food was not great, at all, and I really didn’t sleep much for the 16-hr flight and was very mad that it was sunlight for the entire flight. The flight was uneventful except for two things that made me laugh. First of all, they had the oldest or weirdest movies playing. Each movie was from a different region of the world: one from Korea, I think, one from China, a Bollywood movie, Russian, and then an American movie, the one with Sly Stallone and Wesley Snipes about the cryogenic cop, I forgot the name. Secondly, the last hour they have on the plane what they call “Sunshine Calisthenics” or something. A video comes on with a flight attendant, and she asks us to join her in the exercises, and that’s what they are. The actual flight attendants have their back towards you and you’re supposed to mimic their movements. It is hilarious to see a plane-full of Asian folk, from 15 to about 65 all doing these weird stretching exercises. I laughed on the inside and outside while doing them. The best part would be the finale, where they have a happy-time exercise that consisted of a half-macarena dance with some clapping added on the end. No one in the plane was on beat and I thought it would be rude for me if I were so I just didn’t try it. At Shanghai we filled in the entry cards and the health-quarantine questionnaire. They gathered all the people who were continuing on to Beijing and we went through the customs, where they held me up, once again, for the whole visa thing. Luckily this only took about 15 mins. but my group seemed mad at me. Hour and a half later we were on to Beijing, and when we landed the group from LA to Beijing went off and we skipped the customs and went to baggage claim. We all had no idea what was going on because they never told us. However, I did meet this nice guy named Jason who was from China but left 12 years earlier to live in LA, and he comes to China once in a while because his parents still lived there. He translated for me as fewer and fewer airport agents spoke English and helped me to sort of figure out where to go to connect to Air China.

I was happy again that I had such a long lay-over because I had no idea where I was. We had landed at Beijing at 12am local time, which was 12pm Miami time, and apparently all the shops and everything else closes at the airport at 11pm and doesn’t open til 5.30am. I wandered around for a half an hour before I figured out that China Eastern had taken us to domestic arrivals, Terminal 2, and I had to get to Terminal 3. While wandering around though, this guy asked me in broken English where I wanted to go, I said “Air China,” and he said that I would need to go to T3 and there’s a free shuttle outside that would take me there. Him and his buddies seemed to have just got off the job but he said goodbye to them and took me to the shuttle. I thought that he would leave me there, but he got on and waited with me and tried to communicate with me. His breath smelled heavily of alcohol, but I realized I couldn’t complain because the last time I brushed my teeth was around 4.30am on Thursday, and it was technically already Saturday here. Then the shuttle started up and I must say, it is a very long distance from T2 to T3. It probably took us about 20 mins to get there. But during the trip I realized how generally nice people are. Here I have a person I’ve never met before in my life leave his friends for a short amount of time just to help out a stranger that he didn’t need to. It was sort of amazing to me, and I really began to like Asia, based upon the niceness of people in China. I realized that there are so many people in the world and we sometimes get pessimistic about the kindness of strangers because we meet so many crappy people in our neighborhood or country. But it’s best to have an upbeat attitude towards life. I didn’t get mad at anything during the trip so far and I felt that was a good characteristic to have. The mood you exude is the reception you get: you seem mad and pissy and short and negative, you’ll meet crappy people. And luckily, it seemed for me, if you’re upbeat and positive, you’ll meet positive and friendly people, which was my case.

And so we finally got to T3 and I was unsure of how to deal with my guide, whether to give him money which may have been an insult or just thank him or what, and I decided that I would just follow his cue. Then my pro-bono friend turned to me and said: “You…you pay me for…for services, yes?” I didn’t know what I had expected. All that mood-exude crap I was thinking on the shuttle ride and here it came down to the great mover of the world: money. I didn’t know what to say, and I was disappointed, yes, but on the other hand I understood and respected the hustle. So I said, okay, but that I didn’t have any Chinese, all I had was American. He said okay, and I asked, “Well, how much?” “20.” I said okay, $20 is fine, handed it to him and he led me into the terminal and showed where to wait until 5.30 am that morning, which was on the fourth floor, counter F. As we proceeded to find the place he tried to talk to me but my patience was gone and I suddenly realized how tired I was. We passed some of the workers there at the airport, who I know saw me handing the money to him, and I think they both laughed at and felt sorry for me. So what I felt then wasn’t unity amongst mankind but shame that I momentarily forgot how things are. People are poor and are always searching for money. My attitude toward him changed. He wasn’t doing this to be nice to me, so I didn’t feel I owed him anything in trying to be nice to him. I paid him for services rendering, and so I took on an American attitude and felt he should just do his job and shut up.

He left, I went downstairs where I saw some relatively comfy seats and I knocked out until it was time to leave. I went to Air China, got my ticket to Mongolia, no hassle, got on the flight and saw there were quite a few white folk and even a black person, or he might have been dark-skinned Indian. Either way, I slept on the way to Mongolia. We all descended the plane, and said hello to Ulaanbaatar (U.B.). The airport was small and old, but since I had no expectations of the place I just accepted it. We went through customs very quickly then down to baggage claim. Obviously, my luggage was not there. Now, though I was a bit disappointed by my guide in Beijing, I was still very happy with everything and very thankful to have finally made it to U.B. When I discovered my luggage wasn’t there, I felt it was the natural order of things and just shrugged my shoulders as I was extremely hungry and extremely tired. The last time I ate was ¾ into the Pacific Ocean and the last time I slept for more than 3 hours was sometime on Wednesday, Sept. 9. It was now Saturday, Sept. 12, 10am local time and I just wanted to sleep and eat. So while I was pointing out my luggage type to the baggage people, the person from Santis English Language Institute (where I would be working for the next year) came over and told me everything would be okay. When I saw him I smiled again and said I knew.

Finally done with that, they said that what happened was that the luggage is arriving after me, as it boarded a later flight to China. I met up with the other person who was on the Air China flight, a guy named David. Apparently he would not be teaching at my branch, but at the main center in downtown U.B. There was another woman from Santis who spoke much better English and they explained that we had to go and get our work visas upstairs. We went and in this small, post-Soviet looking room that was the immigration office, with a woman that looked half-Russian and Chinese, Asian hair and Russian demeanor, we filled in the small form. David and I laughed at how cold the woman looked and generally everything else that has happened and will happen. Now, I brought limited funds with me to Mongolia, seeing as: we would get paid soon, it was a very inexpensive place from what I heard, and because I was broke. The Assistant Director at Santis told us that the work visa would only cost around $50 and so I budgeted that with the probable cost of food, etc. It ended up costing $134, and so I quietly cussed out Wen or Xiang or Chen or whatever his name was for hustling me out of $20 and had to borrow $4 from David cause I was a bit short. I was in Mongolia, my funds were absolutely depleted and I had no luggage, I wanted to take a shower, brush my teeth, and mostly eat and sleep. The situation was overwhelmingly movie-like so I laughed about it with David and realized, at the base of it, that I knew everything was going to work out. Obviously, it would just take a while. We went downstairs with our new work permits and I explained to, I think her name was Muru, that I had no money at all. She told me, and I believed her, that we would work something out.

Now, the reason why the first contact made me laugh. You know that fat, funny Chinese guy you see in the movies? Yeah, that was him, except that I didn’t know his name and obviously he was Mongolian. But all we did was walk from the airport to the parking lot, and he got into the car on the right cause the steering wheel’s on that side, and he was already heaving and out of breath. He got in and apparently the steering wheel was too close to the driver’s seat and it stuck right into his gut. I don’t know how he got into the seat first of all and he couldn’t figure out how to move his seat back. The woman, Muru, had to unbuckle and reach over his stomach to find the latch but her hand was squeezed up against the door when he tried to move his butt up to give her more space. So she started screaming in Mongolian, he was heaving and I think apologizing, and David and I tried our best not to laugh. So he then had to open the door, she I think cursed at him some more and pointed with her bruised hand where the latch was. He found it, slid back a bit, and looked back at us and smiled. He had these big fat cheeks and was even more out of breath from the whole ordeal. It was hilarious and I was kind of mad that I wouldn’t be able to laugh about it.

We finally got on the road. Mongolia, as the author of the Wikitravel entry said, is “vast and empty.” U.B. is poor. It looks like a post-Soviet city, which it is. They use the Cyrillic alphabet, which is the Russian alphabet, and the language does sound like a Russian-Chinese hybrid, the two colonizers of the place. The traditional Mongolian script is not widely used. As we were driving on the road to the airport, we could see the mountains surrounding the city, but also the smog from the factories. The billboards that said “Welcome to Mongolia” were extremely old and rusted. There were a lot of sheep along the road at certain times, and it was a weird contrast between the sort of countryside lifestyle with the shepherd and the flock and the surrounding nature, and the old, dirty, industrialized structures. The buildings all looked Soviet, and you can imagine yourself sometimes that you’re in a Russian city. U.B. is a small city, with a small downtown. The drivers are absolutely horrible though. They haven’t had cars for too long and it is very obvious. They pay no attention to the road signs and the drivers are about as bad as the pedestrians who just seem to wander onto the road, stop in the middle to have a conversation, and ignore the nuisance of the cars. As for the drivers, where there are two lanes, they squeeze in four cars, swerving intermittently between them. They take random lefts, many U-turns, all overuse their horns, but surprisingly it all seems to work for them. It doesn’t seem like there are too many accidents here.

So we took David to get his traveler’s checks exchanged and open a bank account. It took long. Then, the Asst. Director didn’t tell him to bring passport photos along for the work permit, so he had to take those. That took long as well. We then went to check out the main Santis location, and met some of the teachers. Apparently this is how it’s broken up: we, the native English speakers, have the easy jobs. No lesson plans to submit, only to have conversations with the students and improve listening and talking skills. The Mongolian English teachers have the difficult jobs of grammar, etc. It was sad to think that we were probably getting paid more than them. But they were all female and though they told me their names, first of all, I’m horrible at remembering names, secondly, I’m even worse at remembering Mongolian names. We then went to lunch at this traditional Mongolian eatery. The slogan inside the restaurant, as I believe the slogan of the country, is: “Meat for men, grass for animals!” Mongolians only eat meat. Traditionally, they would eat meat during the fall, winter, and spring, and dairy during the summer. They explained that this was before refrigerators and thus they had no way of keeping the meat, so they just didn’t eat it during the summer. Only dairy—cheese, milk, butter, yogurt, etc. No vegetables. None at all. Nowadays, they eat meat throughout the year, but still very little vegetable. I ordered the “Recommended” plate, which consisted of Mongolian staples: buuz, which is a boiled dumpling filled with either mutton or vegetables, and kuushur, which is the slightly longer, deep fried version of buuz. There is so much meat in this place, and not having eaten for a while, I quickly got full but finished my plate. My meal was 7,900 Tugriks (Mongolian currency), which, at 1,420 Tugriks per dollar, it was about $4.50 maybe. But Muru said that one kuushur, which is actually the size of one’s hand, and not the smaller version which I had on my plate, was 300 Tugriks, and people usually have 3-4 of those for a good meal. So a full meal would, for me, who would eat about four or five of those, be less than $1.

Anyways, after lunch we split and I went to the branch where I would be working at. It was much smaller and I met the British guy Sean that works there—not sure of his position yet—and James, the new British teacher who flew in the previous night. He walked me through the classrooms and explained some basics, but I was extremely tired so I didn’t retain much. The Assistant Director at that branch, Aruina, would take me to the apartment, and she took out a loan for me for 100,000 Tugriks. She asked me if this would be enough and I said I had no idea. It sounds like a lot but I wasn’t sure; then I calculated how much one meal would be and I thought it probably was. 100,000 Tugriks is about $70. We walked to the food market, and obviously I was too tired to think, because all I bought was two bottles of water, toothpaste, and soap. The 1.5-liter Apu water from the “Bogd Khan mountain formed 800 thousand years ago” was only 560 each; the Colgate cost 2,600; the single bar of soap was only 50. 50 Tugriks is about 3 cents. I felt good about that. We then went to my temporary apartment, seeing as it belonged to a teacher named Steve who taught before and would be returning next month. They would try to find me an apartment closer to where James was staying, which is closer to the branch. I went to the bed and slept. I woke up at 12am, which was lunchtime in Miami, and realized I had made a terrible mistake. All I bought at the store was water and toiletries, and so I found some rice, no spices, and boiled that. There was tea so I drank that, plus, of course, the water. And then I turned on the TV.

On Mongolian TV, from what I‘ve figured, the channels are broken down thus: mostly Mongolian channels, 2 of them with music, 2 are movies, and around 3 are news, local channels, etc. There is a German-interest channel in alternating German and English, a Korean channel in English or English subtitles, and a Russian MTV station. It was interesting watching “Sex and Tequila” with the ugly bi-sexual Tila Tequila in poorly-dubbed Russian. There are also more Russian stations and it took me a while to figure out which was Russian and which was Mongolian, because they use the same alphabet. I finally settled on that if they’re white and sound white, they’re Russian. This seems to work. The ONLY fully English and fully American channel, sadly, is FOX NEWS! I was shocked to see Glen Beck on TV last night, and, seeing as this is the only American channel, am really sorry for what Mongolians think of Americans. I then watched some Russian movie and finally went to bed at 5am in an attempt to alter my body’s clock. I woke up, brushed my teeth, and showered, and Sean from my branch is supposed to ring me up and we’ll get some supplies today that I desperately need. So I will leave my journal entry here for now. My stay in Mongolia will be fun and interesting, but so far it hasn’t been exactly smooth and easy, but I’m excited at the opportunity either way. Therefore, this was a long entry, but a lot happened. The others hopefully will be short.