Gandan Khiid

Gandan Khiid is the biggest temple in Ulaanbaatar and (it's my understanding) one of the most important in all of Mongolia (though I could be wrong, so if I am, I'll stand corrected).  Some of my very first posts in this blog are from Gandan Khiid, but here is another picture I took of Gandan Khiid (and the surrounding ger district) from the top of the hill at that very magical ovoo.

Mini Monks

This photo was blurry because I was super far away from these bos and I didn't want to get too close to them to take the picture because I didn't want it to be obvious that I was taking a picture of them and, ahem, I did not want to ask permission to take their photo and have them tell me "no", so I just zoomed like crazy, and since my current camera only has something like 3.5X zoom, and then I have to go into digital zoom, this picture super sucks (even if the subjects are interesting).  I'll tell you (or Santa) all about my dream camera later on.

The State Department Store

Lonely Planet describes the State Department Store as worth a visit just to see how much stuff they have all crammed into one building, so I visited expecting an eclectic mix of mayhem, but I was disappointed.  It just had your standard department store shoes, clothes, et cetera, but not even the best selection.  On the top floor, there is a very miniature food court (think, three options) and a bookstore that carries only Mongolian books and a few ESL textbooks.  There's also a stationery shop, which is decent, but much more expensive than the little shops that are everywhere else on Peace Avenue.  There's a gym, too, so if you feel like being pervy, you can stand and watch the buffest Mongols working out.  All in all, the State Department Store kind of depresses me.  And I don't like going there because I always have the impression that the masses of people standing around in front of the store or just inside the entrance are trying to figure out the best method to get into my pockets.

The Mongol Rally

Last month, I missed the chance to meet one of the Mongol Rally teams.  They were the last team to arrive, and one of the members contacted me through couchsurfing, but we couldn't seem to get our schedules in sync so we didn't end up meeting up.  Too bad, but oh well.

The Boy

As I mentioned a few posts back, I met a boy the other week.  We were supposed to have a date on Thursday night.  And we had also made a day date for Friday.  And we had plans to go to the opera together on Saturday.  And it turned into a massive, never-ending three-day date.  And I'm on cloud nine.  Wow!  He is actually almost too good to be true.  I'm so happy!  This guy makes me happier than my last three boyfriends all added together!  I really hope this feeling lasts, and I can't see it ever stopping...

The Grab n Go

I've never actually eaten here, but it seems intriguing.  It seems like pretty much everything on the menu is meat, though, and I'm afraid of getting really low quality meat from places like this.  I should try it, though-- it just may surprise me.

Pizza Broadway

God, I've been in Asia for far too long.  I am now the type of person who takes photos of her food in restaurants.  A few weeks ago, I had the week off from my full-time job, so I decided to treat myself and go to a restaurant.  I'm not embarrassed to go to a restaurant alone.  This is Pizza Broadway on Peace Avenue.  I was surprised... it was pretty good!  I had the mango-something drink (it was the drink with mango and ice cream in it) and the BBQ chicken pizza, which was not at all like what BBQ chicken pizza is in Canada, but which was tasty, nonetheless.

Chess

The title of this post says that it is about chess, and the picture is, indeed, about chess, but o.my.god. I am not going to write about chess.  Just yesterday, I wrote about how my students make me happy.  Then, today, I come to my part-time job, and two classes in a row, my students manage to prove that wrong.  In the first class, I'm trying to explain something, and my students are sitting there talking to each other, joking around, and not listening whatsoever.  I told them that this behaviour was unacceptable, but they continued to do it.  I warned them that I can be either an extremely fun teacher (like what they have seen up until now), but if they disrespect me (and I feel incredibly disrespected when it's obvious that nobody is listening to me), then I can also be an absolute bitch.  Then, I go to my second class.  I start every class by reviewing the homework which I assigned in the previous lesson.  That way, we can be sure that everyone arrived at the correct answer and that they understand what we are learning.  It should take a maximum of twenty minutes.  Maximum.  This fucking class didn't do the homework.  I don't mean that a couple people didn't do the homework.  I mean that absolutely nobody did the homework.  Making them answer a question was like pulling teeth, and it took the entire fifty fucking minutes of class to review their homework.  I ended up slamming my whiteboard marker down four minutes early and walking out of class because 46 minutes of trying to be patient when I'm actually incredibly pissed off that no one did my homework is apparently all I can manage.  Thank you for listening to this rant.

The Three Hills of Misfortune 3

This is my last post with a picture of the Three Hills of Misfortune.  Again, I thought it was a beautiful ballet.  The costumes reminded me a bit of Ukrainian dance (particularly the men's costumes).  This is my favourite photo from Three Hills of Misfortune.  I couldn't get a non-blurry photo because I had to turn off my flash and the dancers wouldn't stand still for long enough for me to get a good shot.  I think the blurriness kind of adds to, rather than detracts from, this photo, though.  :)

In other news, I had a rather unfortunate and unsettling incident on the bus yesterday.  I started off this week on top of the world.  I didn't tell you before, but at the ballet on Sunday night, I met a boy.  I really like him.  He's cute and smart and really, really nice.  We made plans to go to the opera together this coming Saturday.  And we might bake a pumpkin pie together for American Thanksgiving (even though it's not Thanksgiving for me).  I was so excited about meeting this awesome guy, I felt nothing could ruin my good spirits this week.  Nothing whatsoever.  I was wrong.  Yesterday, I was assaulted on the bus.  For doing nothing at all.  I was sitting there, just minding my own business, when this crazy rabid bitch (a person, not a dog) attacked me.  She punched me in the face (she had a wimpy punch, though, so it didn't hurt), kicked me in the legs (again, she had a rather wimpy kick, so it was ok), and then she grabbed handfuls of my hair and pulled as hard as she could (that /did/ hurt).  Then, she starts bashing my head against the wall in the bus.  She had my head down and she was pulling my hair, so it was hard for me to put my head up to see, but I tried to hit her back anyway (I mean, I had to protect myself).  Finally, at last, I managed to grab on to a handful of her hair, and I think I was actually just about to get the upper hand when two people got in between us.  Funny how when she was kicking the shit out of me, none of the Mongolians on the bus got up to help, but when I started to fight back, there were immediately two guys in between us.  She is a lucky bitch.  At the risk of making myself sound like a crazy bitch, I wanted to pummel her.  I wanted to pummel her face over and over and over again.  I wanted to beat that bitch black and blue.  I wanted to knock her down and kick her senseless.  I did muay thai for three years, and I believe I would have been capable of this.  Never in my life have I ever wanted to beat someone up as badly as I wanted to beat her up (I have actually never ever until yesterday even remotely had the desire to even slap a stranger, but when you're attacked out of nowhere for nothing, it makes you want to fight back).  She is extremly lucky I didn't fight back (much).  She's lucky that the only fighting back I did was in the interest of defending myself.  She's lucky that I did not fight back in the interest of defending myself and of hurting her.  She's just incredibly lucky, that's all I can say.  I don't know how I held myself back (I could have gotten past those two guys in between us), but I did, and I guess that makes me a better person.

As I'm typing this, I'm reminded about the incident a few summers ago on the Greyhound bus in Canada.  I guess I'm lucky the crazy bitch didn't have any knives or guns on her, or else things might have been much, much worse.  As it is, my hair is considerably thinner today than it was yesterday (yesterday, after the incident, as I ran my fingers through my hair, I was also pulling out handfuls and handfuls of hair), and my neck and shoulders are killing me, but other than that, I am fine.  I need a hug.  I need someone to hug me while I cry.  But I'll be fine.  It doesn't make me think too much of Mongolians right now.  When I look at my colleagues or my students, I try to remind myself that they are not the same as the girl on the bus, that the bus incident is an isolated incident, that the people who are normally around me are good people.  Still, I can't help feeling that when my contract finishes, I will be out of here so fucking fast, they'll never see me go, and I never plan on looking back.  The only thing that is getting me through this week now is how much I'm looking forward to seeing the boy this weekend.

The Three Hills of Misfortune 2

Today, another post about the Three Hills of Misfortune.  I really loved this ballet.  For me, it's right up there with The National Ballet of Canada's presentation of the Four Seasons, Alberta Ballet's Carmina Burana, and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's interpretation of The Magic Flute as far as favourite ballets I've ever seen.  One thing that really struck me about The Three Hills of Misfortune was the amount of flexed footwork (the second photo of this post is a great example).  I've never seen so many flexed feet in a classical (character-classical?) ballet, and it was BEAUTIFUL!

The Fountain of Bakhchisarai

Tonight, despite the cold outside and the invitingness of my bed and my comfy blankets, and the fact that I've developed an attachment to sitting by my window sipping delicious hot chocolate made with hot milk, I made it to the opera.  Tonight's opera was "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai".  Because of the title, I was expecting a Mongolian opera, but then, when I went to buy my ticket, I saw a notice on the wall that said it was an opera by Puccini, so then I was expecting some kind of Italian opera.  Imagine my surprise!  It was closer to a Mongolian show after all!  So, when I got home, I googled "Fountain of Bakhchisarai" and found that it was actually originally a poem by Pushkin.  But, my surprise didn't actually stop at the fact that it was a Mongolian-type performance.  I was also surprised to find that I was watching a ballet, not an opera.  The poster outside definitely said that the show was an opera, but I adore the ballet, so I was so happy to find that the sign outside was misleading and we were watching the ballet version of this story, instead.  And it was so cool.  It was part classical ballet, part character ballet, part Ukrainian-type dancing, part belly dancing (en pointe), and all beautiful.  This is my second Mongolian ballet that I've seen.  I have to admit that I think I enjoyed the other Mongolian ballet (The Three Hills of Misfortune) slightly better, but really only slightly.  Maybe tomorrow, I'll post some pics from The Three Hills of Misfortune so you can see what I'm talking about, and later on either next week or next month, I'll post some pictures which I took from The Fountain of Bakhchisarai.

Blackout Mongolia?

If only there were a Blackout Mongolia blog the way there is a Blackout Korea blog.  Le sigh...

The Hi-Fi Music Store

I love this music store.  It's on Seoul Street.  Remember the post in which I talked about finding Time and Newsweek in English and then said that I thought the Mongolian porn was much more interesting and bought some for my brother as a Christmas gift?  Well, this is the same store.  Only, every time I've gone back, they haven't had any more Time or Newsweek in English.  Too bad.  But I still really like this store for some reason.  One day, as I was walking down Seoul Street, I heard Arcade Fire blasting down the street.  What do you suppose was the source of this musical delight?  You guessed it!  Hi-Fi Music Store!  I'm in love.

One of those weeks

Argh!  It was one of those days/weeks where I had so many profound things to say.  I ran to my computer to write it all out for this blog, and.... the internet connection wasn't working.  And it stayed not working for three days.  And now that it is working, I can't remember what all those profound things I had to say were.

In other news, I got attacked by a big German shepherd yesterday.  As you know from my earlier post about dogs and cats, I adore both dogs and cats.  Dogs don't scare me.  I love dogs, actually.  I don't misinterpret a dog jumping up on me to lick my face as an attack.  No, I know that's playing.  But when a dog pounces on your back and tries to knock you over and rip your flesh off, then that's definitely what, in my vocabulary, counts as an attack.  I was especially angry because its bitch of an owner stood there laughing instead of the more acceptable reaction, which ought to have been to apologise profusely to me for her ill-bred, ill-trained, and ill-mannered dog.  I may have called her a few names, but I don't think you can really judge me for that unless you've reacted more magnanimously after having been attacked by a monstrously big dog and then watched in dismay as its owner did nothing more than stand and laugh at your terror.  Seriously, it was one of those "fuck Mongolia" moments.

Feeling Bleh!

I got very sick yesterday.  Well, it was the sickest I've been in close to a year, anyway.  I'm not sure if it was a very mild flu or if it was food poisoning, but I just felt sucky.  Since I've decided to not get a phone here in UB, I couldn't call into work, so I had to go to my part-time job, hoping they would send me home.  I couldn't have called in to work anyway because people tend to not believe me when I say that I am sick (I was actually misdiagnosed as a hypochondriac once when in fact I have a degenerative autoimmune disease).  So, I went to work, felt sucky, went to the bathroom and threw up, and yep, I did get sent home.  My boss forced me to drink some Theraflu and then she drove me home (that was nice, or else I would have been stuck on public transportation in that state), and I went straight back to bed.  I've slept for close to two days straight now and I feel close to 90% of normal!  Huzzah!  I will go in to work tonight, even if I'm not 100% my normal, bouncy teacher self.

Incidentally, speaking of being sick, my first thought when I saw this bus was that the Easter Bunny must have thrown up all over it.

State Opera and Ballet Theatre 4

I am all out of ballet and opera tickets.  Horror of horrors!  I bought about six tickets, and the last ticket was for this past Saturday.  Actually, I have a small confession to make: for the past few weeks in a row, when it came time to go to the Opera House to use my ticket which I had already bought, I looked out my window at the cold day in Ulaanbaatar, I looked at my cosy, comfortable bed, I looked back out the window, I looked back at my bed, I considered which piece was being performed, I considered the money I would be wasting (less than $5, in both cases), I checked the schedule to see if I could catch the piece later on in the year, and I dove into bed and placed my covers over my head and fell soundly asleep.  Two weeks in a row!  Well, now I'm out of tickets, and I'm thinking that maybe if I'm going to pull that stunt very often, maybe I shouldn't buy any more tickets, but noooooo!  I love the State Opera and Ballet Theatre.  Once I actually motivate myself to leave my apartment and go out into the cold day, and once I actually arrive at the theatre, I love it!  I seriously love everything about this theatre!  Tomorrow, when the box office opens up, I'll buy maybe eight more tickets... that should keep me entertained until January.  And by the way, I really want this painting!

The Butchers #2

If you read my post which immediately precedes this one, you would know about my childhood and my stance on meat-packing and butchers.  You would remember that I don't find it inhumane to slaughter animals (even though I do hardly eat any meat at all these days, but that has nothing to do with a moral dilemma), and that I kind of find it fascninating to stand amidst the butcher shops in a foreign country, even if I can't find the words to explain to them how I'm different from the standard gawping whitey tourist.

Some people might say that they think a cart full of innards and heads is gross, repulsive, revolting, sick.  But me, I find it fascinating.  Like I said in the last post, if it were a cart piled with human heads or kitten heads or puppy heads, I would be outraged and sickened and wouldn't be able to look, but these, these animals, they were bred right from the beginning for this purpose.  They never had any other purpose in life than a trip to the slaughterhouse so someone could have some sustenance.  And of course, as always, this trolley (anything butcher-related, really) fascinates me.  We used to always cut the tongues out of the animals we slaughtered.  Some people liked to use them as fishing bait, and some old-timers liked to boil and slice them to make sandwiches.  But as you can see, here in Mongolia, they do not cut the tongues out of the heads.  Maybe this has something to do with the fact that Mongolians like to boil an animal's head whole, and then cut chunks of meat off of it.  I'm just speculating, but maybe, in that case, just maybe the tongue might be a special treat.

ETA: Just yesterday, I was walking around downtown Ulaanbaatar, and I saw three street dogs stop in turn to sniff at something on the sidewalk.  I got a little closer to see what this something was, and it was none other than an animal skull which had been boiled and picked clean!  Only in Ulaanbaatar can you find animal skulls laying around on the sidewalk and nobody looks twice because they don't see anything abnormal about that.

The Fix-All: Scotch Tape

In September and October, before it got really cold, the city of Ulaanbaatar was working feverishly to build/repair many of the sidewalks.  Notice anything off about the hammers they are using to pound in the sidewalk tiles?  Look closely....

Hammer held together with SCOTCH TAPE!  Maybe Red Green's got it all wrong-- all you really need is scotch tape!

Bringing the Farm into Town

I posted a picture that looks almost exactly like this one last month.  If you shifted just a couple of degrees to the South, it might actually be the same picture.  In fact, I may have even been standing in roughly the same spot on Peace Bridge when I took the other picture.  What I was trying to capture here (and what I think I failed to capture) was the fact that someone had brought their cows to graze in this big open space (yep, those specks that you can just barely make out are cattle).  Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me and I can't zoom with my iPhone, so this was the best I could do.  Another time, I saw some cattle grazing on a very small triangular patch of grass that was in between the two lanes of the highway, but that time, I didn't even have my iPhone with me.  The only other place I've ever seen farm animals roam freely around a town was in a very small and remote village on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia.

The Mugging #2

I've been going to bed too late lately, and I'm extremely tired because I think I need more sleep than the average person (I have an autoimmune disease, and quite often, people with autoimmune diseases do need more sleep than normal people), so I decided to go to bed early last night for a change.  Yeahhh!  Wrong.  At 1:30 in the morning, I get a knock on my door.  I ignore it because I'm asleep and it's the middle of the night and I don't want to ruin the first night in a long time that I have decided to treat myself to a good night's sleep.  Then, I hear people in the hallway outside my door having a loud discussion.  This is terrible, because the sound in my building travels ridiculously well, and the hallway echoes, which meant that I could hear everything in my apartment.  And it did disturb my sleep.  So finally, I get up to look outside and think I might ask everyone to be quiet or to take the conversation into someone's apartment and close the door so they don't have to disturb me.  When I look outside, I see that it's my boss and my neighbour.  My neighbour, the same guy who got mugged a few weeks ago.  And he drinks too much.  So I start to put two and two together, and figure he's probably drunk and lost his keys or something.  And I don't want to get involved because in many countries in Asia, you lose face just by involving yourself in a situation.  So I close my door and try to go back to bed.  But they continue being as loud as ever, so finally, I get up and go out of my apartment and I go up to them.  My neighbour is like, "Duuuuuuuuuude," (he is obviously very drunk) "There's nothing.  There's nothing in my apartment."  Whereupon, I assume he means that he has been robbed and there is, in fact, nothing in his apartment, so for just a second I am really concerned for him, but then he continues, "I went to the club and I was going to get some ____________, but it was a lie!  It was a lie!  They didn't have any ______________.  So I was on my way home in the taxi and they took it.  They took everything.  They took... they took like... a hundred dollars!  They took a hundred dollars.  And they took my cigarettes.  And they took my keys. And I can't get in.  I sleep here tonight."  And he sits down on the floor in the hallway.  Which I kind of felt like it was a request for someone to invite him into their apartment for the night.  No fucking way!  I need my sleep, and when he's drunk, he tries to do inappropriate things like tickle my feet and stuff, and I need my sleep, and I don't fancy the guy, and I don't fancy not getting any sleep because he's in my apartment for the night.  So, I just turn around and walk back into mya apartment and hope he doesn't notice me go.  I mean, should I feel bad that I don't feel bad for him at all?  I mean, last time he got mugged, I felt extremely sorry for him.  I went out looking for him with his girlfriend (see my post from October called "The Mugging"), and when we found him, I brought him back home, and I helped him find a way into his apartment (because he had also lost his keys that time, too), and I stayed with him until he calmed down, and I actually even cook for him, but all he did was insult my cooking because he had seen me put a little salt in it, so he decided that it was too salty, so instead of fucking thanking me, he just insults my cooking.  Okay, I had thought, he's drunk and upset, I'll let it slide.  But the next day, once he was sober, the one thing he seems to remember is that he thought my cooking was too salty (which it wasn't-- he was just a drunk idiot and likely doesn't know what good food is).  And that kind of hurt my feelings because I had taken a good four or five hours out of my evening, which I had intended to be a relaxing evening, to help him out.  And that's the kind of thank you I get.  But I did still feel bad for him that he had the awful experience of being mugged.  I mean, it sounded terrible.  But, I figured he had probably learned from that time.  I mean, he had been drunk and alone, and it was getting dangerously close to dark.  I mean, I definitely learned from his mugging experience.  The things I took away from it were in the form of a few rules I made for myself: (1) no public drunkenness, ever, under any circumstances; (2) don't carry anything that will make me look like an appealing target to a mugger (I try not to carry my camera with me too often, I try to bring only what I can fit into my pockets so I won't have to bring a purse, and I carry less than 10,000Tugrug with me at all times); (3) avoid taking the so-called taxis here in Ulaanbaatar; and (4) if I can avoid it, I don't go out after dark.  I just assumed that my neighbour had also learned at least a few of these lessons from his first mugging experience, so now that I find that he in fact learned fuck-all, and he thinks it's okay to disturb my sleep because of it, no, I don't have any pity or sympathy.  I mean, yes, I know that opportunistic crime is rampant here, but that's just the thing-- it's opportunistic.  Just don't give them the fucking opportunity.  This guy insists on going out to clubs, getting wasted, and coming home alone in taxis.  He's begging to get mugged, and he's gotta know it.  So I wasn't sorry for him.

Anyway, about my picture today, I saw this dude with a snorkel fitted onto his SUV.  Traffic was monstrous, so he snaked past me a few times, and finally I decided to get my camera out.  I mean, it's like, 'Dude, you live on the Steppe. WTF do you need a snorkel on your SUV for?'  He must have thought I was crazy for taking his picture because, as you can see, he gave me quite the look when I took a picture of his vehicle.