On Friday I called up Degi, my other contact in Ulaanbaatar (the director of DIAMANT Foreign Language Institute, a German outfit), and she said ��Oh, do you want to come on a weekend trip with us? We leave at 2 PM (in 2 hours) and it costs $150. We��ll visit Karokurum and pristine volcanic lakes.�� I said sure. Then she told me to call the driver��s cell phone, who was sitting right next to her. I asked him if there was enough room for me. He debated it with Degi for a few minutes (like I said, Mongols like to talk) and then said it would be really crowded with me along. I said that��s okay, maybe I��ll---and then he hung up. That��s the thing with talking to Mongols on the phone. If you say ��OK�� then they take it to mean ��Goodbye.��
The good news is that I made contact with Dan Leon, another American ICE participant. I know what they tell me: DON��T associate with Americans. But, first of all, this isn��t Europe. Americans are about as scarce as peanut butter here. Second, I don��t know any Mongolians who would want to see a traditional song and dance performance with me. Nor do I know any Mongols who would sit at a bar and shoot the breeze about being a foreigner in Mongolia with me. So that��s final. When the students get back from this weekend trip, I��ll try to figure out the UB Nightlife that I��m missing out on, a couple of fellow countrymen in tow.
Yesterday I went on a mass walking and exhausting tour of three museums in UB. First I stopped by the post office to buy some stamps and more post cards. It seems that the first batch of postcards that I sent out from China ended up in a Chinese fortune cookie. To those of you who were part of this first batch, please have patience and I will send out new one here in a few days. The mail is terribly slow here. I still haven��t received any mail, though Davaa never really checks the PO Box, always saying ��Margaash�� (tomorrow). ��Tomorrow�� I��ve been told is a meaningless word in Mongolian. It��s overused.
Anyway, so I started at the Mongolian Natural History museum. This was packed with all sorts of stuffed animals. Most of them weren��t very spectacular (the stuffed deer was an insult). Though the stuffed snow leopards were probably the closest I��ll ever come to the real thing (they��re dangerously close to being extinct��and yet poachers still bag a few every now and then right under the Mongol Authorities�� noses. It��s a profitable trade, so Mongols can��t really enforce the endangered species laws.)
The highlight was the intact Tarbosaurus skeleton, found in the Gobi Desert in the late 80s. It��s basically a T-Rex type, with razor sharp teeth and puny, worthless arms. The other highlight was the excavation of the fossilized remains of two dinosaurs fighting. One was a velociraptor, the other was a protoceratops. While the world is literally exploding all over the place and everything is being covered in a thick layer of debris, these two dinos still want to bash each other��s brains in. Sounds very human-like to me�� Next I ventured over to the Mongolian History museum, which had better organized exhibits with more English captions. The cost was 500 tg, about 50 cents, to enter. If you wanted to take photos inside, you had to pay $10. Thirty bucks to videotape. The same went with the Natural History museum and every other museum in UB. I guess since the price for admission is so low, they make money on the snap-happy. But still��ten bucks to take photos of their poor exhibits in bad lighting? You��re better off just buying a few postcards for a buck.
Well, the History museum was informative at least. I learned that one of the Mongol Khaan��s sent a letter to Pope Innocent the IV, pretty much declaring the Pope was to bow down to the Mongol Army. Nevermind the Mongols had yet to reach Italy, or even Istanbul, really, before they had to retreat.
Next, I walked to the Zanabazar Museum of Fine Arts. Once again a man approached me from behind, saying ��Hello?�� ��Helloooo!�� I just ignored him. He asked, like always, ��You speak English?�� I just shook me head and said, ��Je ne compris pas.�� He moved on to more docile targets. It was always the same story with each one of these losers. Their house burnt down and they need some assistance. They knew enough English to say this much, at least. The rest of the story was written out on a scrap of paper that was translated for them for about 100 tg. Despite this, Mongolians generally don��t pester foreigners. If you say ��No,�� ever if you say it softly and without conviction, they will say ��Sorry�� and move along. If you were in China and said ��No,�� you would be in for a battle the next ten minutes.
The Fine Arts museum had lots of Buddhist art of OK quality. Most of it wasn��t that old��maybe 100 or so years at the most. The true highlight was downstairs in the Art Gallery. Student work was on display. Some of it was truly ripped off from an Art History book, but some of it was truly awe-inspiring. A lot of it was Abstract Expressionist, but always with a hint of the steppe in it. Horses were a popular subject matter. But why not Soviet architecture? And I kept hoping to see an artist with a sense of humor. None could be found.
Today I hit up the Monastery Museum (an old Buddhist temple converted into a museum by those Russian Overlords who wanted an example of how foolish Religion can be). I��ll have to agree with the Russians on this one. The art inside truly is laughable. Numerous smiling gods in God-Only-Knows-What positions. Much of it more ornate than a Baroque cathedral.
Especially interesting was the back-room, called a Secret Tantric Prayer Room. Basically, it was a room for lamas to make out with women. Inside, huge paintings resembling Where��s Waldo tableaus made the whole experience ludicrous. These paintings combined MC Escher, Monty Python, and the best of pulp comics about sex, drugs, and rock n�� roll. A whole lot of sadistic torture (including turning you into a sheep or camel, chopping bits/chunks of your flesh off, cutting out your tongue, boiling you in a human soup, being eaten by various hungry animals, sitting in a cave while bugs eat your flesh to the bone, growing a tongue large enough that other men plow it with cattle slicing it up (no joke!), or repeatedly drowning). All of it was designed with fuzzy logic vanishing points, and most of it was ink-drawn, so it looks like one big cartoon. No wonder the kid whose Mom was going around saying prayers to all these laughing statues stood in front of these pictures for minutes on end. As did I.
Afterwards, I strolled in the Children��s Park (basically UB��s version of Central Park). Carnival rides of varying fun-factors and colors were scattered throughout. Though if sometimes you had to wait until the ride was at least half full before the conductor started up the diesel engines. I rode on the gigantic ferris wheel. The guidebook said it was slow as molasses; however it was over in about four minutes. I contemplated other rides, but what fun would it be on these rides by myself? I wanted to see a performance of the Tumen Eck song and dance ensemble (for $6), but decided at the last minute that I would rather see it with a friend.
Last night one of my host brother��s friends asked me, ��Don��t you get lonely here? You don��t know anybody. Nobody speaks your language.�� I wanted to say, ��Well, duh.�� But instead I was more truthful. ��I can keep myself entertained fairly well.��
But it still stung.
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