Meanwhile in Mongolia

I am Samwoah, and I will be in Mongolia for a little while.

[samwoah-blog]

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

Can't get instagram to forward to the Mongolia Tumblr. Alas...

Today I was on Mongolian TV… (at 5 сургууль)

[samwoah-blog]

Mountain Top

[samwoah-blog]

at Bogd Mountain

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

A small update. Again.

Maybe soon I'll get better at this... Still cold, but I'm down to my coat liner consistently. I can't wait until it's warm enough for me to travel the city by foot more reasonably. My roommate brought up the idea of finding bikes at the black market here. I'm thinking more and more that might be a good idea. It would be pretty easy to beat the bus on a bike. The places I end up are always good, the people always interesting... And the world very small. Example: There's a guy here who owns a popular restaurant, who went to Mass Art in Boston right near where I lived, and was guest DJing at a club this past weekend. I'll meet 20 people from Africa at a party, another 20 from Australia somewhere else, have a Lithuanian Easter, play with adorable orphan children, meet a cool guy who works for the IMF, learn how to play (and suck at) snooker, attend a strange karaoke dinner, exchange valuable knowledge with my students, be refreshingly and wildly sarcastic with my roommates, visit another school and have existential conversations with Mongolian, Dr. Who obsessed, high school freshman, my roommate, our friend from Uganda and an epic, sixty-something year old Scottish -Aussie man. I'm not bored to say the least. I really want to get pictures of all the strange playgrounds here. I still find them amusing... Especially when they have really communisty elements like 5 of the exact same slide. I managed to cut myself on a wall here. Yay tetanus shots!

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

Here's some unfiltered, unedited bad taxidermy. Brought to you by The Mongolian Museum of Natural History. It was very hard to limit it to ten.

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

A small update.

It's getting warmer, so I wasn't lied to. Catching pickpockets is hilarious. I'm not sure what they're thinking... Dude I can feel you. The best advertising is in the litter. Granted, the amount of litter is nonsense, but it makes it easier to pick a snack if you saw what everyone else was having. I'm still not used to what's expensive and what's not. I'm also still not used to random things disappearing or reappearing in stores. I was well aware of this phenomenon before getting here, but when it's something like cup-potatoes or bananas it just gets you all the time. Ice cream here is consistently very good.

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

I wash my hair and the suds are grey. Oh hey coal soot!

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

Bourbon at noon.

At work. In a teacup. With a sweetarts lollipop. With my coworkers. I'm not going to compare to my old job but...

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

Buddhism Moment

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

Smattering of Thoughts: Friday, February 8

I probably am going to leave this country with some amount of lead in my body. Between the fuel and the DPRK pots and pans I’m cooking in I’ve started to accept this.

There is this wonderful chaos here. I’ve been telling some of my students that I came to Mongolia because I thrive in chaos (then I explain chaos.) The difference between this sort of chaos and the disorganization of teaching in the past or even the chaos of my old job, is that I’m left mostly to my own devices to create and do a job. I think most people can’t deal with that, but I think its perfect.

Here chaos creates as it should. In my old job any chaos was unnecessary and left only destruction, anger, and resentment… In other words it was entirely toxic. In past teaching chaos that could happen organically wasn’t embraced. There was right and wrong (creative disorder was wrong), and it took unnecessary effort to change that.

I’ve had one full week of teaching and I’m highly encouraged. The students are kind, most of them try, and they’re all very funny. I appreciate their relatively innocent senses of humor even as mostly near-adults.

That “I need a hug feeling” hit me way faster here than it did in New Zealand. Here, it hit me on a crowded bus. They have these beasts of Russian busses, and I was in a particularly crammed one. I’d say there were almost a hundred people in this bus. The people squeezing around me felt really nice, even though I probably should have had numerous safety concerns rather than enjoying a moment that would normally be incredibly uncomfortable for anyone. In NZ it took maybe 6-8 weeks before I couldn’t take it anymore. I told my roommate, she was like minded and we hugged for a good 20 minutes in public, then proceeded to cuddle at home because we both couldn’t take the lack of physical contact anymore.

If you like sweet and salty, this is the place for you.

I have decided to make it official and watch all of Arrested Development in every country I live. I started again yesterday, I’m almost through season one, and its even funnier than the last time.

I pretty much feel like a bad ass at some point of every day.

I’m going to start getting mail together soon.

That’s it for now. Time for eggs.

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

Today I found a dog skull on the sidewalk on the way to work.

I think it was a dog skull, I can’t imagine it would be anything else. I’m trying not to read into it.

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

I arrived in my bathroom here to find peach scented toilet paper. I've been wondering why two guys would ever bother getting it. As usual, Yahoo Answers always comes through. (Found out later that Jana just likes the color, fair enough.)

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

I apparently arrived just in time for teacher's day here. 1) fancy dinner 2) me and my department head, Odnoo 3) English language department.

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

I will be having very strange dreams tonight.

I am sure of this.

[samwoah-blog]

Stuck in Beijing, China. Exploring.

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

Finally, some photos up... Can't sleep...

[meanwhileinmongolia-blog]

What you can find and cannot find here is surprising. Pepper and mustard were the most striking immediately, as I couldn't find mustard anywhere and only whole peppercorns with no grinders to be found. (I was however impressed by the abundance of dairy, candy, and salt in every form.) I went on a pepper quest yesterday and found it in the State Department Store, three bus stops away on the 10 bus, sort of hidden away near the baked goods (along with some other spices I was happy to see.) I found the mustard later near where I live. I had given up looking but I happened to see a couple yellow bottles in a bin with some different ketchup bottles. Behold! Mustard. The cashier clearly had never seen it before and didn't know what it was. Later I noticed on the back "restaurant package, not for resale." Great Job, Mongolia!