back

I probably shouldn't be writing right now; it's 2:11pm in the afternoon in Mongolia (15 hours ahead of Denver)... and here I am, back in Colorado. I've been back for almost two days.

I've tried to be outside as much as possible. I'm trying to get in rhythm with the sun, so that it doesn't take so long to feel 'normal' again...

on the plane, I met a Chinese-born man who's become a citizen of the UK. We talked about the market crash, and then he said: "Americans will hopefully learn a thing or two from this. In China, my parents' and everyone in their generation have spent their lives saving 50% of their income."

50%. That's an amazing number. I'm going to try to save 50% of my income from this week and feel how good that feels.

My flight was delayed. I spent an extra day in Mongolia, and then an extra one in Beijing. I realized that I know Beijing better than I know San Francisco. I took a cab from my hotel to the outermost point of the city subway; got lost for about three stops, but then got oriented and walked myself to the best street vendor in all the city (before then visiting a wonderful noodle shop, where a huge bowl of fresh, delicious noodles cost about $1.20.

I slept on the plane.

And now I'm home, listening to the washing machine begin to clean away the smell of coal that lingers...

4-hour concert, hike to a hilltop, lama fist fight, chopin ballet, and an indian dinner

It was a full weekend:

1. bought a snickers bar at a Buddhist Education Center
2. attended a 4-hour concert on Friday night, complete with Mongolian pop singers, Italian opera, Mongolia soldiers' choir, throat singers, and Mongolian traditional dancers
3. turned down offers of paper cups filled with pickle juice; managed three (small) bites of pig tongue on bread before admitting defeat
4. cheered for the MRPAM staff soccer team on powdery, powdery snow
5. hiked to the near-top of Nukht while learning about the advantages of the socialist system
6. learned how to count to three in Mongolian -- during the most intense tug-a-war tournament I will likely ever witness in all my days
7. sang along to 2Pac in the car ride home
8. slept 12 hours
9. walked in morning light up to Gandan Monastery to listen to the lamas chanting. witnessed a group of 8 to 10 year old boys in a punching/kicking fight, which wouldn't have been that remarkable --- except they were dressed in their lama robes just outside the monastery
10. bought a kilo of frozen chicken legs and a half kilo of yellow and red bell peppers
11. planned tomorrow's class
    
12. met up w Mandah, Javkhaa, and Bayasaa to tour the Mongolian Natural History Museum. Saw the space suit of Mongolia's first astronaut (who's now serving in Parliament) and a collection of preserved beetles
13. walked across Sukhbatar Square for the national Mongolian ballet company's Chopin performance... sat between a Mongolian student and a Nepali man who's working on coordinating a national movement for grassroots small-scale miner advocates
14. ate saag paneer and naan bread while talking about Nepali history and Mongolian geology
15. walked home underneath a nearly-full moon, crossing the street 3 times and not getting hit once

The best alphabet song ever sung....

I visited Ena's mom's elementary school class today... They sang me the alphabet. Listen the whole way through. It was the sweetest thing, ever.


How many alphabets could you sing as a 2nd-grader?

You may ask yourself, this is not my beautiful wife...

It's after 1:00am here; I stayed up really late last night reading and talking w Myrna Ann... today I got home, took a three-hour nap - something I haven't successfully done in months... maybe years.

When I woke up, it was dark, and I had NO idea where I was. Slowly, I remembered: Mongolia. Oh, yes, I'm in Mongolia...

My dream had been so vivid: in it, my dad had called to tell me that my grandmother had passed away. In the dream, I was left remembering her, wanting to honor her with my thoughts, thinking of all the things I wanted her to know that I thought of her...

When I woke up it took me maybe 20 minutes to realize that she is still alive... I lied in bed, trying to sort through my world and existence: what is real in my life right now? What's happening - and what was just a dream?

It was a moment not that different from the Talking Heads song, "Once in a Lifetime": my disorientation was perhaps just as strong as it might have been had I woken up to discover a baby of my own crying in the next room, in a house on the Mediterranean Sea.

******
It's a weird feeling that sticks - it's hours later now, and I'm still thinking about it: that moment where you don't know who you are or what you're attached to or where you belong. I guess I like it when the pieces come back and assemble themselves: I find or remember my identity again, and then I wonder if I like myself...and I find that I do.

Do you know that feeling?

buuz and gay pride

Hi.
It's Sunday night here. I just finished making some football idiom games for tomorrow's class, am about to pass out...

Tomorrow morning I'm meeting my students at the Grand Khan Irish Pub. For those of you who might have forgotten that I'm in Mongolia, that's "Khan"- as in "Chinngis Khan."

Eagle TV, Baika's news station, is sponsoring an American Super Bowl party. Nevermind that the game starts at 7:00 am Monday morning, Ulaanbaatar time. The pub will be open, and diehard American football fanatics will be there to watch the game. Them, and my English class. I'll let you know how it goes.

It was a fun weekend. I went to the Mongolian opera last night, which was awesome, and today Manlai and some of his friends picked me up at noon to take me to his uncle's "summer home". We drove outside of UB, where the air is fresh, and I finally met his mother. She cooked us mutton and buuz (Mongolian meat dumplings).



I was home for about 10 minutes this evening when Zula came to pick me up. Out we went to Dublin's (yes, they love the Irish here) and then to "Level", a very trendy club off of Peace Ave. I think she is about the most wonderful person I've ever known. She's such an independent, thoughtful person. Very strong, creative, and tremendously intelligent.

Here's why I love her:
I use my laptop and LCD projector in my class. During a 10 minute break on Thursday, I was skimming an article on the NYTimes, and one of my students gasped, pointed at the words "same-sex marriage", and then covered her mouth as she started to laugh. Other students looked, and were very confused: "Same-sex marriage??? What is that?"

I explained, carefully and slowly, that one of the current civil rights movements in the U.S. is for the homosexual community. People are gay and lesbian, and they want to have equal rights as heterosexual Americans. Some of my students nodded solemnly, trying to be respectful, I think, but many of them -adults in their 20s and 30s- couldn't do anything but laugh.

I wasn't offended; it obviously was the first time, in their lives, they heard about the concept. It was totally, completely bizarre to them.

When I asked, already knowing the answer, if Mongolian law protected or supported the gay community, one of my students said: "I don't think we have gay people here."

So that's the backstory. When I met up with Zula tonight, the first thing she told me was about going to a gay parade and bar yesterday. Talk about an underground scene. One of her girlfriends invited her to the event, and Zula thought it sounded fun and interesting... so they went. When she studied in St. Petersburg, she had gay friends; this was, however, her first time in her life meeting openly gay people in Mongolia.

I loved getting to hear her talk about everyone at the bar - it was sweet because it was such a new experience for her (that she loved) and because she also had to search for the English words to describe it to me: "Some of the men were very beautiful. If you looked at them at first, they looked like men. But if you looked longer, you could see they had a kind of feminine beauty."
Mongolia has to be one of the hardest places in the world for homosexuals. It's people like Zula who will bring it around.