Ok, I think this is the last post that has any relation to missions.

The mission retreat (which was weeks ago) was both good and bad. It was good in that it reminded me not to forget my ultimate purpose in life (to serve God) and bad in that I couldn't relate to the people there. Most of the people had gone to the islands or South America, so their experiences were very different from mine. Their attitudes were also different, since for most of them that year of missions had been the bulk of their international experience.

I'm having a hard time contacting people in Mongolia. If any of my friends read this please email your IM name to christopherchristiansen@hotmail.com

Re-entry

I have decided to write a few posts about re-entry into the US. I wasn't going to do this, because the experience of coming back "home" has lost almost all meaning for me. However, I recently realized that this is / has been my first time entering back into the US after doing missionary service personally.

One thing that I have noticed is that there is no after-effect. I didn't come back to the US feeling (or acting) more "holy". I didn't suddenly want to become involved in everything at church and start up Bible studies in my home. This is partly because I haven't been to the same church more than twice since I got back. Maybe once I have a chance to claim a group I'll see a difference.

However, thinking about this lack of an after effect makes me wonder what I should be doing differently (and a few things come to mind). Moses's face was glowing after he came back from talking with God. I feel that mine should be at least a little different.

Southern has a re-entry program for its returning SM's, which is mostly mandatory. I'll write about it, posting the reactions of fellow SM's along with my own thoughts.
_____________________________________________
Being a missionary means not forgetting you are a son of God.

Trip West

I just got back from my trip to Olgii. Several times during the trip I asked myself why I was going. This question was usually prompted by a similar question from Boorma, the church member who went with me. She didn't see the point in spending several days on a crowded bus just so we could spend a day or two in the middle of nowhere.

She might have had a point.

I tossed around several explanations for why the far west of Mongolia was so appealing to me. Perhaps it was the mixture of cultures, the remoteness, or the mind numbing size and beauty of the glacier-capped mountains. However, as I tossed these ideas around in my mind I came to another conclusion. My dad had stated it quite well when I was planning my (since abandoned) trip to China: hell is a very interesting place.

To get to Olgii we boarded a bus in Ulaanbaatar. The bus was ancient, and had panels removed from it's sides for ease of access in case of a breakdown. Fortunately it was not particularly crowded, because tickets were sold by the seat in the ticket office. The luggage made it a bit hard to move around, but everyone had a place to claim.

On our way out of Ulaanbaatar we stopped. There was a group of guys by the road. When we stopped they gave the driver a friendly greeting, and then began piling on to the bus. This was... how shall I put it? It was the kind of thing that made one unhappy to be on a bus. Apparently the ten guys who boarded the bus had bought "tickets" from somewhere other than the ticket office. I expect the two drivers made a nice profit on the trip. Unfortunately their profit meant that I was smashed between a sweaty guy and the wall for the whole trip. Since I couldn't spread my legs my knees were jammed against the seat in front of me, and bashed even harder with every bump. I tried taking off my shoes and kneeling on the seat, but the Kazakhs apparently regard feet with even more disgust than the Mongolians, and they looked at this very disapprovingly. I let them look.

Now that the bus was properly loaded to normal third world standards, we continued on the trip. Nearly everyone on the bus was Kazakh. Most of the people which looked Mongolian turned out to be of mixed ancestry, but adamantly asserted that they were Kazakh. Several of the women wore headscarves, and a few people would go off to pray in the direction of Mecca sometimes when the bus stopped. Most of the chatter on the bus was incomprehensible to both Boorma and myself, but everyone could speak Mongolian if they wanted to so there was no problem communicating.

We took the southern route to Buyan Olgii, which goes along the edge of the Gobi desert. This was somewhat disappointing. I have heard that the northern route is quite beautiful, though the road isn't quite as good.

The bus had problems almost from the start. Driving across the packed gravel of the Gobi it would overheat about every ten to twenty minutes. When this happened everyone would pile out of the bus while we waited for it to cool down.

I consider myself an expert on nowhere. I have been to many places that claim to be the middle of nowhere, and I can now say that the western Gobi desert takes the prize (unless you count Antarctica). Mile after mile we went, with nothing to see but dust. Even though we were going along a relatively major road there were few stops. Every 40 miles or so there would be a few buildings by the road, though there were times when we went much further than that without seeing so much as a distant ger, or even a sheep. You know there's no one around in Mongolia when you don't see sheep.

The bus had trouble climbing hills. This was a problem, because the Altai mountains are "mountainous" in rather the same way that the Rockies or Andes are mountainous: in an uncompromising, mountainous sort of way; the kinds of mountains that aren't likely to move if you say please nicely. To climb even the smallest grade the driver would have to swerve back and forth across the road. Often the bus would simply stall, and sit there like a stubborn donkey trying to point out the fact that it was built in the 70's.

After 50 hours of bouncing around on dirt roads the trip ended, mercifully. I was somewhat terrified at the prospect of getting back on the bus at the end of our stay. One might say that I felt trapped and claustrophobic, despite the fact that the soaring mountains and wide expanses of the place made my mind jibber softly to itself in insane incomprehension.

Thinking casually of ways back that did not include the bus, I looked at my GPS and discovered an interesting fact. The distance from Olgii to the Afghan border (when measured in a straight line) is almost the same as the distance we had to travel to get there from Ulaanbaatar. If international borders were not an issue, it would have been faster and easier for us to get to Afghanistan than for us to get back to Ulaanbaatar, especially considering that the trip would be through China, which has decent roads (for the most part).

Olgii wasn't what I had expected. I had expected a mixture of middle-eastern and Mongolian cultures, but it turned out that there were somewhat more defined ethnic divisions. In some parts of town most people lived in Gers. In other parts people lived in mud-brick houses. Most signs were in Mongolian, some were Mongolian with Kazakh words, and very few were all Kazakh.

We found a Kazakh watermelon and named him Jondace, which I was told meant "lifelong friend".

Jondace agreed to be our guide around town, and he did a fine job of it until we ate him that night. He turned out to be quite sweet and juicy.


I made a point of visiting the mosque, mostly because I had never been in one. There are mosques near Ulaanbaatar, but it just doesn't seem the same because few people here are Muslim. In Olgii, however, most of the people are Muslim, or at least claim to be.
A new (and much larger) mosque is under construction, presumably using money donated from the some middle eastern country. The current mosque was built in 1992 with money from the UAE, but it seems small in relation to the population of the town. We went in and talked to a man (the Imam perhaps?) who explained what the script on the wall meant. I had heard that Muslims pray only in Arabic, and I asked him if many people understood the script or the prayers. He said that everyone studied Arabic starting when they were small children, so that they could understand it (or at least most of).
He didn't ask Boorma to wear a head scarf, which was odd because a list of rules printed in three languages asked women to "wear the head coverings provided". I didn't point it out, but Boorma noticed the rules later and was somewhat embarrassed.
The man told us when the next time for prayer was and invited us to come, but I declined. I would have felt rude sitting there and staring at people praying, and I certainly couldn't have joined them. We heard the prayers being broadcasted over the mosque loudspeakers later as we walked through the town.
A little later as we went through one of the Kazakh areas of town I saw two young Kazakh girls. I then did one of the most touristy things I have ever done, and asked if I could take a picture with them. They said yes, and the one who wasn't wearing her head scarf put it on shyly.
So... yeah. That and a few old women are my experience with "ragheads" so far (Kazakh men don't wear turbans, but then neither do most Afghan men). As far as their outlook on the world in general, I am coming to the conclusion that most practicing Muslims view the world in much the same was as conservative Christians do. I find it odd that the two hate each other so strongly.

I must say I don't understand how one religion can produce such extremes. The muslims I have encountered here and in the US have mostly been of two types: either liberal and not particularly devout or sincere and kind. Comparing this to the images on the news I am forced to conclude that what we are seeing is an example of how people use religion to justify what they would like to do anyway. Some of my friends may disagree with this conclusion, and to them I will point out one part of history (of many) where Christians should be thankful for a similar assessment: the crusades.

So, yeah. We came, we saw, we wandered around, bought some hats, and then piled back onto the bus the next day.

Or rather we were going to pile back onto the bus. Boorma found a man who offered to take us in a van for T55,000 instead of the T65,000 that the bus cost. He said that he was going to take 11 people. Incidentally, the vans have 11 seats. I pondered this, and concluded that it was unlikely he planned to take one person per seat. Perhaps he wasn't counting the two seats in front. That was still pretty good: 9 seats for 11 passengers is a really, really good ratio in Mongolia.

Unfortunately had been a slight misunderstanding. By "eleven people" the driver hadn't meant eleven total, and he hadn't meant eleven passengers. Instead he had meant sixteen passengers, himself, a friend of his who smoked heavily whenever he wasn't drinking heavily, and a large load of sheet metal which he strapped to the roof.

For over 1000 miles we attempted to bounce around in the van. I say "attempted" because the van was so crowded that bouncing was difficult. Usually these vans carry up to seventeen people for short distances in the city (say, going to and from the market). We had eighteen people, half of whom drank vodka every few hours to stay nicely drunk, luggage for the eighteen people, and the driver's load of sheet metal strapped to the roof. I had possession of the corner of a seat. The floor would have been much better, but there was no floor to speak of. There was a seat, a six inch gap, and then the wall. Intense and uncomfortable pressure prevented me from moving back, forward, right or left. Every time the van swayed the five people sitting in our row of three seats would sway, smashing the person at the end into the wall.

So, for three days and over 1000 miles we traveled. I bounced up and down on one butt cheek the entire way, since there was no room on the seat for the other. The abused butt cheek in question is now filing for legal separation.

Boorma had some words for the driver, and as her mood worsened she shared these choice words with everyone else. I understood her poor mood. We had stayed with a friend of her's in Olgii whom she hadn't seen in a long time, but other than that the trip hadn't been that great for her. Her parents lived in the neighboring province and she hadn't seen them in over two years, so I offered to buy her a ticket that would take her back via that route. She declined, saying that she didn't want to take any of my money. I attempted to explain that an extra $20 didn't mean anything at all to me, and she looked around for a van that would take her. Unfortunately, by the time she found one she was too pissed at the world to take it. At least that's the best explanation I can come up with for why she came back with me.

We got back into Ulaanbaatar at about five in the morning, grabbed a taxi back to the school and then parted ways. I'll be leaving Mongolia on Wednesday, so I don't think I'll have anything else to write about. I'll probably go back to writing in my other blog, thoughts from chemistry, but I'm not sure.

A fitting note on which to leave Mongolia: wind and wide open spaces:

Let the stupidity begin!

Skip to the bottom of the post to see the videos.

Classes ended last Thursday, and so the mad rush to do interesting things before leaving the country began. Recently I have been trying to go to a shooting range near the city, since there are things one can do in Mongolia which are hard to do in America. Some of the things I wanted to try were driving a tank, shooting an AK-47 and shooting a rocket propelled grenade.
An internet search had led me to believe the shooting range was located at the Hujir Bulan military camp. I badgered Itgil (the receptionist) until she looked up the number for the military camp and called them.
They were not helpful. The woman who answered said that they didn't give tours or allow people on the shooting range. When asked about the advertisements they had put out she said that while they HAD allowed such things in the past, they certainly no longer did. She did not know why they had stopped, when they had stopped (they were operating as recently as last month) or who had been running the program.
I got the feeling that what she really meant by all this was "I'm not going to get paid for helping you, so I'd really rather be drinking my tea. Bye." This, unfortunately, is a common sentiment among Mongolian government employees.
Further searches turned up two more shooting ranges near the city. I managed to obtain a flier for one of them, which had a map and several phone numbers. Going to Itgil again, I begged her to call them and find out where they were.

She called them.

They had no idea where they were.

Rather, they knew exactly where they were, but they didn't know where they were in relation to anything else. For all practical purposes, this meant that they could not convey their location to us. They explained that any Mongolian would know exactly where they were. Unfortunately, none of the Mongolians who were going with me had the foggiest idea.
I turned to the map on the flier. I stared at it intently. A red line had been drawn from Ulaanbaatar to the camp,with several points on the line marked and distances shown. Oddly enough, the background of the map was out of focus so it was impossible to read anything except for the red line.
I took the map upstairs and got a detailed map of the area around Ulaanbaatar. I tried to compare features and get my bearing on the flier's map. Slowly, I realized that the two maps were not the same. Equally slowly it dawned on me that the faded background features of the map were familiar. It turned out to be a map of Paraguay, which had been helpfully placed behind the red line "road" to convey the impression of "map".
This was infuriatingly un-helpful, since the red line did not (in and of itself) give much useful information. Finally I decided to put my faith in the phone numbers and hire a driver.
Three of us (myself, a Korean student and a Mongolian student) went to a place where drivers gather with their cars, waiting for people to come and hire them. The Mongolian student decided that she was in charge, and that she was going to get us there. This was unfortunate, because she had no idea where we were going.
Unencumbered by this small trifle, she quickly found the number for a shooting range about a day's travel away, and began negotiating with the drivers. The other student and I tried to stop her in English (which she understood), Mongolian (which the Korean student speaks fluently) and all manner of signs, but it took about 15 minutes to steer her from her single minded goal.
When we finally got her to slow down, I showed her the numbers for the place we were actually GOING to, and asked her to get directions from them. She called them. The man who answered said he could give us directions, but he would much rather send someone he knew to pick us up. The driver would be there quickly and would give us a great deal, because they knew each other well.

I'm sure they did.

Against the protests of myself and the Korean student, the Mongolian student called the driver. He said he would be there in 15 minutes, and that he would indeed give us a good deal.
Mongolia runs on island time, which is odd, because it is landlocked. I have learned to double all times that I am given. If someone says they will be there in 15 minutes, it means they will be there in half an hour. If someone says they will be there in an hour, it means two hours.

The driver was late, even by island time. After 30 minutes we called him. He said he was stuck in traffic. "Traffic" is the best thing that ever happened to people who are always late. Before there was traffic people were late and had no excuse. Now that there is traffic people show up an hour late to just about everything and blame that "traffic", even on Sunday mornings when the streets are nearly empty. I would also like to point out that one can easily WALK across the city center in an hour.

After 40 minutes we called the driver again. He claimed to be about two kilometers away (a distance the average person can walk in 20 minutes). We looked out at the street, which was free of traffic.
Twenty minutes later the Korean student and I told the Mongolian student that we were getting another driver. She protested, saying that the first driver would be here any minute. I replied that I hoped he would be, so that he could watch us leave and fume about it.
We hired a guy with a Land Cruiser for about the same price that the first driver (who owned a sedan of some sort) had offered. The Mongolian student called the driver to tell him we had hired someone else. He was furious that we had given up on him after a mere hour, especially since he was just around the corner. We never saw him.

The drive to the shooting range was mostly uneventful, and the scenery was amazing.
The greatest part was coming over the crest of the hills and feeling the world sink beneath you, as if you were dropping down over the rim of a bowl. Exactly like that... only in a Land Cruiser.

The camp was not quite as the brochure had portrayed it, but then again they never are. Two guys came out to meet us. One was dressed in camo, and the other was dressed like a sweaty mechanic.
Still, it was fun. We did manage to do some shooting.



Of course the real reason why I went there was to shoot a rocket propelled grenade, something that one simply can't do in the US. The launcher was old, but since when does that interfere with the plans of stupidity?

Yeah... I looked like a dork, and I couldn't hear a thing for several hours. Earplugs just might have been a good idea. Still, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one of my friends that has shot an RPG.

We also got to take pictures on the tank, but at that point no one wanted to drive it.
My ears were still ringing this morning (the day after) but I'm slowly getting my hearing back. Hopefully there's no permanent damage. Something tells me RPG's just aren't supposed to do that when you fire them. I had my mouth open and everything! What more can you do?

I've noticed that Mongolian flies are smarter than American flies. It seems odd, but I am convinced that it is true. When an American fly meets a window it thwacks against the window repeatedly in an effort to get out. An American fly will stick close to the glass, so that if half the window is open (but the halves are separated by the window frame) the fly will never make it out.
A Mongolian fly, in contrast, takes a different approach to the whole window thing. when a Mongolian fly runs into a window it doesn't buzz in place. Instead it lands, and sits there for a few seconds. Then, the fly makes a wide arc, and lands either on a different window or in a different place on the same one. In this manner a Mongolian fly eventually succeeds in going out of the open half of a half open window.
I have observed this several times. I probably only mentioned it because Douglas Addams talked about a man who invented a fly that could go through the open half of a half open window in one of his books.

I think now that I have observed this difference between American and Mongolian flies I shall apply for a multi-million dollar research grant to study them. The future of the planet is at stake, trust me!

One short moon

This afternoon I was writing down phrases from the dictionary. I chose useful phrases like "he's an old friend" and "are you wearing women's underwear?". Suddenly I realized that I would be leaving in a month. Learning more Mongolian seemed somewhat pointless. Mongolian isn't an international language, and I almost never keep in contact with friends after I leave a place.
I keep on kicking myself for not learning more of the language while I was here.
I will say this much: whoever I marry is going to have to be willing to spend some time here, at least a few summers.

I will also say that "in ayalal gaikhaltai baison" - this trip was wonderful, but I'm pretty sure I butchered the grammar there.

So, now that the clock is ticking down perhaps my eyes will open up again. That's what I love about traveling; it opens your mind and makes you value existence.

Camera Kite

Last one, I promise.

I'm always the last one to know

One of the problems with being the only native English speaker that works at the school is that I never have the foggiest idea what is going on unless I ask. Unfortunately, I have yet to ask. This means that I'm always finding things out at the last minute.

I could understand conversations about upcoming events if I was concentrating on the conversation, but those conversations are so mind-numbingly boring that I never do. Once I stop paying attention to a Mongolian conversation it is very unlikely that I will start paying attention to it again, so from that point the whole thing is doomed.

I was in class this week, and when I looked at the schedule / attendance sheet I noticed that the term project would be in a few days. I told the students that the project would be due the next Tuesday.
The students gave me blank stares. "There's no class next week", they said.
"No class?" I asked, incredulously.
"No, there's no class", they replied.
I couldn't believe them, so I ran downstairs and asked Itgil the receptionist. Sure enough, there was no class. The entire school was being used for an evangelistic series (which I knew about) so all classes were canceled.

So... I'm going to try to find someone to stay with over the week, or perhaps several people. I want to spend a few days with people that don't speak English so that I can practice my Mongolian.

In other news, there was an interesting activity day today. Seven people came, which is a pretty good number. No one came up with anything to do, so I made pizza and we played cards. For the first time since I've gotten here everyone actually HAD FUN. It's amazing. It was probably partly due to a different mix of personalities, but I think it's also because I'm more used to people now, so I make guests feel less awkward.
We played Uno, a Mongolian game I don't know the name of, and a Chinese game I don't know the name of (there's one Chinese student). Both of them were great fun, so I'll have to play them with people when I get back to the US.
After about two hours I commented that it was almost three, and people took the hint and left.
Awesomeness.

Windy Day

It was a nice windy day today, so I decided to attach the camera to my kite and take video from the kite while it was in the air.

'twas fun.

Tsag tsag tsag tsag

English has around 600,000 words. German has about 200,000. I'm guessing Mongolian has fewer words than German, somewhere around the number that French has (about 180,000). Internet sources on the average person's vocabulary vary widely, but let's say that most people use between 10,000 and 40,000 words regularly. In other words, English just has a lot more words than it needs.

However, there are a few places where the Mongolian language is, in my opinion, somewhat inadequate. For instance: the words for clock, watch, and hour are all the same: tsag. "Time" as in "once upon a time" is odaa, but time as a general concept is also "tsag".

I tested out this oddity by creating a sentence, "The clock chimes several times a day on the hour". I then asked several people to translate the sentence. Most of the people who tried could translate it, but no one could understand them once they did. Finally someone translated it in a way that could be understood, but the meaning was somewhat different once it was translated back into English. She translated it as "The wall clock rings regularly throughout the day".

As far as ridiculous homophones go however, no language can top English. I don't think there's a language other than English that can make a sentence as confusing as this next one:

"The blue berry blew buried boars with the Boer, as the bored baler bailed her boat with a board."

I made that myself, thank you. -bows-

Homophones such as these are the bane of people who speak English as a second language. The words "pool" (as in a large, man-made basin used for swimming) and "pool" (as in billiards) have caused a great deal of confusion lately. A few months ago I asked Gerlee and a few other friends if they wanted to go to the pool. Gerlee wanted to go (though no one else did) so I went off to get my swimsuit and towel. When I came back down with my bag she asked me what was in it. I showed her. She was momentarily puzzled, and then said "AAAAAH, you meant swimming pool!".

I thought that it was over after that.

On Thursday I asked Gerlee and Datdag (her boyfriend) if they wanted to go to the pool. Gerleee said we should go in the afternoon on Friday. On Friday Datdag and I waited for her as we put together new tables for the church, but she didn't show up until about seven. When she did show up and saw me with my bag, she said "AAAAAH, you meant swimming pool!"

She then explained that she was too tired, and that she didn't want to go. I'd wasted hours waiting around for her. I wanted to throttler her, so I tried to explain the difference between "go to the pool" and "play pool", but I don't think it worked. I told her that if I ever talked about playing pool, I would refer to it as billiards.

Just when you think you've seen it all...

I've lived in six different places with snow, and this is one of them. However, today I saw an entirely new kind of snow. To say the least, it surprised me. There was some rain (seen it) followed by icy pellets (seen them) which changed into driving, horizontal sleet mixed with dust (seen it) followed by something entirely new which I have never seen. Big, triangular snow pellets started falling with an audible sound, bursting open on the ground like dirt clods. Some of them were more than half an inch across; the size of kidney beans. If it were summer I would have thought they were hail, except that the pellets weren't hail, they were soft snow. There was a definite layered structure inside them, like hail, except that hail is circular and these things weren't. They were shaped a bit like the re-entry capsule from the Apollo missions, only more elongated. Something like this:
Has anyone else seen snow like this? I asked the Mongolians, and they haven't. Some of them gave a name for it, but when I asked Sarnai what the word meant in English she said "thunder"... which I guess means they thought it was hail.
This is a picture of the snow after it had been melting for a few minutes. Seriously, a few of the ones I caught with my jacket were 3/4 of an inch long.

It Was 80 Degrees Outside Yesterday.

And today it snowed. That is, in fact, a light dusting of snow on the roofs across the road. The mountains might even keep a hint of white through the day tomorrow, because it isn't supposed to get far above freezing. What a way to welcome in June!

Mongolian Election

The Mongolian presidential election was yesterday. Gerlee went to her home town (about 45 minutes from UB) to vote. This is a picture of her and her sister with their voter registration cards after they finished. They also got a dot of ink on their fingers. It's very interesting to be able to spot who voted by the little dot. Most of my students had dots on their fingers today.

The official results won't be in until tomorrow, but it appears that Elbegdorj Tsahia, the Democratic Party candidate, has beaten Nambaryn Enkhbayar, the incumbent and candidate for the People's Revolutionary Party (basically communists).

Elberdorj had been running an ad campaign all over the city around the phrase "oorchilokh oo?". Literally this means "Change?", but I suppose it might also mean "Do you want change?" or "Do you change?". In either case it's highly reminiscent of the Obama campaign.

While Gerlee was in her home town she visited her grandparents. Her grandpa was very nice, and only slightly drunk. I asked him to tell me about all his medals, and his wife's medals. They had about 30 of them displayed on top of a dresser, all from the communist era. He told me all about the medals with obvious pride (in case you're wondering, he was planning on voting for Enkhbayar).

Gerlee also got to see her cousin, who she doesn't get to see very often. Apparently he had a growth spurt while she was gone (all of 45 minutes and $1.00 in bus fare away, but I guess she's busy). He's taller than she is now, at least when she takes off her high heels. This is a picture of them in her grandparent's living room.


The trees are all leafed out and the flowers are blooming. It makes me wonder why on earth I planned a trip to this country in which I leave just as summer gets fully underway. I must be insane.

Sorry about the foggy pictures, the lens cover on the camera (the one that closes automatically when you turn the camera off) is broken and I can't keep it clean. Any advice?

Zaisan

Somehow I completely and totally failed to ask for the picture with everyone. Ah well, this is the best I can do. Eight students came on our Friday trip to Zaisan, which just might be a record. It was an absolutely lovely day, made even more so by the graduation parties which swarmed all over the hillsides like flocks of fairies in fluttery silk... flocks of fairies tailed by troglodyte males. Do I show bias?

On top of that there was a Kazakh man there with his eagle. I'm usually not one for blatantly touristy things, but I made an exception for the eagle. I paid him T1,000 (80 cents) for a picture or two. The bird was ridiculously heavy, it must have weighed almost 10 pounds. The tears in the leather of the glove made me believe the things I had heard about the eagles the Kazakh's use. Supposedly they have been known to take down wolves. The Kazakh's are the only people who have tamed any species of eagle for hunting.

I've made a hobby of editing with paint. I find it to be a downright artistic pursuit. I removed something from this picture.

Same spot. I removed something from this one too :)

After walking around Zaisan taking pictures we went down to the river. The day was absolutely beautiful.


In this picture you can see the new golden Buddha, the river (and the trees that grow along it) and the west end of the city (with its three power plants).

Huh. Never mind, I guess it was 9 students. They complained that I didn't bring a blanket. Who needs a blanket?!

...besides, I didn't a blanket like that, and other suck lame excuses. At least I brought lots of soda!

Karaoke

I have discovered an interesting fact about my musical tastes. In the past people have told me that I only listen to one kind of music, so I have tried to diversify. The pattern is still the same: I obsess over one group until I'm sick of them, then move on to another. Still, I think that I have managed to mix it up a bit. Today taught me something though; none of the bands that I listen to are the kind that can be found on a karaoke song list.

The students chose karaoke for this Friday's activity. I was somewhat hesitant to go along with the idea, since my idea of karaoke included the concept that one must be drunk to enjoy it. Still, after asking the pastor what he thought of the idea I decided to go along with it. So this morning five of us piled into a taxi and went to a place with karaoke rooms.

Notice I do not say that we went to a karaoke bar, which is what I thought we would do. The place where we went had several private rooms with couches and a table in the middle. We ordered drinks, and a man turned on the karaoke monster that sat in the corner, extending its microphone tipped tentacles out into the room.

As I stared at the book full of songs two things dawned on me. First, I wanted to have fun and I wanted the students who had brought me to this place to have fun. Second, I didn't see exactly how that would end up happening.

I sat back and sipped on my coke, deciding that I'd just see how things went and join in eventually.

"Sing!" said one of the students, shoving the song list and microphone in my face. I protested, saying someone else should sing first, but she persisted. I decided now would be a good time to practice the social art of "smiling and laughing at dread", also known as SALAD.

I took the book and began flipping through it, trying to find a song which I liked. A quick glance showed this was a futile ambition, and I began searching for any song I knew. It seemed almost as if the entire English section of the book was dedicated to Celine Dion. Now, I have no problems with Celine Dion, but I don't know any of her songs. In fact, the only thing I know about her is that she's Canadian. I wouldn't even know this, if it wasn't for the fact that Canada has no other celebrities to speak of, except for Pamela Anderson of course.

That should piss of half my family quite effectively.

I finally settled on a Billy Joel song, simply because there were very few other songs I knew. Unfortunately, I forgot two important things. I forgot that Billy Joel changes keys constantly (meaning the songs are nearly impossible to follow), and that he says "oooooooooh" A LOT. The result was quite embarrassing. Fortunately, it was so completely embarrassing that I decided I had no dignity left to lose. I have since concluded that this is the point of karaoke.

We sang songs for another hour, mostly in Russian. I only chose one more (We Will Rock You) which was also abysmal. The Russian songs were simple, with easy tunes and easy ranges, but unfortunately, being Russian, they were written in Russian. I have a hard enough time reading Mongolian, and the patterns are different in Russian. I could barely read at the speed of the songs, let along read AND sing.

Eventually another student showed up, who's name was Davaa. Davaa was a member of a locally popular rock band, so I asked him to sing (since I had never heard him sing before). He picked a Mongolian song, and did a quite decent job of it. He then chose a Beatles song, which was refreshingly easy to read and sing.

Everyone clapped when he finished. One of the students (a young woman) remarked that he sounded almost professional. I looked at her.

"He's in a rock band" I said.

"Yes," she said, "he could be in a rock band".

"No, no, I mean he is in a rock band".

"He sounds like it, doesn't he?" she replied.

I shook my head. Conversations with students usually run like this, even when the students are in the upper levels. Davaa's friend Yumka leaned over to me.

"He.... rock group.... name... Fire" he said. (Yumka started learning English last week)

The other student looked at him with wide eyes, and the conversation left English entirely. She couldn't believe that this man was a member of Fire.

"Sorry," she said, turning slightly red. "We've never met one of our celebrities before, Fire is a very popular band."

An uncomfortable silence followed. With a rock star in the room, who would dare sing? I found it somewhat amusing, mostly because I had never seen the rock star in his element. I had only seen him struggling to remember things like the meaning of "How are you?" and the word "pets".

The ice soon thawed however, and we continued singing. Davaa ordered a glass (a glass, not a shot) of vodka, which was the only alcohol anyone had while we were there. After another hour or so we decided it was time to go.

We went out, and I headed off to get a taxi. The group called me back. "Come with us, we'll take you back to the school" they said. We all piled into Davaa's van. As I sat down, I remembered that Davaa was the guy who had drunk the glass of vodka. I briefly wondered how many beers a glass of 80 proof vodka was equal to. However, I then remembered that Ulaanbaatar streets are always jammed with traffic, and that we'd probably never top 15 mph on the way back.

The traffic was terrible, even worse than normal. After about 10 minutes Davaa got tired of it all, and decided to take an alternate route back. The "alternate route" was empty, and we sped along at about 60 mph. 60 seemed like a breakneck speed in Ulaanbaatar, and I tried to keep from gripping the seat as pedestrians and vehicles crossed the road in front of us. The students continued happily chatting back and forth in Mongolian and English. Davaa chatted too, except when he stopped to swear at something that swerved into his path.

Halfway back I decided that whatever number of beers a glass of 80 proof vodka was equal to, it was less than the number required to make Davaa's driving noticeably different from that of the average taxi driver. This is either a testament to Mongolians' ability to hold their liquor, or an indication that all Mongolian taxi drivers are slightly tipsy.

Still, we made it back just fine. I think I might even do it again if the opportunity arises. I just wish that I hadn't been quite so up-tight the entire time we were there. I suppose that my initial thoughts about the necessity of being drunk were at least partially correct.

Brownian motion generators

Since coming back to Mongolia I have learned that the hot water system here in Ulaanbaatar is quite complex. This is unfortunate, because hot water isn't something you want to think of as "complex". Hot water is the kind of thing you want to be very, very simple.
It is best when a pipe is involved in the system, preferably one you can't see. You want to have complete faith that there is hot water in the pipe, and you want it to immediately issue forth whenever you wish it to do so.
Unfortunately, I am faced with two problems here at the language school. The first problem is that the school is technically classified as a business, and not a residence, which means that it loses hot water regularly. The second is that I am (after all) in Outer Mongolia, which means that everyone loses hot water regularly, whether they happen to live in a "business" or not.
If that were all I might be OK with it, but unfortunately it isn't. Getting back to the issue of simplicity, I have found that hot water is more of a philosophical issue here than anything else. The question "do we have hot water?" cannot be easily answered, especially at 6:30 in the morning as I groggily attempt to shower.

There are several possible states that the hot water can be in on any given day, and none of them can really be called "on" or "off".
I shall call the most common state "two minute shower". When the hot water operates like this it is freezing cold for the first 30 seconds, then warms up over the next minute until it is too hot to touch. It is then imperative to shower quickly, because after another another minute the hot water will go away again, never to return. I should note that this makes NO SENSE AT ALL because Ulaanbaatar has central heating and hot water, meaning that all the hot water has to come several miles from the power plant in order to pull this little trick on me.
The second state is "sit there and shiver for 20 minutes while the neighbors wonder why you take such long showers". In this state the hot water is technically on, but it has to travel all the way from the power plant to get to you. Sitting in a freezing cold shower for 20 minutes requires a great deal of faith, especially when you know that you could be experiencing the third most common state of hot water, which is no hot water at all.
In this (third most common) state the hot water is off, meaning that leaving it on for half an hour won't change anything. Technically, there is still hot water. To obtain it, you must put pots on the stove, turn the little knob, and foolishly hope that the electricity is on. I should mention that due to some confusion on the part of the utilities the electricity here at the school goes off several times a week, even when it is on everywhere else.
The fourth and least common state of hot water is "hot water". In this state hot water actually comes out of the pipes when you turn it on. You may then shower in peace, until the hot water goes off of course. I have experienced this kind of hot water about a dozen times since I got here.

I have chosen to write about this now because for the last two weeks the hot water has been in the third state; no hot water at all. The water was off for a week, then it came back on for the two days that Noel was here (lucky Noel), but it turned off on Sunday (she left on Saturday night). It has been off since then. I have come to the reasonable conclusion that Noel is a hot water goddess.
Since then I have been forced to wake up early and put hot water on the stove to boil, then take a bath in two inches of tepid water. However, this is still vastly superior to the other option, which is "no hot water, not even the hot water you forgot to put on the stove in the predawn hours you PATHETICALLY STUPID IDIOT". This option involves me turning on the lethal jets of hypothermia inducing ice, getting most of me wet, lathering up, grimacing as I attempt to turn the water on again, chickening out, sitting there covered in soap for a few minutes, forgetting that I'm sitting there covered in soap, remembering, making another attempt to turn on the water, succeeding, briefly changing gender due to the extreme cold, then getting out of the shower to go hide in the warmth of the bed for a while.

This is one thing I'm not going to miss.

Temperature graph

I kept a record of the daytime highs for a few weeks, or maybe more than a few weeks. At first I was trying to see how closely the temps here in Ulaanbaatar followed those in Moscow, but there wasn't much to see there. I then looked at the difference between daytime highs and nighttime lows, but that wasn't very interesting either. So, I've lost interest. Still, the graph looks kind of cool. You can see an interesting pattern: the temps climb, then for several days they swing wildly up and down before climbing steadily again. The yellow line is the average high for Ulaanbaatar. Click on the picture to see it full size. Oh, and the temps are Celsius.

Ulaanbaatar by Daylight

I went for a 16k / 10 mile walk today. The main reason was that the leaves on the trees were budding out and opening up, which absolutely demanded a walk. However, I'm still not exactly sure why the "walk" turned into a 10 mile excursion. This excursion took me to the river, along the river for about an hour, and then back again. Here are some pictures.

Radio and television have the FCC to worry about. I have my dad. My dad has told me about half a dozen times that the language on my blog "isn't befitting of a missionary". So, in keeping with this advice I have blurred out certain words in this picture of graffiti. $10 to the first person who guesses what the mystery words are. Lol, just kidding.
This is a fairly common opinion among the majority of Mongolians. However, I have never seen such good grammar in Mongolian graffiti before. I mean, we have such complexities as an implied subject (you) and a correctly spelled nationality. Also, they said "The Chinese" instead of just "Chinese". Truly, this is a masterpiece of literary racism.



This one just rocks. I especially like the guy with the ski mask and the two spray cans. Sorry about the angle. It was really big, but I couldn't back up because there was a busy street behind me.



This is a masterpiece. Such wonderful detail! And all before the cops came! Too bad it's old. I would have liked to see it before other people covered it with meaningless rambling.



It's an alien.... angel.... scuba diver.... thing. Oh, and it has a spray paint can that could possibly be a grenade.



This is either a self portrait or an anime character. Either way, it's cool.



Any takers?


A Sunday afternoon for the emerging middle class.



I take a picture of it every time I go. I don't even know why.



I had to throw a rock to get this crow to take off at the right time. Do you think National Geographic does that?



A large hawk landed to take a drink from the river. I wish it had let me get closer, but I guess the crow had told it all about me. This picture was taken with maximum zoom. I had a picture of the hawk taking off (sans rock) but it was too far away to be any good.


I got back from my 10 mile walk extremely tired, and was absolutely elated to find out that for the first time in a week we had hot water (a week, no joke).

This Sabbath I'm going to preach on language barriers, specifically language barriers between us and God. I will show how God tries to work around these barriers, and what we can do to help him. That has nothing to do with the blog post, but I'd appreciate any stories or suggestions along the lines of the sermon.

Angry Cat Pinata

Before I start the post on the pinata, I'd like to say that the student did show up to Sabbath school. Please pray for her. She has an absolutely voracious appetite for knowledge, and a very open mind. She's also a plain old nice person, and I'm hoping she shows up next week.

Oh, and could the person from Nebraska leave a comment saying who they are? I'm curious. I didn't know I knew anyone in Nebraska, but it keeps on popping up in the hits.

We made a pinata. Originally it was for the weekly activity day, but then I realized that only one or two people would show up to that day and decided to do it on Sabbath instead.



Sorry for the terrible video quality, I think Boorma forgot she was holding a camera.
I think I might make another pinata this summer, it seemed like people enjoyed it.

I've deleted the automatic "Being a missionary means..." thing from the last few posts. I think I'll leave it in for this one.
________________________________________________________
Being a missionary means two things: having a message to share (not all people do), and sharing it.

After seven months

I recently did something that I rarely do. In fact, it was something that I have only done three times before. I invited someone to church.
I'm going to hastily cover the shame of my inactivity by saying that I have invited many people to Bible studies, and preached a whole bunch of sermons, but I find my own excuses somewhat hollow. It all boils down to the fact that I have been somewhat shy when sharing my faith, which begs a question: what is an unshared faith? Is it really possible to believe in things as monumentous as eternal life or Christ's second coming, but then be hesitant to share them?
I don't think so.
The problem is that the arguments of atheism are by no means stupid. The best evidence for the existence and nature of God is the still small voice, which is exactly the evidence one does not have in times of doubt.
Recently, I was listening to a psychologist who said "People would rather change the world to fit their minds than change their minds to fit the world".... or something like that. I suppose it shouldn't be a quote. But what happens when the conflict is internal? I am a science major with somewhat left leaning political views, and my basic world view reflects this to a great degree. On the other hand I am a conservative Christian with a literal interpretation of the Bible (at least those parts of it that are not obviously poetic and figurative).
These two views have formed firmly established circuits. I switch between them like many people switch from mood to mood. Often I will think in one frame of mind, and suddenly realize that I am conflicting with my basic beliefs in the other (that statement goes both ways). So, when I am having a Bible study and someone calls the Bible outdated and backwards, then holds science as a shining example of modernity, I cannot give them my answer. I do not believe the Bible is backwards (though some things were meant for the people of the time, and are therefore outdated now), and I do not believe science is a shining example of virtue (last time we tried that eugenics happened). Still, the conflict remains.

And it doesn't help that most creationist scientists act as an arm of the Republican party, being neither carefully scientific nor purely religious.

-sigh-

What's a conservative Christian liberal to do?

I'll tell you if the person shows up to church. I think she probably will.

Pool / Billiards pictures

I needed to balance posting the sermon with posting something a little less puritanical.National Geographic always publishes pictures like this whenever alcohol is involved (why do they do that?) I would like to point out that that's a bottle of sprite on the table, but other tables had other things so I guess the picture is appropriate.
This guy (Chimba) has been playing since he was four. He toys with us, taking unnecessarily hard shots so that he falls behind, then sinks the last four or five balls in a row at the end of the game.

Itgil on the left, Gerlee on the right. Tsegee took the picture. They took about 30 pictures like this (as they always do when I leave my camera lying around) so I thought I might as well post one.

The only problem with playing pool is that it takes at least two washings to get rid of the smell of smoke on whatever you wore.

I made this shot. -bows- thank you, thank you. lol.

Sermon on Freedom

This will be my next to last sermon probably.
__________________________________________________________

What does it mean to be free? Most modern wars are fought in the name of freedom. One ethnic group fights another so that it can maintain its identity and have “freedom”. My country has fought several wars, supposedly so that other people could have freedom. Those people haven’t always appreciated our efforts.

Freedom is the most modern of values. Over the past few centuries the entire world has been demanding “freedom”. We want freedom to do what we want to do, freedom to say what want to say, freedom to go where we want to go. People talk about freedom so much that they sometimes don’t think about what they are saying. This is why I was struck by a verse I read recently:

Ephesians 3:1

“ For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles”

That doesn’t make any sense! I am a modern person with modern values. Prisoners have no freedom, so I think that being a prisoner is a terrible thing. Why would Paul say he was a prisoner of Christ, the source of all good?

I thought that perhaps Paul was simply talking about his current situation. He spent a good deal of time in prison because of his witnessing. In a few places he calls himself a prisoner “for Christ”. There’s a big difference between being a prisoner “of Christ” and a prisoner “for Christ”.

Fortunately Paul has a habit of repeating everything he says in slightly different words. This way, if we don’t understand the first time, we can read a little further and he’ll clarify.

In Ephesians 3:7-9 he says:

I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.

Being a servant is a little better than being a prisoner, but not much. A servant still has very little freedom. A servant does exactly what their master tells them to do. Interestingly, Paul says that he became a servant “through the gift of God’s grace”.

“I don’t need grace to become a servant!” says my modern mind. “I might need grace to get some kind of reward, but grace to be a servant? I need strength to defend my freedom, not grace to give it up. In fact, why would God even ask me to be a servant? I thought God wanted me to be free!”

Once my faith weakened. We all have highs and lows, and this particular time was a low. I wasn’t sure that God cared for me, or that he was even there. It seemed my prayers were empty and didn’t go anywhere. I decided that I needed some kind of test. For a month I would pray to God every day, asking him to use me. If there was no difference at the end of the month I would re-evaluate my beliefs. It was a stupid plan, but I wasn’t in a very good frame of mind.

So I decided I would pray this prayer:
Dear Father in heaven, I am your servant, and you are my master. Please use me for whatever you need. Show me how to do your work, and help me to be more like you.

The first time I said this prayer it was hard, which surprised me. It was very hard to say “you are my master”. We hear the word “servant” so much that it looses meaning. We often say “make me a servant” and forget that by saying this we are also saying “please be my master”.


But this prayer was very effective. It didn’t take a month to lift me out of my doubt and depression. It didn’t take a week. It took one heartfelt prayer. This is because one of the main reasons for doubt and sadness is pride. Once I had given up my pride, and my desire to prove what a great person I was, the doubt melted away.

I believe this is what Jesus had in mind when he said “the truth will set you free”. Sin controls our mind and our actions, and eventually destroys us.

John 8:31-34
“31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
33 They answered him, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?"
34 Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”

Still, can’t we be even more free? Why do we have to be either a slave to sin or a servant of Christ? Why can’t we do what we ourselves want?

There is a very good reason. We sometimes forget that the earth is a battleground. There are exactly two sides in this war; good and evil. There aren't, say, three sides consisting of good, evil, and me. Good and evil are fighting over every person here. There are no civilians. At any given moment you are serving a master, the only question is which master are you serving?

Which master did you serve this week? Can someone say that they were brought closer to God through your witness? If not, what can you do next week so that someone will be able to say so? It is impossible to passively follow Christ, the only way to follow him is actively. Which master should you choose?

Let’s look at this logically. Let’s chose the master that gives us more freedom. Which master allows more freedom? Why did Paul say that he was allowed to be a servant through “grace”? What’s so good about being a servant of God? I think it is because as a servant of God you have more freedom than you could even if it was possible to not be a servant of anyone.

Once Paul and Silas were preaching in the city of Philippi, and a fortune telling girl who was possessed with a demon started following them around. You’d think that a demon possessed girl would scream and curse, or perhaps throw things, but she didn’t. Instead she just kept shouting “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you how to be saved”.

This was one of the most destructive things the possessed girl could have done. By telling everyone that she approved of Paul and Silas, she was implying they were associated. It’s just as if you were trying to decide whether or not to make an expensive purchase, like a car. As you are inspecting the car a person who you know is a thief comes up and says “You can trust this dealer, he’s an honest man, and the cars he sells are dependable”. If that happened to me I would get out of there as fast as I could.

And Paul knew this. After a few days he got annoyed. He turned around and said "In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!" and the evil spirit left her.

This girl was a slave. By the power of God Paul freed her from slavery to the demon, but she was still a slave with human owners. When these owners realized that she couldn’t tell fortunes any more they were furious. They went and stirred up a mob. The mob hauled Paul and Silas into court. The judges had them stripped and beaten, then thrown into prison.

Chained in the dark prison, bruised and bleeding, Paul and Silas did what anyone would do. They moaned, groaned, cursed, and tried to sleep on the hard stones.
Did they?

Acts 16:25-30
25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone's chains came loose. 27 The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul shouted, "Don't harm yourself! We are all here!"
29 The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 He then brought them out and asked, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"

Here we can clearly see the difference between being a servant of Christ and a slave to sin. We may think that people who sin are more free, but in reality sin takes away our freedom. It covers us, destroying our personality and turning us against ourselves and the people we love. Sin ate away at the free will of the slave girl until she was “possessed”, she was completely controlled by a demon. When Paul cast the demon out of her using the power of God, he moved her further away from satan and closer to freedom.

In contrast, being a servant of God frees us, and makes us more like ourselves than we were before. This is possible because we are creatures created by God, so when we go from rebelling against God to serving him we are returning to what we were designed to be; we are returning to our true selves.

Paul and Silas, as servants of God, were able to sing in prison. God then sent an earthquake which opened all the doors and made everyone’s chains fall off. What kind of earthquake makes chains fall off? When the jailer came down and saw that they had stayed willingly (saving the honor and the life of the jailer) he asked them “What must I do to be saved?”. He could see that these men were truly free. They knew their purpose in life, and they knew what they wanted.

Service to God is true freedom; more real than the freedom we always try to get for ourselves, more real than the freedom promised by any government. Jesus says:

Matthew 11: 28-30 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

In this world it is impossible to be your own master. This world is a battleground, and everyone is following a leader. Even by doing nothing you are following a master. What can you do to be free? True freedom is service to Christ, and serving Christ means doing his work. What work can you do for Christ?

Drunks

Most of you have heard this already, but I might as well post it.

Last Friday I made a quick "glance at the sun" dash to the store in true
Adventist fashion. I bought the things I needed and headed back to the school.
The store where I do most of my shopping is less than five minutes walk from the school, and I go there every other day or so. There's only one street to cross, so I run most of the way there for the sheer joy of running. I seldom run on the way back though, because I have to carry the groceries.
This time as I walked along the sidewalk a man blocked my path. This meant only one thing: he wanted me to give him money. It's happened to me a few times before, and it's never very pleasant. Beggars usually sit with a box in front of them, and street children have mostly moved to selling things instead of begging. If someone blocks your path they are not begging.

"Give me T500" he said (about 40 cents)
I would have done so, except that he had blocked my path, he was drunk, and all my money was in a wad. It's not smart to take out a wad of cash when someone blocks your path and tells you to give them money.
"No" I said.
"I need it for the bus" he said, and I believed him.
"No" I said.
"Give me T500" he said.
"I don't have any money" I said, lying.
"%$#@!, right" he said, swearing in Mongolian.
"%*$#@! you" I responded, also in Mongolian.
At this he became extremely angry and grabbed on to my arm. I regretted swearing. It never does me any good when I swear in Mongolian (or English, come to think of it) and that ignores the moral aspects of the whole thing.
There were people passing by all this time, and I hoped that someone would peel him off of me. I had no such luck. Instead the man turned and called to two other men who were coming towards us. They quickened their pace. Apparently they were his friends.
Fortunately when he turned to call them he let go of my arm. Not wanting to get into a fist fight (which I would no doubt lose) I ducked to the side and ran for the school.

So, aside from the swearing, several people have chastised me for how I handled the situation. They said that I shouldn't have lied and I said I didn't have any money. Let's take a vote. Is this kind of self preservation lie moral / ethical? I'd like to add that people usually leave you alone here if you say you don't have any money... ya know, just to say it.
Vote in the comments.

Silver

I haven't posted in a while, so I guess I should. I won't be able to upload any pictures because someone took my USB cord, so I can't transfer the pictures to the computer. I think Noel has it....

Anyway.

The school is on break, so this is my time to finish buying gifts for people, and get interesting things for myself. Honestly there isn't much else to do.
I am beginning to realize that I planned this year brilliantly (heavy sarcasm). I arrived here in late fall, when the last leaves were falling off the trees. Fall is dusty and windy, and everything is a gray-brown color. Soon winter arrived. Winter is also dusty, but there isn't as much wind. This is unfortunate, because on the calm days the smoke of the city just sits here in the valley, at times making it hard to see more than a few hundred yards.
Now it is spring. Spring is dusty and windy, and everything is a gray-brown color. You get the idea by now.
I will leave at the beginning of summer. Summer is sunny and green, with spectacular thunder storms almost every afternoon. Migrant hawks, swallows and cranes come to raise their young. Naadam, the most colorful Mongolian festival, is during the summer. The best fishing is during the summer. I'm not going to be here to enjoy it.

Really, just brilliant.

Anyway. I've been trying to buy silver lately because I find it interesting. I bought my first silver coin here for $3, and found out online that it was worth about $20. Since then I have kept my eye peeled for silver things.
The only problem is that there are so many fakes. My family owns a few silver things, but I haven't spent enough time staring at them to be able to tell a fake instantly. It is especially difficult because there are so many silver alloys, so you have to keep more than one image of "silver" in your mind.

I went to the outdoor market to buy a leather jacket (incredibly cheap here) and while I was there I bought two things that were "silver". The first was a Mongolian WW2 military medal for bravery ($14). The second was an item I don't really understand that is for holding tobacco and cleaning a pipe ($7).
I got back, examined both of them closely, and concluded that the medal was silver and the pipe thingy wasn't. I showed the things to a few Mongolians. All of them looked at the two items with an air of confidence and said exactly the opposite. The pipe cleaner was silver, the medal wasn't.
Itgil (the front desk worker) was quite adamant. We've had a few arguments since I got here, because we're both quite pig-headed. She said that we should go to a pawn shop, where they would tell us for certain. We went, but the pawn shop was closed. We then angrily stomped to a jewelry store, where they (like every other Mongolian we talked to) said that the pipe cleaner was definitely silver. However, they also said that the medal "might have a little bit" of silver.

Somewhat annoyed at having so many Mongolians tell me what was and was not silver, I decided to dedicate two days to finding out what the metals were

-Fair warning, it's mostly chemistry from here, but not well documented chemistry.-

Since then I have been doing an array of "chemical tests". This sounds fancy, but it really means I've been looking up everything that can be done using kitchen materials. The list is surprising.

1. Silver tarnish isn't silver oxide, it's silver sulfide. Silver oxide is surprisingly hard to form, and it's white, not black. Silver tarnish can be removed by placing the silver on a sheet of aluminum, dusting it with baking soda, and pouring very hot water on it. Some reaction happens, but I'm too lazy to go look it up. The end result is that some bits of the tarnish go to the aluminum (because aluminum is more reactive than silver) and hydrogen sulfide gas is released into the air. The gas smells like rotten eggs or onions.

I did this, and pretty much proved that the medal is at least partially silver. Most of the tarnish was removed and the bubbles smelled surprisingly unpleasant.
The pipe cleaner didn't smell like anything, and instead of dissolving the "tarnish" chipped off.

I then realized that the tarnish might be cupric oxide, CuO. Alloys of silver and copper turn black in response to heat because copper forms oxides quite easily (yes, "oxides", there are two of them). Cupric oxide comes off with acid.

So I tested the acid, and nothing happened.

Today I took the pipe cleaner to a university to measure it's density. I hate doing this stuff at school, but now that I'm not in school it seems that I'm always doing it anyway.

After 10 minutes of pondering signs written in Cyrillic and asking questions in broken Mongolian, I finally found the general chemistry laboratory. Then, after miserably failing to explain what I wanted to do, I went and found someone who spoke English. That took about five minutes.

They were very helpful, and even showed me how to use the balance (the electric scale required a "technician"). I was very grateful and told them to stop by for free English practice.

Anyway, the density we got was 7.4 g/cm3. The graduated cyllinder didn't have marks finer than 10 ml, so we'll be generous and say it was 7 - 8 g/cm3.

Silver is 10.49 g/cm3.
Copper is 8.96 g/cm3.
Zinc is 7.04 g/cm3.
Nickel is 8.91 g/cm3.

Interestingly, the alloy of copper, nickel and zinc (which would be almost exactly the same density as the thing I measured) is known as German silver because it resembles silver in many ways.

So I bought a tobacco bowl and pipe cleaner for $7, and it was probably only worth $5. If it had been pure silver it's melt value would have been about $70. It was a decent gamble, perhaps I can find a greater fool.

To celebrate the fact that I had lost money, I decided to spend money (wait, there's something wrong with that). I stopped at the store where I bought my first silver coin and bought five more for $15.
When I got home I passed a magnet over them as an afterthought. All but one (a Mongolian copper coin from 1915) was a fake. Small surprise, considering the fact that three of them were from central america.

I can't believe I did that.

I'm going to be very, very careful buying silver now. At least the fakes I have bought were cheap enough so that I can probably re-sell them for about what I paid for them in the US. (Fake cuban 1930's peso for $2 anyone?).