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.