Let the stupidity begin!

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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.