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.
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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.