Also, people should be grateful for the opportunity to learn a new language. Besides being a good way of communicating and learning about the world, learning a new language improves general memory, provides some protection against dementia in the elderly, and can be helpful in the case of a stroke or brain lesion.
As regards the bit about brain lesions, bilingual people who have lost the ability to speak or understand one language due to a neural lesion sometimes have fewer problems with the other because it is stored in a different physical location. There's some debate about how much of an effect being bilingual has, but there were a few examples I read that show it is indeed helpful, even if only occasionally.
Anyway.
That rant was because of a youtube video I saw on how people who come to America should learn English, so the rest of us don't have to deal with signs or automated messages in a foreign language. A cynical person would say that English IS a foreign language to the vast majority of Americans, but I'm not a cynical person.
Am I?
Anyway, still on the topic of languages.
In Ulaanbaatar a taxi is any car that stops when you hold out your hand. This is a lovely system, because it means you meet a lot of interesting people and never have to wait long for a taxi.
Yesterday I decided to go to Zaisan for the afternoon... by myself. I asked several people to go with me, but they declined for a variety of reasons. Some said it was too cold, some said they wanted to stay and watch a movie, and some merely stared off into space muttering about "the chosen one" as as they rocked gently back and forth smoking weed and listening to Yani.
I mean....
So I went by myself. I crossed the street and quickly flagged a taxi. The driver asked me where I was going, and I told him. Some drivers try to start up a conversation, but this man wasn't one of them. He was completely silent as we drove across the city, except for his soft humming.
Then, in the middle of an intersection, the car died. It didn't sputter, it just died. The driver tried to start it up again. It sputtered like a teenager being told to get up at six AM, then died. Turning to me, he gave an embarrassed grin and asked if I could help him push. After we had pushed the car out of the intersection and to the side of the road he told me the car was out of gas.
Mongolian drivers NEVER have more than a gallon of gas in their tanks. To keep people from siphoning their gas they simply leave their tanks as close to empty as possible. When the tanks are that close to empty it is very hard to read the gas gauge, so a lot of them simply drive around until the car starts to sputter, then turn into a gas station and put in another half gallon. There is one obvious problem with this: cars are constantly dying between gas stations and causing traffic jams.
I sighed, paid the driver for the distance he had taken me, and flagged another "taxi".
Two cars stopped almost instantly, and I got into the one that happened to be closest. Getting in, I directed the driver to Zaisan. He turned around and handed me a pencil and a pad of paper, tapping on the paper to indicate I should write it down. "Zaisan?" I said again, hopefully. "I can't write" I said in Mongolian. He shook his head and pointed to his ear.
ah.
I wrote it down, spelling it Заисан, which was probably wrong. He looked at the paper, puzzled. I pointed in the direction of Zaisan, continuing to blabber on in broken Mongolian out of habit. He smiled and nodded.
"Thi, Dan" he said, pronouncing each syllable distinctly and carefully, but none the less incorrectly. He then proceeded to drive me to Zaisan.
In Ulaanbaatar there are few cars that aren't scared and battered. Most cars have their bumpers covered in dents and paint streaks. This is partly because most of the country has learned to drive quite recently, and also because the roads were designed for much lighter, much slower traffic. At the moment the main rule of the road is "avoid death". Smaller cars get out of the way of larger cars, and interesting horns have been invented due to the fact that normal horns are losing their effect from overuse.
I was somewhat nervous as the deaf taxi driver pulled out into the traffic, realizing that he couldn't hear any of the horns directed at him. My fears were soon allayed as I realized he checked his mirrors about every five to ten seconds. Normally, a trip across the city involves several near death experiences, but not in this car. As I watched him it dawned on me that he was keeping track of every single car in the sea of traffic, and I was awed.
Zaisan was fun, if somewhat cold. I flew paper airplanes on the updrafts climbing the slopes of the hills, and some of them stayed in the air for about 30 seconds. Here are some more pictures. Click on them to see them full size.
People have been getting more serious about Buddhism recently. Under communism it was discouraged, but now Mongolian Buddhists are actively trying to discover what it means to be Buddhist, including some valiant attempts at vegetarianism. 
Anything that includes the Russian hammer and cycle has got to be cool, especially when there are kids climbing on it.
HIPPIES WERE HERE!(no, the dream catcher is not traditional)
This will look cool once it finally turns green.
I think that the smoke has an almost dreamlike quality when the sun shines through it at this angle. Maybe I've been here too long.
On the way back I found a place where the ice had melted, leaving the impression of ice crystals in the mud.
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