Mongolian time and liquid integration

September 13, 2015
Written by Eric

It never feels like you've done that much around here, until you've already done it. Emily and I have a fair amount of downtime right now as we settle in to our communities and respective teaching roles, and yet at times it feels like there's never enough time in the day to get everything done. I suppose that's not so different from anything else in life, really.

So, what have we been doing, then? I'll start with today and move backward: Emily's cooking skills continue to amaze me, as she's currently making an apple coffee cake to take to one of our new friend's apartment. Again, we've been asked to be vague as to names and specific traits, but suffice it to say that this person is also not Mongolian, and is doing volunteer work. She's offering us very good coffee, and Emily wanted to return the favor. [Update: the cake was delicious, and I don't even like cooked apples.]

Earlier today, we went to the market and got hold of a few necessities, mostly food. I had thought that today was supposed to get up to 28 degrees Celsius (just about 80 degrees F), but that's clearly not the case, as it's currently jacket weather, cloudy, and windy.

We've been making good with my college lately, in a few ways. First, I'm finally full-on into this job, teaching classes and designing lesson plans with my counterparts. Second, we spent Friday and Saturday at Lake Kyrgyz, a lake which is about a two-hour drive from Ulaangom. This was an object lesson in several respects, the most relevant being the reality of Mongolian time. We were originally supposed to leave at 2 to go to the lake, but one of my CPs said we'd more likely leave at 3. Em and I showed up at 230, and sat around until about 330, at which time we got on a bus. We pulled out of the parking lot at about 4 and stopped at a gas station, after which we turned around and went back to the college, and about ten or twelve more Mongolians boarded the bus. About fifteen minutes later, we pulled away again only to stop at a store across the street, where we parked (with the engine running, heightening my anticipation) for another ten to fifteen minutes. At last, around 430, we were on our way.

We experienced the beginning of our third object-lesson on the bus, which Em and I decided to describe as “liquid integration”. You can decide what that means; I will neither explicitly confirm nor deny those suspicions. Liquid integration continued on a much grander scale once we reached the lake. 

A quick aside – I was expecting that we were going to go to the much-closer, largest-in-the-country Lake Uvs (or Uvs Nuur), but it was not so. The two-hour bus ride was, therefore, also a surprise. I was also expecting that we would be sleeping outside camping style, but this was also not the case. We stayed at a 'tourist lodge' which included a main building with a kitchen and several meals, three large lodging houses -- which my group completely filled -- and a few guest gers. Emily and I stayed in the gers. 

We were awake and partying with them up until about 11ish, then pooped out and went to bed. When I woke up three hours later at about 2 am, they were still going. Okay, not too bad, I thought. People like to party; 2 or 3 am seems reasonable to me. But when I woke up at 630 am and the music was still going, I was a little more surprised. The next morning, I asked one of my CPs how late she had been up. She told me she had gone to bed at about 7 am (and woke up at about 830) after dancing all night. Some of the men had apparently neither gone to sleep nor stopped partying. I don't mean to pass judgment on Mongolians with this; I just thought it was impressive. I haven't stayed up that late in... hell, have I ever? I don't think I have. I don't think I'd even want to.

Anyway, the next day was quite nice – sunny and breezy. We hiked up a nearby mountain into a small canyon where it was so quiet you could hear dirt shifting, chit-chatted with a lot of people in Monglish (exactly what it sounds like), and tried to catch up on missed sleep. After breakfast, our understanding of Mongolian time expanded further: we asked one particularly friendly guy -- whose name we did not get, somehow -- when we would leave. He said at about 2 o'clock, after lunch, which would be at 1. When lunch hadn't started at 2, I asked one of my CPs when we would leave, to which she responded, “After dinner, probably 8 or 9.” Okay, roll with it. Of course, we ate dinner at 530, and ended up leaving at about 7, 715.

The party continued on the bus trip back; we were on the bus with mostly older folks, which we thought would be more sedate. It was not to be, prompting Emily to observe that in Mongolia, every bus is a party bus. They either sang, danced, or sang and danced the entire trip back. It would have been fine with me, had one person not taken it upon themselves to do that shrill, fingers-in-your-mouth whistle every minute or so. Oh, and they also played “Gimme Gimme Gimme” by Abba. Points in the negative column.

The whole thing was fun, though; we were the only people around for miles and miles. Once we got out of the city, in fact, it was sort of like driving out of Las Vegas, but more stark. If you've never driven into Vegas, what I mean is this: you're in the desert, you're in the desert, you're in the desert, there's nothing around and then BAM! There's Vegas. For this, it was two hours of nothing but herds of animals and the occasional ger, then BAM! Ulaangom. The lodge we stayed at was stand-alone; there was a gas station nearby, but nothing else within sight, even from the top of the hills /mountains behind it.

Other than that, things have been going pretty well. The power and water was off in the morning thre days in a row. Don't know why. The weather has been getting steadily cooler, though, which means soonish we will have hot water. I am, perhaps, unreasonably excited about that. We haven't seen our American friends much this past week, unfortunately, but we plan on making up for that in the coming week.

Coming soon: a lake trip with Emily's school and the first nights below freezing with no he