Yammer Sonin Youm Be!

This phrase has been the story of my life this past week. It means “how interesting!” or “how strange!” and it’s a phrase used in Mongolia for any number of things. It can have a positive connotation, like when you run into someone you know on the street that you weren’t expecting to see, or a negative connotation when you get hung up on by the fire department because it’s after 6pm and they would really prefer not to deal with your electrical fire after work hours.
Last weekend I went to UB to buy a plane ticket to Korea to take the GMAT and meet Cady. She came back out to Arkhangai to visit and do some seminars with me. While we were in UB we went to all the stores that sell “uncommon” vegetables and food, such as crackers, cheese, spices. On of my friends has told me about the American Store, which is owned by an American who has lived here a really long time and started importing many things from America that you can’t find here. The store is a little hole-in-the-wall place that is buried in a neighborhood in UB. My friend drew me a map, so Cady and I went in search of it. We eventually found it, and it’s literally in a shack in the middle of a bunch of apartment buildings. It was amazing. Tortilla chips, jars of salsa, marshmallows. Things I never imagined existed in this country. We spent about half an hour wandering around in awe.
We took the post bus back to Arkhangai, which is my usual mode of transport. It was especially miserable. We thought it was going to be the “big bus” because the woman who sold the tickets said so, but it didn’t turn out to be. The “big bus” is like a normal bus, the luggage goes on the bottom and the seats are normal bus seats that have backs and headrests. The addition of the “big bus” is a pretty new and welcome development. It turned out that we took the “little bus,” which is more standard in Mongolia. It is a bus about half the length of normal busses, with no room underneath for luggage. It should seat about 26, but usually there are about 40 people on the bus. And all the luggage is piled in the aisle, under seats, and crammed into the little shelf on the roof. On my way to UB it must have been “bring all your boxes on the bus” day, it seemed like everyone who got on the bus had about 4 boxes. So the luggage was piled about a foot over the level of peoples’ heads. I was in the very back seat and every time the bus stopped I had to crawl over the pile. On the way back to Arkhangai Cady and I were sitting near the front, so while we still had to climb over things, it wasn’t nearly as precarious. But we were seated right next to the heater, which is basically the breath of hell shooting hot air at you the entire 12 hour ride. So I opened the window. The bus ride is always a battle between the windows and roof vents being opened or closed. Usually someone will open them, and then 10 minutes later someone else will close it. Repeat, repeat, repeat. When the windows are open it is actually quite pleasant. It’s kind of annoying having air blowing in your face the whole time, but much better than being hot and miserable. Not usually according to Mongolians though. The woman sitting behind us was of the opinion that it’s better to swelter. So she tried to reach in front of me and close our window. I told her she couldn’t because I was hot, and she slapped me on the shoulder, pouted, and basically told me I was alone in being hot.
Everyone gets grumpy on the bus. It’s long and very uncomfortable. Sometimes that makes people act like jerks. While Cady and I were on the bus the Mongolians around us kept commenting to each other how difficult the foreigners were. I’m not sure why they thought we couldn’t understand them because we spoke to people in Mongolian several times. Our Mongolian is better than their English, so we made ourselves feel better by making sarcastic comments about them. After the lunch break a bunch of the men sitting in the front started drinking beer. So, of course, we had to stop at a place we don’t normally stop so they could get out and “look at the horses.” Cady and I got out and they yelled at us and said we weren’t allowed to and that we should drink less water. Later one of them tried to get me to throw his beer bottles caps out the window and I told him no I wouldn’t, what a bad thing. They all laughed, and it didn’t do much good because the next time we stopped for them to look at the horses he threw those and the bottles out the door.
We did eventually reach Tsetserleg, only slightly less the worse for the wear. A couple nights ago I had everyone over for dinner. We were all in my kitchen cooking, and all of a sudden we started smelling plastic burning. So we looked around to figure out what it was. Turned out to be my electrical outlet melting. So we unplugged everything, but Ochgo went out in the hall and saw a fire in the fuse box. That was a little scary. So I called my counterparts and they got a hold of my landlord. She came over and started calling the police and the fire department to get someone to come out and see what the problem was/try to keep my apartment from burning down. They hung up on her because it was after 6pm (not by much). Apparently in Mongolia the fire department only works during business hours. Yamer sonin youm be. Eventually they agreed to come out, and 45 minutes later two men showed up. I’m not sure what they did besides flip my fuses on and off a couple times and pull the outlet out and look inside the wall, but they said everything was fine but I couldn’t plug so many things in at once. Stupid foreigner. Aside from a half-melted outlet, it seems that everything is fine.
On Saturday we all went to Battsengal to go riding. It was Christi and Zaneta’s first trip to the hudoo, so we should have known… The driver we normally hire to take us to Battsengal couldn’t go because something is wrong with his car, so we had to take some other guy. About half way to Battsengal we were driving along and the tire fell off the axel. Not a flat tire, that’s normal. The entire tire, lug nuts and all, flew off the car and rolled about half a mile away down a hill. How interesting. The driver and Cady, who jumped out of the car and took off after the tire before we were even stopped, eventually got the tire back to the car and the driver began fixing it. He kept saying how interesting, we are so lucky, if we had been coming down a mountain we all probably would have died, we are the champions of luck. Interesting way to look at it I suppose. He discovered that the metal part that makes the tire turn was completely stripped, and a couple parts had fallen out. What brilliant car maintenance. Luckily Zaneta found the two little metal parts that were missing. He told us he didn’t need them so Tuul threw them in the grass, but it later turned out that his spare part was also missing pieces. So we picked through the grass and eventually found them. Two and a half hours, several games of 20 questions and charades later, and he had the tire pack on the axel and we were off.
On our way home, after our driver made us stop at some ger so he could buy aireg, the battery died. Luckily we just made it to Tsetserleg before the car completely died so we all just walked home. The driver still expected us to pay him full price. I refused, I have become so frustrated with some Mongolians and their ridiculous business practices. He takes horrible care of his car and it can’t even make it 120km without having several major problems, he stops at his friend’s place when we told him we didn’t want to stop and he still expects us to pay him what is equivalent to about a quarter of our monthly living allowance on top of all the gas? I don’t think so. We eventually came to an agreement on a 10,000 tugrik reduction in the price, and he was still mad and said we could never ride in his car again. How sad for us.
Luckily we made it out to Battsengal last weekend, because Winter has officially hit. It has snowed a few times this week and the biting, dust-filled winter wind has started.