The First Day in Town

It was dark at 6:30AM when Tobi jumped on my bed. The punctual morning call of Tobi meant an urgent biological walk outdoors in the coldness. After walking and showering Tobi, Enkhee prepared a good and nutritious breakfast for her son. "The lunch was not good enough for a growing boy at the secondary school, I'd like to feed my son well at home", Enkhee contended as a proud and caring mother. My morning ritual started by seeing Enkhee dress her son in warm clothes for school bus at 7:30AM when it was still dark. Then I returned to the warm bed to continue my unfinished dream.

Being a devout Christian, Enkhee reads the Bible every morning, she also makes the good use of early morning hours to translate books about God's words from English into Mongolian. When the morning broke at eight thirty, I walked into the kitchen to see kind and compassionate Enkhee prepare the crumble for a flock of sparrows chirping on the balcony. I thought all birds would have flown to the south for warmer places to spend the winter. Why did the sparrows in Mongolia remain? Didn't they have wings?

In my bedroom, it was a fascinating scene to look out through the frozen window on the 9th floor to see parents hold their well-clad small kids to the kindergarten across the playground. I wondered how hard it would be for parents to convince their toddlers to leave their warm beds to school in the snow.

After a light breakfast of a cup of Mongolian tea and a slice of bread, Enkhee accompanied me to a small bank in the neighborhood to exchange US dollars into Mongolian tugrugs (exchange rate 1 USD = 1450 tugrugs). Having a bunch of cash in hand, we hopped into a cab to see what the State Department Store had to offer.

The facade of the State Department Store was the same as it was five years ago. When I saw an huge ice sculpture of two bottles of orange juice and a teddy bear, I took the camera out of my bag just to know that the battery was frozen to death. We rushed into the store to get warm and to see a much different layout of the interior. As Mongolia had been developing rapidly in the past five years, more cars running on the streets, more people shopping in the department store, more exciting future awaiting in front.

Upon my request, Enkhee showed me to the bookstore on the 5th floor to look for Baabar's newly published book in English, From World Power to Soviet Satellite recommended by Mr. Choidorj. Be it a big bookstore occupying two thirds of the whole floor, there were no books in English. When Enkhee found Who's Who in Mongolia Theatre, she was happy to show me that her father appeared on the first page, because his last name started with A. Enkhee continued to find another book, Who's Who in Mongolia Movie and her mother was in the book. Coming from a celebrity family, Enkhee told me many of her happy childhood memories when her parents rehearsing lines at home and taking the kids to the backstage of the theater.

After I bought two booklets of color papers to make the green, yellow, and red flags as timing devices for Toastmasters demo meetings at the stationery corner, we took the escalator down to the hat corner on third floor to see if it was open by then. At noon, the hat counter was finally open.

Being a hat aficionado, I loved all woolen hats on display and I tried them on one after another. After taking more than a dozen photos of various hats and caps of different colors and styles on, I was told it was forbidden to take photos in the store. Among all beautiful hats, I bought a brown dog ear winter cap with Mongolian motif on.

It was 1PM when we walked into Pizza Broadway next to the State Department Store. I ordered hot coffee latte and Enkhee had hot lemon tea to go with our super yummy Pizza Combo. Being a foreigner, I must have caught a lot of attention from the young and pretty waitresses by setting my camera on self-timer to take photos of my newly-bought cap. "How come a middle-aged woman could enjoy herself so much by posing in front of the camera? Where is she from?" wondered the waitresses. When I found three straws in green, yellow, and red colors, I encouraged Enkhee to try a short tabletopics session over lunch for fun.

After a good recharging of our body and soul at Pizza Broadway, I was ready for an afternoon city tour on foot. On the way to the State Circus, we passed a Korean pavilion. When I saw a small fence garden covered with thick snow, I didn't think twice to jump in and lay down facing up to make the first snow angel in my life. We rushed to the State Circus to get warm inside, but it was closed. Nevertheless, it was worth the trip, because I loved the ice sculpture surrounding it.

At 2:30PM, we walked into the Ulaanbaatar city library. Like Taipei city library, Ulaanbaatar city library was packed with young college students. Unlike Taipei city library, Ulaanbaatar was not free for entrance. I couldn't get into the library to browse the books on the shelves, because it would cost me 7,000 tugrugs to apply for an annual pass. And it would cost another 1,000 tugrugs to borrow a book to read at home. Education in Mongolia was not free for all. American Culture & Information Center next door on the other hand was free to enter. There were quite a few new books in English on display, I didn't bother to ask if I could borrow them, because Batbaatar and Deegii were eager to take me to visit the National Museum of Mongolian History and Enkhee had to go home to greet her son from school.

Founded in 1991, renovated in 1998, the National Museum of Mongolian history was well worth the visit. The museum exhibits the history and culture of Mongols from ages as early as the Stone Age and up to the modern days. I was amazed at the deer stones of ancient period on the first floor. It was not to my knowledge there were deer stones in China, probably because reindeers were herded by people in the cold north.

The traditional costumes, hats and jewelry of different ethnic groups caught my attention. I liked very much the exaggerating hair style and the fancy accessories on it, and I tried to memorize the details for my future reference. Due to the time constraint, I took a quick look at the exhibits on the 3rd floor, including traditional Mongolian Culture and Life, and 20th Century Mongolia. Even though I visited the museum for two hours in 2004, I was glad to revisit the museum in 2010 for one hour.

At four, Deegii invited me and Batbaatar to her office at Center 34 for a cup of freshly brewed coffee. Fifteen mintues later, we were on the road to the wild west, 100 kilometers from Ulaanbaatar. It was one of the most thrilling adventures in my life to drive on a traffic free asphalt road in the snow land. When the sun set, the sky and the snow land turned into a blue canvas with a stroke of yellow and orange horizon at the far end. It was dark when we arrived at a storage room packed with wolves caught by the hunters in the forest. Each wolf was frozen to death with a big chunk of bait meat in their mouth, eyes widely opened. I was told that the wolves would be sold to Chinese people to make Chinese medicine. In stead of remembering any Chinese medicine made from wolves, I thought of wolf's fur to make the best brush for Chinese painting and calligraphy.

After the successful wolf deal, we were invited to have tea at the broker's ger in the middle of nowhere in dark. The Mongolian hospitality received at the ger was genuine and heartfelt. I had a big cup of Mongolian tea, sweet cookies, and dried mare milk curd. The hot milk tea was okay, the hard sweet cookies were okay, but the dried mare milk curd was tasteless and vary hard to bite.

In the middle of the tea time, a young boy in a traditional Mongolian costume came into the ger after he finished the herding work. He was very cute and shy. I tried my best to communicate with him. I asked him if he could sing. I asked him if he could recite poetry. His mother smiled at us with interest. I'm sure if I could stay at the ger for a week, the young boy could teach me about herding and I could teach the boy about singing and dancing. We could become good friends.

At seven o'clock, we left the ger family. I can't thank the Mongolian family in the ger enough for sharing their food and drinks with us in the darkness and coldness. When we left the ger, I saw many stars shining in the sky. I felt so close to the universe and I felt so small in the vast steppe covered with snow.

After 5 minutes navigating on the dirt snow field to reach the main road, I found that I left Enkhee's scarf in the ger and we had to return to the ger again. It took the driver 10 minutes to figure out the right way back the ger. I was glad that I was forgetful so that I could see the Mongolian family for the second time.

At 8:30PM, I was back home in UB. I asked Tsenguun if he could help me make paper flags with the color papers I bought at the State Department Store. After making three color flags with the chopsticks in the kitchen, Tsenguun posed a victory sign before we called it a night. I was so grateful that I was lucky to live with a young school boy full of energy and spirit in a Mongolian family.