The Habitat Team started arriving Friday morning. Before breakfast, Jeannie and Jonathan, both from NYU Law School, arrived on Aeroflot via Moscow, some 27 hours door to door. They had six hours in Moscow so they left the airport and got to spend a hour or so in Red Square. I was in my room when the phone rang and the front desk informed me that my roommate was in the hall - Jonathan was my new roommate and we will be sharing this suite until Monday morning.
After breakfast, I headed off to LEI for my last day of teaching English. To celebrate the day, I had crazy pencils for each student - every one was different, all colored in a crazy scheme. This allowed each student to describe the pencil: green eraser, blue background with red stripes or red eraser, orange background with black stripes, etc.. Before class, I checked to make sure it was okay to give everyone fruit. I had Orgil, the student who taught me to ride the bus, go with me and I purchased bananas and oranges at the fruit stand - everyone had a piece of fruit for their morning snack in class. All the classes went well and I said my goodbyes - they all want to know when I am coming back.
In the afternoon, I set out on my own. My first stop was the Memorial Museum to the Victims of Political Persecution. This time it was open and I went through the museum with a couple from England (we were the only visitors). In the first room, they had these large posters, one for each of the 21 aimags (provinces) of Mongolia - each was about 36" wide and 24" tall. While it is hard to see in the photos, on each poster there was a small description in English (bottom right hand corner of the first three, bottom left of the fourth) giving the number of people killed, imprisoned, exiled, etc. during the Stalinist era purges 1937 - 1939. There was also a map of each aimag (top right hand corner of the first three posters, bottom right hand corner of the fourth) so you could see where this happened. I believe the national population at that time was around 700,000 and some 30,000 were executed or disappeared.
One of the more ghastly exhibits was of some the human skulls that have been exhumed from some of the mass graves.
There were many letters and newspaper articles; some did not have translations, but some did. The purges went after all of the government and religious leaders, as well as what we refer to as the intelligentsia. Here is a Buddhist monk who was convicted of crimes and whose property was taken.
Here is the Prime Minister who was jailed for ten years, but after Mongolia became an independent democracy in 1989 (after the collapse of the Soviet Union) had his conviction overturned in 1990.
There were also paintings to illustrate how the government controlled the population.
I then headed off to a sidewalk cafe for quick dish of pasta and a cold beer. My next destination was the Mongolian Museum of Natural History. Along the way, I came across The National Legal Institute. In the lobby, I could tell that the security guard did not know any English and that he seemed apprehensive about my presence - presumably because he could not communicate with me. In front of his desk, there was a variety of brochures that appeared to be basic legal information for Mongolians - it looked like consumer rights and other similar topics. There was a book store off the lobby and the doors were open, so I went in to investigate. While most of the books were in Mongolian, there were some in English, including "English for Lawyers" and the "Mongolian Law Review." Before I could go any further, a Mongolian tourist who also spoke English came to tell me that the guard said that even though the book store doors were open, it was not open for business and asked if could I please leave the book store.
I continued north to the Museum of Natural History. My Lonely Planet Guide indicated that there were a lot of interesting dinosaur skeletons and information, so I was looking forward to this. But when I got there, the sign indicated it was closed because of renovations.
So I continued to wander around and came across this construction site, one block south of the Blue Sky Hotel. The sign says it will be The International Commercial Center and has a drawing of what it will look like when finished. I then took several photos looking up at the construction.
I also discovered that the World Health Organization had an office building nearby.
At another location, there was a commercial being filmed.
And more construction in every direction - in the UB Post (the local English language newspaper), I read that the population of Mongolia had reached 2.9 million and that rents in Ulaanbaatar were expected to quadruple in the next two years. GDP has been growing at 12.5% for each of the past several years and is expected to continue at that rate for the foreseeable future.
I returned to the hotel and found that Jonathan was napping. Jeannie stopped by to leave him a note and to say that she would be walking around town because she wanted to stay awake. Later, Thai (our Habitat group leader) and his wife Minh arrived; they had spent three days in Beijing, and had adapted to the time change. Billy, the local Habitat staffer, came by the hotel. We put two tables together in the hotel restaurant and the six of has dinner together. Billy explained how he had gone to the USA speaking no English, but learned from necessity. Over ten years, he lived in Chicago, Little Rock and Dallas. Because he was a basketball player, he played on a local Mongolian basketball team and went to the annual Mongolian basketball competitions. Unknown to us Americans, there are some 25 or 30 Mongolian teams around the USA that gather annually in a different city - so he got to visit Denver, Portland, New York and several other cities. Two years ago, as the eldest son in his family, he returned to Mongolia, started law school and then got hired by Habitat for Humanity.
For dinner, everyone tried different Mongolian dishes and Mongolian beers. I had a Tiger beer again (although it is not Mongolian, it is brewed and bottled here) and an Alton Gobi (Golden Gobi). I had the Epos soup with toast - beef, onions, peppers, mushrooms and noodles in a mildly spiced broth.
After breakfast, I headed off to LEI for my last day of teaching English. To celebrate the day, I had crazy pencils for each student - every one was different, all colored in a crazy scheme. This allowed each student to describe the pencil: green eraser, blue background with red stripes or red eraser, orange background with black stripes, etc.. Before class, I checked to make sure it was okay to give everyone fruit. I had Orgil, the student who taught me to ride the bus, go with me and I purchased bananas and oranges at the fruit stand - everyone had a piece of fruit for their morning snack in class. All the classes went well and I said my goodbyes - they all want to know when I am coming back.
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| LEI Teachers and staff |
In the afternoon, I set out on my own. My first stop was the Memorial Museum to the Victims of Political Persecution. This time it was open and I went through the museum with a couple from England (we were the only visitors). In the first room, they had these large posters, one for each of the 21 aimags (provinces) of Mongolia - each was about 36" wide and 24" tall. While it is hard to see in the photos, on each poster there was a small description in English (bottom right hand corner of the first three, bottom left of the fourth) giving the number of people killed, imprisoned, exiled, etc. during the Stalinist era purges 1937 - 1939. There was also a map of each aimag (top right hand corner of the first three posters, bottom right hand corner of the fourth) so you could see where this happened. I believe the national population at that time was around 700,000 and some 30,000 were executed or disappeared.
One of the more ghastly exhibits was of some the human skulls that have been exhumed from some of the mass graves.
There were many letters and newspaper articles; some did not have translations, but some did. The purges went after all of the government and religious leaders, as well as what we refer to as the intelligentsia. Here is a Buddhist monk who was convicted of crimes and whose property was taken.
Here is the Prime Minister who was jailed for ten years, but after Mongolia became an independent democracy in 1989 (after the collapse of the Soviet Union) had his conviction overturned in 1990.
There were also paintings to illustrate how the government controlled the population.
I then headed off to a sidewalk cafe for quick dish of pasta and a cold beer. My next destination was the Mongolian Museum of Natural History. Along the way, I came across The National Legal Institute. In the lobby, I could tell that the security guard did not know any English and that he seemed apprehensive about my presence - presumably because he could not communicate with me. In front of his desk, there was a variety of brochures that appeared to be basic legal information for Mongolians - it looked like consumer rights and other similar topics. There was a book store off the lobby and the doors were open, so I went in to investigate. While most of the books were in Mongolian, there were some in English, including "English for Lawyers" and the "Mongolian Law Review." Before I could go any further, a Mongolian tourist who also spoke English came to tell me that the guard said that even though the book store doors were open, it was not open for business and asked if could I please leave the book store.
I continued north to the Museum of Natural History. My Lonely Planet Guide indicated that there were a lot of interesting dinosaur skeletons and information, so I was looking forward to this. But when I got there, the sign indicated it was closed because of renovations.
So I continued to wander around and came across this construction site, one block south of the Blue Sky Hotel. The sign says it will be The International Commercial Center and has a drawing of what it will look like when finished. I then took several photos looking up at the construction.
I also discovered that the World Health Organization had an office building nearby.
At another location, there was a commercial being filmed.
And more construction in every direction - in the UB Post (the local English language newspaper), I read that the population of Mongolia had reached 2.9 million and that rents in Ulaanbaatar were expected to quadruple in the next two years. GDP has been growing at 12.5% for each of the past several years and is expected to continue at that rate for the foreseeable future.
I returned to the hotel and found that Jonathan was napping. Jeannie stopped by to leave him a note and to say that she would be walking around town because she wanted to stay awake. Later, Thai (our Habitat group leader) and his wife Minh arrived; they had spent three days in Beijing, and had adapted to the time change. Billy, the local Habitat staffer, came by the hotel. We put two tables together in the hotel restaurant and the six of has dinner together. Billy explained how he had gone to the USA speaking no English, but learned from necessity. Over ten years, he lived in Chicago, Little Rock and Dallas. Because he was a basketball player, he played on a local Mongolian basketball team and went to the annual Mongolian basketball competitions. Unknown to us Americans, there are some 25 or 30 Mongolian teams around the USA that gather annually in a different city - so he got to visit Denver, Portland, New York and several other cities. Two years ago, as the eldest son in his family, he returned to Mongolia, started law school and then got hired by Habitat for Humanity.
For dinner, everyone tried different Mongolian dishes and Mongolian beers. I had a Tiger beer again (although it is not Mongolian, it is brewed and bottled here) and an Alton Gobi (Golden Gobi). I had the Epos soup with toast - beef, onions, peppers, mushrooms and noodles in a mildly spiced broth.
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