|
| new colors again!
i have to go to norman again!
he ho ha he ho ha ha
| | |
| Here i go, to new orleans,
our house in the middle of our street
big big adventure!! cannot wait!!
all numeros in different states!
we are the village green
| | |
| this post is for samirmo!!!!! who is awesome and needs to hang out with moi more!
also, you were not born jan 20th!!
also, today is tre cool's birthday! happy birthday tre cool!, remember samirmo???
oh and i get to hang out with samirmo's dad for a week coming up ,
wahoooooooo. im gonna make him take me to the movies so he can fall
asleep!
that is all for now! i hope you have enjoyed this samirmoface!!!!!!!
| | |
|
Mixed Buisness
Quick
Note to Friends and Family: The University E-mail Server has been
suffering "severe performance problems" and has pretty much unavailable
to me for the last week. I’m hoping to shift my e-mail address as soon
as possible, but for now, if you wish to get a hold of me, leave a note
on my blog.
So another day with temperatures around 60
degrees has our current teacher, a conservation biologist, touting
theories of global warming, but everyone in our group is pretty happy
to be out of our sweaters and into short sleeves. Overall I’d say it’s
a pretty good day in Mongolia.
I have just come from an afternoon
discussion with several students and two professors from the American
Studies Program (Amerik Suglolyin Tuv) of the Mongolian National
University here in Ulaan Bataar. Both teachers from the American
Studies department and three of the approximately 50 students in the
University’s program joined our group for about an hour of really nice,
relatively unstructured conversation about comparative values between
our two nations. My personal highlight from the meeting was how excited
the Mongolian Students got when I mentioned I was from Oklahoma;
apparently the Great Plains is going to be covered in class next week.
My only caveat is to think that they condense all the greatness that is
the Mid-West down to a single week.
I think this discussion
highlights one of the most important travel skills (nay-life skills)
I’ve learned during my time, and that is being able to balance "Keeping
it Real" and "Playing it Cool." In Asia, it is often a cultural value
to let those you’re dealing with "save face" or avoid embarrassment,
and thus oftentimes it is best to "play it cool." For example during
our conversation, one of the professors was obviously very diplomatic
in her speech and her choice of topics, while the other, near the end
of our time together, tended to point conversation towards America’s
duplicity of values. So, while he was pointing out the contradiction
between our love of liberty and democracy and our actions in Vietnam
and Iraq, and our love of equality and American Jim Crow laws, I made a
wise choice to "Play it Cool." I could have mentioned there are periods
in each country’s history when the values of the people are not
congruent with the actions of the state, such as the Communist Purges
that ransacked Mongolia during the late 1930’s. I could have mentioned,
when the same professor was touting Mongolia’s pride in it’s untouched
natural landscapes, the Mongolian tendency towards throwing trash and
broken glass anywhere and everywhere. Instead, I chose to play it cool,
and let the conversation shift towards other topics.
In other
situations, however, the need to "keep it real" supplants the ideal of
"playing it cool." For example, on my way to the university, I hitched
a ride to the main square in town. I noticed that the person who picked
me up for some reason, while not being a cabby, had a taximeter in his
car. I also noticed this meter tended to count about twice as many
kilometers than what I remembered the distance being to the main square
in town. Now, at the end of the trip, when he was asking for about
twice the fair price, I decided know would probably be a good time to
"keep it real." I could have just "played it cool" and paid him what he
was asking; it would have been easier, he didn’t speak English, it
wasn’t that much money and it would’ve avoided a potential conflict.
But I decided to keep it real and send the message that he couldn’t
simply cheat all the white tourist who didn’t speak the language and
save some of my money. Thus, when the cab got to Sukh Bataar Square I
just gave him what I considered the fair price for the ride, the price
I paid numerous other times.
Sometimes, however, "Keeping it
Real" goes wrong. In this case, after handing the Cabby 500 less
Tugrugs than he was expecting, while he was protesting the price I
turned to leave and found that the passenger-side door was missing it’s
handle- I had no way of getting out. So now, instead of making a smooth
exit, I was stuck trying to explain to the cabby, in rather mediocre
sign language, I did not wish to pay him the price he was asking.
Eventually, his patience wore out, he reached over and thumbed a level
inside the door to let me out. Rob is getting the hang of Mongolia.
Keepin’ it Real | | |
| GEAR UP:
ALL SUFJAN
ALL STEVENS
ALL DAY LONG
| | |
|
