Next time you'll get your food!

I hung out yesterday with Roland. We've both lived in Mongolia for quite some time and alternate between expat type restaurants and Mongolian restaurants. We chose a Mongol restaurant this time we chose a place in the 10th district. The atmosphere was nice. No jerkwads in the place.

I ordered some khaan coffee, burmel schnitzel (burmel, means breaded in Mongolian), and some parantha bread. Roland ordered Indian coffee, one bing, and gulayash.

I got the coffee and schnitzel minus the parantha. Roland got the Indian coffee and bing minus the gulayash. So after I finished my schnitzel, we asked for the bill and our waitress for our bill. She said it came to 7,000 and we pointed that Roland's goulash and my parantha never came. She asked us if we still wanted them; we said "no thanks" and she deducted them from our bill as a result. Still a good place. I think Roland and I might go there perhaps on a double date or some such. As we were leaving some Mongolian woman who I think is the manager did the little covering the mouth thing some Mongolian women do and said in English "Next time you'll get your food."

Serdamba & Dean invaded the Blackmarket

Former M-elevens and other folk (Dean's family and friends) might know Serdamba. Today Dean and Serdamba went to the blackmarket. Dean's main mission today was to get some new shoelaces for his shoes. Serdamba need to get a new 10 Liter container to hold water. Not much has changed there. It is still the kind of place where it is best to know where one is going or at least to look like one knows where one is going. Serdamba and I bought all the items we needed and made it through snag-free.

I also hung out with Roland Mendoza this morning and accomplished some of the tasks I needed to complete for the working permit at my new job. Tomorrow I may meet Roland again to do some more of this stuff.

Why this how question is important

My name is Dean Villa. I am a former Peace Corps volunteer. I served in Mongolia as a volunteer between June of 2000 until June of 2002. After that, I taught at a a private school for another two. I also sometimes work as a guide/ interpreter. Now I'm back in Mongolia teaching English at a Russian school. Ultimately I want to work in educational exchange and if possible live in both countries. If I can get the right kind of job, I plan on living sometimes in Mongolia and sometimes in the United States.

I want this blog to be informative, funny, and practical. I've helped lots and lots of tourists in the last 6 months after recently returning. I have also helped my best Mongolian friend, Serdamba. He works as a guide in the summer and a teacher during the school year, however, this fall he'll be studying for his Phd in educational studies. One really awesome English recently married couple got me into blogging. I visited their blog and and found out how to create my own blog and that brings us up to the present moment. They noticed something most travellers to Ulaanbaatar/ Mongolia notice. It can be an adventure crossing the street in UB and that is how I came up with the title. There is really so much more that makes life difficult here, and yet if one learns some basic Mongolian phrases and modifies one's perspective these little difficulties aren't impossible to deal with. In addition to crossing the street other difficulties include finding a restaurant, ordering food in a Mongolian restaurant, finding a phone, making a phone call, dealing with health issues, travelling in Ulaanbaatar, and sometimes just plain having fun. Some of these issues come about by peoples' personal preference, temperate, personality and the like. Others come about because of the fact that Mongolia is a developing country and that the infrastructure is always in a state of change. Where to find wet wipes for example? Ibuprofren can be found but where? Where can you find a good bar or restaurant that isn't packed with expats and yet has good food, beer, and at the same time is safe? It is possible to find such places. Recently after spending sometime in the UB Guesthouse I noticed some people who were just hanging around the guesthouse watching movie after movie. They were bored because they didn't know where to go, where the good places are, where the safe places are; I am an enemy of boredom.

Tim and Sam the English couple are travelling around the world for their honeymoon. They're perfecting skills they learned in England. Horseback riding and moutaineering. they're travelling around to countries to learn how local people in certain countries have perfected these skills. So they are trekking in the Himalayas; that is the Pakistan portion of the journey. The horseback riding portion included Mongolia. They were told by my friends who are a bunch of herders living in Khuvsgol Aimag that they are now quite good. Tim and Sam became my friends too.

My hobbies include travelling, exploring, learning foreign languages, swimming, hiking, reading books, and watching movies.