Lost in Translation

Dear Paedobear,

Well after our recent chat Im sure youd be proud of me. Its been two days and so far I havent slept alone in my stay in UB. It seems I've continued my incredible celibate bed hopping skills from Oz. I should be an international sensation.

I didnt land till midnight and when we finally pulled into the only person at the house was a teenage Mongolian girl who had prepared everything for my arrival. I was supposed to be staying wth her mother but because of my unexpected plane change she was on business in Korea. This was all fine until the guide who dropped me off left and we became alarmingly aware that neither of us speak each others language. Thank god for my charades practice (finely honed at Jess' house at Christmas- ask her about Dr Yarmulke and Man Thumb).

Even so, once we'd covered the basics; point at self and say Elizabeth, mime sleeping and look questioning, she rubs her stomach [No guys, she wasnt asking if I was pregnant but thanks for the faith] and I shake my head etc, it gets remarkably difficult to hold a conversation. Her name is  Ariuka, she's 16 and still at school, helping her mum out at her clothing store at the weekends. I found this out in a manner of charades and with the help of a English-Mongolian phrasebook which had been printed in what must have been the 1960s- it considered where to buy men's cologne in a department store a fairly crucial piece of information evidently. I turned out that her elder brother Azaa was studying software in Bangalore but had spent several years learning English so she got hold of him on MSN and we spent a surreal hour trying to establish simple things like when we would wake up in the morning and whether I'd want breakfast and dinner. This was broken up intermittently by by exclamations of how beautiful I was followed shortly by a description of her beautiful brother. This is somewhat distressing. Updates shall follow.

By about 2am her brother called the shots and told us both to go to bed. Nice to see the control he had from across the continent. I pointed at myself and the bed and her and the bed and mimed out where we were going to sleep. I think somethings must have got lost in translation because, preparing as I was to sleep, she jumped in the bed next to me. Needless to say, it had been a while since a strange girl had hopped in my bed so I was somewhat thrown. But hey, go figure, its what they call immersion right? Nothing more integrating than a little cuddle. (I have now been informed that no, this is not the norm and I do actually get a room. The handbook had warned that Mongolians were very shy, conservative and withdrawn though friendly. I think it may need updating)

Their house is lovely- its absurdly clean and neat so much t\so that I find myself folding and ordering my clothes and making my bed in the mornings. I cant promise this will continue back home, so Duffyneed not fear hell be out of a job. Especially after the squalor we lived in in the Fish house with questionable hygiene, dodgy food-poisoning inducing meals, Roland the rat, Colin and his cockraoach family and the trail of ants who had made our kitchen counter their personal M1 and endless bottles, boxes, cans, glasses, mugs and tupperwares of ethanol-esque alcohol, it feels like I've returned to civilsation. Ironic, eh?

Not just civilsation but home- several of the other volunteers (older than me by a stretch of a few years) have never lived away from home (its more common in Oz where they dont live on campus at uni) so i dont think they appreciate how nice it is but my host family (Ariuka's mum Narya came home yesterday) are excessively kind about food. Eggs and thick, hard bread and long Frankfurter like sausages (oh grow up!) for breakfast, a stew called hosh or hoff of cabages, potatoes, mutton and rice and cake like cookies to have with tea- if I was a yeti when I left Sydney Ill be a veritable BFG when I get home.

Yesterday my guide, Zuula, showed me around UB which largely consisted in a walk from the house to the Projects Abroad office down the very long Peace Av. (apparently th equivalent of Oxford St not that youd have thought it) to see the State Department Store (set up in 1921 as the first Department Store in Mongolia but somewhat hindered by the Communist era), Sukhbaatar Square with its government building (UB's Whitehouse. I'm sure Barack would say the same) and toweing statue of Genghis Khan. We changed my money along the way into one of the most ridiculous currencies I've ever seen- 1 pound is roughly 2,200 tigruk so I walked out with a wad of cash big enough to use as a pillow.

Having come straight from Hong Kong one of the first things I noticed was the lack of people on the streets. I had briefly considered running before dusk in HK (I know, you can tell Ems and Jack and they can laugh) until the logistics hit home and I realised I'd spent most of my time jogging on one spot the streets are so congested. Everything in HK is pint sized- the tiny people have tiny clothes (the size Christine could fit in after her NYE corset...) and tiny shops so small they dont have fitting rooms. I feldt like I'd done a Gulliver and landed in Lilliput. Here though the streets are empty, even by London standards, are pockmarked with manholes, piles of bricks and rubble and half built walls and scaffolding. The driving is mental- I had thought Paris was bad but here, as one of the other volunteers said, they dont slow down they even do a 'cheeky' speed up. I dont know whether theyr playing Hit The Westerner, but they seem to be doing a very good job of it. I may have to rethink my traffic strategy- its too much paperwork for them to hit me- which I employed back home much to Eliot's fear.

I managed to disappear last night by meeting up with the other volunteers for drinks (an Irish pub if you remember the last one we went to back in those heady days in Paris) which turned into several drinks as we moved onto Xanadu Art Gallery. There were few things more surreal than standing in an art gallery drinking Chinggis (the local beer) as a room full of ex-pats sang along to Mr Brightside played on the acoustic guitar by a somewhat destroyed Australian. A little later, when it was my round, the Australian volunteer next to me expressed (for the umpteenth time) his burning desire for vodka shots. Which led of course to the purchase of a bottle of Borol and 5 glasses. The whole bottle was gone within minutes and it didnt take much to for the devils on my shoulder to conclude that clubbing was the next step forward. I think it was at this point that the girl opposite asked how long I'd been in Mongolia: under 24 hours.

In an attempt not to wake up my very kind host family at 3:30am, it was generally decided that staying at a friends house was preferable which is where I woke up this morning for a crisp winter walk back to the house aong Peace Av. When Narya saw me, far from being annoyed, she cooked me breakfast (eggs and sausages and bread again. The pregnancy comment might not be far off), sent me to shower and bed and cooked me lunch to heat up when I woke up. I just found myself a Mongolian mum.

Anyway babes, I should start getting ready- Im meeting the other volunteers for dinner in a couple of hours. Bed lottery anyone?

Miss you like  a bird misses humming 
Much love your mistress, conscience and spiritual guide xxx