Grub Club: The Castle

Okay, so I lied a little.  This is not a proper grub club post.  Grub Club has disbanded for the summer.  However, the school took us to The Castle Restaurant at the Children's Park for the seniors' graduation dinner, so I'm working with it.

I was really proud of the seniors.  I taught maybe half of them in my art elective this year, and two of those are going on to study art related careers - architecture and fashion design.  However, I would have much preferred a graduation dinner like we took the 8th graders for on Friday - just me and the other homeroom teacher, and 24 kids at another castle...the Irish Castle.  This is because some of my esteemed colleagues annoy the everliving crap out of me, and when the speeches started it got real old, real fast.  I mean, who the hell quotes the Qu'ran at a graduation dinner in a Buddhist country?!?  I could understand if it was particularly relevant or inspiring, but it wasn't.  It made my brain hurt so I won't go on.

I don't particularly care for these formal dinner event type things, even without taking into account my annoying colleagues.  There's the fact that you have to wait and wait to be served, and you don't get to pick what you're going to eat (I know, bitch, bitch, bitch - hey, it's a free dinner, I know I shouldn't complain).  They brought out bread first, which was good, and had some variety.

There were a variety of drinks on the table when we arrived, some of which were warm.  There was ONE coke on the table, and since I got to my table first (we were assigned tables to sit at - also not my favorite thing, although since I didn't have to sit with any of the aforementioned annoying coworkers I shouldn't bitch about that, either) I stole it.  Fire Marshall brought another one over, because he loves me so much (either that, or he knows what I'm like if I don't get my coke).  The second course was a salad, and although I wasn't too sure about the salmon, the little basket thing it's served in is made of parmesan cheese and that was awesome.

The main course was beef with vegetables.  It had a nice flavor but did get lodged in our teeth.  Also note the bone served with it.  Apparently you're supposed to eat the marrow.  I'm an unrefined hick and I felt no need to eat the marrow, no matter how good it was or how good for you.

There was also a dessert, which was good, but not unforgettable, since I have, in fact, forgotten what it was, only that it did not suck.

As far as ambience goes, it wasn't really all that special on the inside.  This clay relief sculpture was the best thing it had going for it, and you only saw it as you walked into the main seating area.  The outside, however, really does look like a castle, straight out of Disney.  If princesses aren't your thing, there's a pirate ship just next door.

Someday my prince will come...

Taking it to the Streets: Part III

I am not really into the club scene.  I don't drink.  I don't smoke (admittedly, not a hindrance here since they outlawed smoking in public places a few months back).  I don't really dance unless the music involves tabla, mizmar, oud, and/or Arabic lyrics.  And - let me be totally and completely blunt - I don't particularly care for what music becomes at the hands of your typical DJ.  There are exceptions, of course.  Let's say you dropped me at one of the DJ parties at Katharos.  I'd be okay with that.  Bronte has excellent taste and her lounge attracts talent (also, I'd listen to the worst off-key warbling to be back in Greece, eating her cooking!)  But on the whole, give me a good book and a warm blanket rather than punish me with hours of loud, repetitive "music."

However, I decided that I was going to see this street art festival thing through, even if Wednesday's field trip didn't turn out the way I was hoping.  Yesterday Geek and I went to the kick-off party for the public part of the festival with a DJ party at iLoft.  There have been workshops taking place there all week as well, including DJ workshops by l'Homme's brother, DJ No Breakfast (ooh, look at my journalistic integrity, there...bringing attention to the fact that I kind of know someone and may have personal bias!  I almost feel like a real writer!)

For once this year, I didn't take pictures, other than the one above of some of the new art decorating the walls of iLoft.  I know the limitations of my phone's camera - there is not much use posting blurry photos of a club.  I could describe iLoft to you, but you'd need to be a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (if you ARE, think of the Bronze).  As for the music, I really kind of liked it.  It was not deafening - Geek and I could actually talk while we were there.  It had a good beat.  I could recognize parts of some of the music, but it was not so repetitive that I wanted to beat my head against a wall.  Is that considered good for a DJ party?  Well, how the hell should I know - I began with the admission that it's not really my scene, didn't I?  But when we left around midnight, it was because I was about to turn into a pumpkin (it was an emotional last day at school and I couldn't sleep in this morning because we went out to Gachuurt with Five for the last time today), and not because it sucked.  I actually enjoyed it a lot.

Today was the main event at the Children's Park.  After getting back from Gachuurt I met up with Domestic Goddess and Fire Marshall at the Black Market (easier said than done!) and we walked over to check things out.  In spite of liking the music last night we skipped straight over to the art part.  Fire Marshall likes street art as much as I do, and was thrilled to tell me he'd found a new Renard this afternoon.  He also agreed that the best street art is site-specific.  This piece of sticker art was probably my favorite, because it worked with what was already there.

After having a good look around, we met their spawn and Five at Gyengbokgung for dinner.  En route, Fire Marshall showed me the new Renard he'd found, and I got to see this one as well.  I mentioned that I'd never seen so much street art in an Asian city, especially considering Ulaanbaatar is NOT that big.  The closest thing was the murals near M50 in Shanghai, and that's gallery central (I should write about that sometime.  Maybe I can do that for one of my flashback ghost blogs).  They told me that last year was different - there wasn't as much to see.  When I told them that this was the second year for Tatym, we realized that made a lot of sense.  This year's festival has already had its impact on the city at large - walking down the plaza between the Beatles monument and the Circus, we saw where someone had stickered the barriers with some of the stickers my students were given on Wednesday.  I hope next year makes the third year...but my students will have to go experience it on their own.

Taking it to the Streets: Part Deux

I have not taken students on a single field trip all year long.  We were warned, at the beginning of the year, to consider other teachers, that basically they would bitch about losing class time, and so I didn't plan anything.  I didn't mind too much.  However, we did have a day this week, Wednesday, when testing was over and nothing was really planned, and it was suggested that this might be an excellent day for a field trip.  So at the beginning of May, when l'Homme told me that the Alliance Française would be holding their second Tatym Street Art Festival, I decided that this was the perfect field trip at the perfect time.  After all, I teach the 9th graders about street art, so it would be relevant, and it would give me the chance to do something fun with my homeroom class.

I LOVE these kids.  They are sweet and funny - they seriously crack me up everyday.  I was not looking forward to being a homeroom teacher, because I am not the most organized, responsible sort of person, but starting every morning with these kids has been a delight to me all year.  In fact, I would be hard pressed to say who I loved more - wild and crazy 8B, or my original class of anklebiters, on the 4th floor at GDA (actually, my anklebiters are about this old now...time flies...)

Thus, I was more than normally mortified when my awesome field trip turned out to be a fail.  When we got to the Children's Park, which was hosting the art workshops, the organizer wasn't there.  The artists weren't there.  The guards didn't want to let us in.  We stood out in the sprinkling cold rain for more than a half hour before the guards decided to go ahead and sell us tickets, and then we still didn't know where we were supposed to go, because the organizer still wasn't there.  When she finally got there, she didn't really know what to do with us.  The kids were impressed with what they saw, and she was going to let us paint, even though the artists weren't there, but before she could get us set up, it started raining again.  Eventually the sticker artist (I'm leaving names out of this, because I'm hoping that this was just one of those days where things just fall apart - it does happen here a lot, and in fact happened to the sixth graders' field trip when they went to the planetarium and the government just decided that they needed to use the telescopes that night - and NOT incompetence that led to this fiasco) showed up, and he passed out a book of his work and some stickers for my kids to use.  However, we had already gotten permission to leave the park for lunch by then, and we were just waiting for the bus to come take us.

And that's another reason why I love these guys so much.  Instead of complaining and making me feel bad, they embraced the chaos.  No art?  Okay, let's go play on the playground of an empty amusement park (I only wished I'd had make-up...we would have filmed a zombie movie!)  No food?  "Ms. M, could we maybe please go somewhere to eat?"  So we finished our field trip by having the bus driver take us to Millie's, where they put a bunch of tables together for us - luckily there was no one there when we arrived! - and had a delicious lunch, just me and my awesome kids.  And when they finished, we waited for the bus across the street, outside the Choijin Lama Temple Museum, where we took a bunch of goofy photos and joked about going to the wedding palace next door and getting married, singing that ridiculous Bruno Mars song.

Which freaking made me wonder - what the hell have they been doing in music all year?!?  I understand that NO ONE can sing some songs (such as "Diamonds" - Rihanna doesn't even sound good singing it and it's her damn song), but c'mon - this is "Jingle Bells!" Anyways, I'm not quite done with Tatym - I'm going to the opening DJ party tonight and will try to revisit the park tomorrow to see how the murals turned out.  Stay tuned.

Taking it to the Streets: Part I

Years ago, when I worked in UMKC's Financial Aid office, one of the coordinators warned me off Athens.  She complained that it was a "dirty city," that she hadn't liked it at all.  Well, by the time I made it there, they'd hosted the Olympics, and of course this had an impact on the state of the city.  However, I couldn't help but feel that the crumbling buildings and the graffiti were part of what she found objectionable, and these were partly what I found charming (also helping: the friendliness of the Greeks in general, the hotness of their men, in particular, their food - OH GOSH THE FOOD! - I could go on.  I love Greece).  But then, I AM an art teacher, which not only means I have a tendency to be a little weird, but also that I've studied street art before.

Over the years as I've traveled, I've taken pictures of the street art I've seen.  There's not as much in Asia as there is in Europe.  However, I was pleased to discover Ulaanbaatar - which, admittedly, seems more European at times than Asian - has a flourishing street art scene, and a lot of it is quite good.

I particularly love the clever ones, such as this one.  I love the use of the location, the pairing of something 3-dimensional with the painting.  Perversely, because sculpture is not something I am good at, I love sculptural installations most of all, such as Slinkachu's miniature installations.  Most of them have such an amazing sense of humor about them, and it's so unexpected to run into something like that - it's like the art equivalent of a street festival or a flash mob.

This one and the next were - presumably - by the same artist, since they bear the same style, sense of humor, and tag - Renard - although I can't seem to dig anything up about him.  The second example, Monsters Everywhere, is right around the corner from this random statue of the Predator.

I have been excessively lazy today (I ditched church, read, and baked enchiladas), and yesterday I went exploring and watched a jazz show, but nothing I could flesh out a full blog over.  So here we are.  It's not a total coincidence as the Alliance Française is hosting a street art festival this week, and I'm taking my darlings, my 8B students, to see it, so you can expect Part II later this week.  Stay tuned.

Also, I've begun to prepare/panic in earnest over the summer.  In two weeks from now I should be in Lhasa.  I'll also be hitting Nepal and Bhutan before coming back here.  The panic is because I'm going to be squeezing blood from stones by the time September 20th rolls around, a date that I am sulking over but I'll say no more on that, because it wouldn't be professional.  I'm also looking for someone to ghost post for me while I'm in Tibet and don't have access to blogger.  If you're a friend and not a random reader and you're interested, I'll send you postcards or something.

Grub Club: Tuul Restaurant

Tonight was the penultimate Grub Club for the school year, and it was Joanne's choice.  She had been wanting to take us to CCCP, a Russian restaurant, but after failing to get ahold of anyone we have come to the conclusion that it is defunct.  This is how we ended up going to Tuul, which is kind of an international fusion restaurant, instead.  I've been curious about this place for a while, mostly because they have salsa night every Friday, and I'd love to start salsa dancing, if I can find someone to go with me (strangely enough, going out dancing is one of the few things I don't really want to do alone.  Movies, restaurants, no problem, but dancing is a kind of a social activity and I would feel awkward going it alone).   

Finding nothing much more tempting, I decided I wanted khuushuur (having them on Sunday may have swayed me a little).  However, I decided khuushuur alone was not healthy enough, so I ordered the Chinese garlic and cucumber salad as well.  The khuushuur was delicious - the mutton was neither too muttony nor too fatty...the salad was awful.  It didn't have much flavor to it, although it looked and smelled delicious.  I tried adding some salt and pepper, but it didn't do any good.  Do yourself a favor and give this one a miss.

Domestic Goddess was disappointed, because the website said that Tuul had pad Thai, but she couldn't find it on the menu.  Geek ordered what we figure was approximately the same thing, although it went by a different name on the menu.  It was delicious.  Domestic Goddess went with the Bangkok chicken instead, which came with a delicious chili sauce, but that was the best thing about it.  Otherwise it was fairly lackluster.

By far the best dish ordered tonight was the burger that Engrish and PE shared.  It was big, juicy and flavorful, and came with a side of what Fire Marshall declared "the best fries in Mongolia."  They were cut fairly thin and had a nice seasoning on them - I can't argue with him on this one.

Finally, there's the pizza.  Domestic Goddess ordered a pepperoni one, but Mad Science, who apparently LOVES balls, went for the meatball pizza.  I was fortunate enough to have some of Domestic Goddess' and it was so-so.  Overall, Tuul was a hit-or-miss restaurant.  Some of the food was great, other dishes were lackluster.  Be prepared to strike out.  And if you do, hope that it starts raining as you're on your way out the door, because rainbows make everything better.  Five (who made it to dinner tonight, presumably because she loves Engrish more than me) pointed this one out to me as our taxi was on the Peace Bridge.  It was a great one, stretching unbroken all the way across the sky.

Spectacular, Spectacular!

Acrobats on the flying trapeze = not passé

"...no words in our vernacular,
can describe this great event,
you'll be dumb with wonderment."

Acrobats, contortionists, even dancing bears...tonight's performance at the state circus could not HELP but remind me of Moulin Rouge, one of my very favorite movies.  I didn't begin the night in a stellar mood.  I am becoming jaded, I think.  The Chinese acrobatic thing where they haul themselves up with strips of silk has become passé.  The guy who did the balancing act with the big pot at Shanghai Circus World had a bigger pot, and everyone knows that size DOES matter.  At least when it comes to pot balancing acts.  And beyond all that, I paid for the freaking VIP seats, but they are NOT the front ones.  They are big and cushy and the one I was sitting on was not broken (unlike the one I sat in for the international circus, but behind the front three rows.  I am ALL about the front row, rock fans.

I've been to the circus three times now in as many months.  Why did I go again, especially admitting the fact that I'm becoming bored with some of it?  This circus was special.  It wasn't the trapeze artists, which were, admittedly NOT passé.  It wasn't the jazzy contortion number (actually, their jumpsuit costumes annoyed me), or even the woman who could twirl ten hula hoops at one time (the student who did that with three hoops at SUIS' talent show a couple years back would have been eating her heart out).  I wasn't kidding about the dancing bears...this circus had animals.  Which, I guess, means it wasn't supposed to be performed in the state circus building, which is a member of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, but somehow, here it was.  There were not as many animals as were originally advertised by the UB Post, but I was most interested in seeing the bears, anyways. 

There's the usual question of animal cruelty.  Nobody really wanted to come with me, because they didn't know how they felt about that.  Should wild animals be trained?  And if they are, can you guarantee that they will be well-cared for?  The bears in the circus tonight seemed healthy, at least.  It's hard to guess at their mental state.  They did their tricks - tumbling, balancing, carrying a dog around the arena - without hesitation, and their trainers seemed affectionate toward them.  They were amazing to watch; they're beautiful creatures, and huge, and absolutely lethal looking.  They had muzzles on their mouths, but their claws were terrifyingly long.

In the end, I decided VIP seating was okay.  When I left the Hill, I decided not to bring my "big guns" (my DSLR), since it was sure to draw more attention to myself, and I hate that moment when the usher taps on your shoulder and shakes his finger at you for taking pictures.  Either the ushers didn't care that we were snapping away, or they didn't bother me because I paid for the privilege, because I did take some photos, and even decided that I would take a video.  So enjoy!

Internations Bonne Vivante

Once upon a time, I'd never been abroad (it's been eleven years and about eleven months since I could say that).  I've never written in the blog about that first trip, because it was way before blogging; perhaps I should work on that, because the month I studied abroad in Venice had a HUGE impact on me, beginning with the moment at the Kansas City Airport when my Dad said that I was about to become an international bon vivant..."Or whatever the feminine version of that would be."  (I haven't studied any more French since then, but I'm pretty sure it's bonne vivante, which would sound the same, anyways).  I really liked that title - meaning something along the lines of "someone living the good life" - and if you go back and read my posts, I'm pretty sure I've referred to myself as such before.

You're not doing too badly if you're living in a calendar

Well, I figure I've been doing a pretty good job living the good life since coming to Mongolia.  Or a helluva lot better than I did in Shanghai, at any rate.  And the biggest part of that, as I've mentioned before, is the awesome friends I have here.  Unfortunately, one of the things that sucks the most about the expat lifestyle is the turnover rate.  Of the people I spend regular amounts of time with, about 70% will be gone next year, and that sucks the big one, because if there's one thing I've learned as an international bonne vivante, it's that friends (or the lack thereof) will either make or break your experience.  One word says it, if you know me at all: Bahrain.

And this is why I decided about a month ago to join Internations.  I had seen they had a UB group when I was first getting ready to come here, but I thought it was strictly a paid site, and I wasn't sure that it was worth it.  Well, Domestic Goddess and Fire Marshall cleared up my fallacy - it IS a paid site, but it is also possible to have a low-level free membership, which is what I'm currently taking advantage of.  Because although it is true that there are a helluva lot of new people coming to our school next year, and probability would suggest that some of them will be awesome, there is no guarantee that they won't be complete and utter...well, let's just leave it at that, suffice it to say that I thought it might be nice to have options.  In fact, this weekend I chose to ditch said (leaving) awesome friends (who are ger camping right at this very moment) in order to attend an event I found on Internations, and ended up going to a second one as well.

What kind of event would be tempting enough to drag me away from my friends in our final weeks together?  Cooking class, of course!  Not just any cooking class, though - cooking class in Terelj National Park.  I hadn't been there yet (actually, it is where my awesome friends were going ger camping this weekend), so it was an added bonus.  Getting to the family who was teaching us, though, was a trip - we drove pretty far into the park, got out, went "over the river and through the woods" before getting into what I would like to call a "steppe bus," which freaked out a lot of my fellow chefs (mostly French, with a Mongolian, Russian, and another American thrown in) but which to me felt just like being back on my grandparents' farm, feeding the cows.

When we got to the family's ger, we were treated to milk tea, bread, and tarag (homemade Mongolian yogurt) for breakfast.  Then the real work began.

On the agenda for the day: making khushuur and buuz, which are Mongolian fried and steamed dumplings, respectively.  Back at Tsagaan Sar (Mongolian New Year) when I asked my students what they were doing on the holiday they told me "eating lots and lots of buuz."  These dumplings are central to Monglian cuisine and are made essentially the same way - you mince a LOT of mutton, add in some garlic, onion, salt, and seasoning, wrap it in a bit of dough (there are different wrapping styles for each), and either deep fry it or steam it. 

The wrapping is, beyond a doubt, the hardest part.  I've made Korean mandu before, and hell, I'm an art teacher, so I thought I'd do quite well.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  There is some sort of pinchy-foldy technique that results in a beautiful pattern along the edge, and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out, no matter how many times our hostess showed me, or how many khushuur I made - although they looked a little better by the time I made my last one, and I was getting faster at sucking.

Our only man on the trip also happened to be in Mongolia pursuing a doctorate in anthropology, and he regaled us with a story of a Mongolian VIP - I can't remember in what field - who traveled to China.  The Chinese fed him their best cuisine and said, "Isn't this tasty, isn't it better than what you eat in Mongolia?"  To which he replied that it was tasty, but the Chinese eat like rabbits while the Mongolians eat like wolves.  Well, us Westerners like our rabbit food, too...a typical Mongolian family could eat JUST khushuur for a meal, but we had to have our salad, and we chopped up cabbage to put into the dumplings.  Our host family kind of thought we were crazy because we cut the biggest pieces of fat off; they were happy to keep them.  Anyways, I was exhausted by the end of the day and I've rarely been so happy to see my bed (which is why I didn't finish this last night, faithful reader), but it was a good trip.  If you're interested in that sort of thing and read French, it was organized through EcoVoyage Mongolie.

Did I mention a second event?  Yes, I did.  Having nothing better to do on Saturday, at the last minute I joined a paintball expedition.  A couple of Russian guys (Alex and Andrei, if I caught their names correctly) run a paintball course south of the Tuul, west of Zaisan, and one of the UB Internations Ambassadors decided this would be a great activity for us.  Although I am NOT, by any means, the most athletic person in the world, I was raised with Shaggy, and he's into that sort of stuff, so I've played paintball a time or two, and I was pretty eager to give it another try.

I was hoping, based on the map of where the course was, that they would be set up in some trees (the last time I paintballed was in the woods on my parents' property.  It's a LOT of fun when you've got that kind of cover).  Actually, it was a constructed course, with pallets knocked together and stacks of tires to hide behind, which is not as fun, but not bad, either.  We got into "bulletproof" vests, and camouflage suits with more protection built in (for both our skin and our clothes), and got gloves, masks, and guns.

It was 30,000 tugrugs to play, which included 100 bullets.  You could buy 50 more bullets for 5,000 tugs, or 100 for 10,000, which all seems pretty reasonable to me.  The worst part by far was getting out there (especially on Children's Day - have I mentioned that Zaisan is starting to get busy?).  If you are on the Zaisan Rd, turn right at the Minii Supermarket - this is the road that you'd turn left on for the Buddha Park or Zaisan.  After the road turns to dirt, watch on your left for a spray-painted Cyrillic word (pictured above) and follow the arrows.

As far as Internations goes, I will probably end up paying for a membership.  I kind of hate trying to meet new people, which means it would be very good for me to do it anyways.  And with that, I have to finish getting ready for school.  Peace out, people.