I love Mongolia, I truly do, but there are times when it absolutely breaks my heart.

Today, driving my daughter home from school, we saw a little boy—maybe 6 or 7 years old—running down the middle of the street stark naked. He was holding a little wheel and just on a solo adventure. It was 50F/10C outside.

I stopped the car immediately to see if he was okay. The two cars behind me stopped, and then one pulled into the other lane to try to get by, but the boy squatted down in the lane as I walked up to him. I used my terrible Mongolian to ask him to walk with me to the side of the road, eventually just taking his hand to walk there together.

He was feeling very shy and probably a little unsure about getting into a strange, foreign woman’s car, but he eventually got into the backseat so I could drive him to the police station. It was clear that he wouldn’t be able to tell me how to get him back home.

After finding parking near the police station (the parking situation is atrocious and ends up blocking a two-lane road that curves and has limited visibility), I took off my jacket and put it on the little guy. He liked the drawstrings for the hood and played with them as we walked slowly—I was watching out for broken glass he might step on with his bare feet—and fumbled down a dirt slope and some trees to get to the sidewalk. I was being silly as we slipped down the hill, which finally broke the ice and got him talking to me a little. He wasn’t able to say much, but he seemed to understand that we were safe people, and he kept a tight hold on my hand as we walked into the first building we saw.

The receptionist in that building said he had been there before and directed us to the other building. The receptionist in the other building tried to send us back to the first. She seemed confused but eventually figured out that she needed to ask someone what to do and told us to sit on a bench in the lobby. Without letting us know what would happen next, she sat back down at her desk. A more senior police officer walked by and asked us what was going on. Terra very bravely jumped into action as a translator for her immigrant mom, who doesn’t know the language well, and explained that we found him in the middle of the street and brought him there to help get him back home.

The police officer got on the phone with someone who knew how to get ahold of his guardian/s and told us to wait with him, which we were going to do no matter what.

When we first got there, I asked the receptionist if they had any clothes or a T-shirt he could wear. She said they didn’t. He was fine in my jacket and entertained himself with the drawstrings, the hood, and the long front and back. He also had fun flashing me as we sat waiting. He was an incredibly sweet, joyful boy, and I wanted to make sure he wasn’t feeling anxious or scared.

Apparently, the only anxious and worried people present were Terra and I. I kept checking in with Terra about how she was feeling. She looked to be on the verge of tears at some point, and I tried to make quick mental notes about how I would talk to her about the situation we were in with this little guy. She hadn’t recognized that he had Down’s syndrome, but she did realize he had a disability that made him nearly non-verbal.

While on a weekend getaway with our dear friends, the Turbolds, Aagii got a message from Zaya, our dear friend and house sitter, that Gilbert had run away from home again. I wrote about Gilbert’s origin story and runaway tendencies here.

On Monday morning, we went out searching again. Driving slowly along the dirt road behind all the houses in our neighborhood, we spotted a golden retriever alone but wearing a collar. I hopped out of the car again with Ketchup to do a closer inspection of the area on foot, looking down into the drainage ditch and under the thermal heating network pipes. Up ahead, a man and a woman were working together to lift a green bag. The woman waved at us, but I didn’t recognize her as Zaya from far away. When I realized it was her, my heart sank. I knew Gilbert was in the bag they were trying to carry, and my chest got tight with dread.
Zaya and her husband, Dagvaa, started a new search when Aagii and I did, but they started from the other end of the dirt road and found him first. It looked like he had been hit by a car, possibly by the busy street registered as his last location, and he tried to make it back home. It looked like he took a hit to the side of his head. He’d been there for a while, possibly all of Sunday. My heart sank even further, and my chest opened up as I wailed.

While he was lucky in all his other solo ventures that started with a mad dash out of the open gate, I always worried that this would be how we lost him. He was my second chance to have a dog with as gentle and sweet a soul as Praxis. We were so very lucky that Gilbert's farthest journey brought us together and for all the years of being able to love him.

If you haven’t already, watch the latest installment of KCET’s Artbound on Giant Robot. The documentary is a very intimate look at the birth of Giant Robot, its creators, contributors, and impact. It covers the eventual end of the magazine, how Giant Robot has lived on through its Sawtelle stores and gallery, and its seeds of creativity and conviction that continue to grow.

I was lucky to be part of Giant Robot from 2004 to 2012. I was a reader of the magazine for many years before that, and working at the stores was the most magical return to retail that I could have ever imagined. I found a home there and a sense of purpose. The store staff, the magazine staff, the artists we worked with, and even the customers became family. When the store manager moved on, I asked to take her place. Over the next few years, I worked with Eric on curating shows, helping to open our new stores in New York and Silver Lake, overseeing the retail operations of the business, and eventually contributing to the magazine and blog now and then. I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else, even when things started getting challenging. It was an experience that shaped who I am today, and I’m eternally grateful for it and all the trust and faith Eric had in me.

The pull of Mongolia was the only thing that could tear me away from GR. I’ve found ways to bring GR back into my life here, beyond the art on the walls of the house Aagii built for us. For Asian American Heritage Month, I gave a presentation on GR to a small group of Mongolian teenagers. They were curious about counter-culture and how we managed to cover so much; art, authors, filmmakers, activism, food, music, and identity. I hoped they’d walk away with their horizons a little broader than they were before and a greater sense of belonging if they struggled with the idea of fitting in. GR did that for me the first time I picked up a copy, and certainly once I found a family there.

Watching the documentary was a lot. It moved at warp speed through a history I lived as a fan and then as part of the family. It revisited the hardest times for GR; when the magazine ended, and the restaurant and the New York, San Francisco, and Silver Lake stores closed their doors. It brought back so many wonderful memories of major milestones, and it was filled with the faces and voices of friends who were such an important part of my life for so many years. Most of all, it reminded me of what I walked away from and how precious it was.

This year, I made green onion pancakes (pajeon) for Chuseok. I never grew up celebrating Chuseok, but since my move to Mongolia, my mom and I have grown closer to my Uncle Sang Jong and his family and I saw their Chuseok preparations on Facebook. His wife, Eun Young, posts very sporadically, but it’s always lovely to get a peek into their life. Their daughter, Tay, is just a couple of months older than Terra, and while they need some translation help when they get together, they’re growing up as cousins—something that makes me very happy.

Eun Young and Sang Jong prepared japchae (glass noodles with meat and veggies), bindaetteok (mung bean pancakes), and more for Chuseok, which some people call “Korean Thanksgiving”. It’s a harvest festival, but it has evolved into something like American Thanksgiving in the way it’s celebrated in today’s Korea, where most Koreans are pretty far removed from the actual harvest experience. Families come together, eat a comforting feast, and reconnect.

After my aunt shared pictures of her feast-in-the-making, my mom shared pictures of the japchae she was making to share with her friends at church the next day. In Mongolia, I spent some time under the harvest moon and thought about my spring onions growing robustly after Terra and I harvested enough of them to prep and freeze four bags for winter, and decided I’d make pa jeon of my own to be part of the Chuseok action.

Mine was the messiest execution of all three, but it was delicious!

I borrowed some ideas from Maangchi’s recipe – the addition of soybean paste (I used some leftover miso packets) is a game changer! I also added chopped kimchi, because everything is better with kimchi!

I’d like to celebrate Chuseok with family someday. Terra loves family holiday traditions and so do I.

Back in September 2021, the U.S. Embassy in Mongolia opened American Corner Darkhan. American Corners are part of the U.S. State Department’s American Spaces program. I’d visited the one in Ulaanbaatar years ago to lead a writing workshop back when I was trying to get a writing group off the ground here. I thought then that Darkhan deserved one, so I was happy to hear the news that one was coming.

It's an investment in U.S. soft power that could be nefarious if it wanted to be, but they mostly focus on creating great spaces for education and youth development. I tend to look the other way when it comes to their potential to advance U.S. cultural imperialism.

The reality is that the U.S. represents economic and educational opportunities for young people here. I want to see the young people here achieve greatness the way I want my own daughter to – in whatever form that takes for her and them. Her American passport opens doors for her that her peers may never be able to conceive of cracking open. If I can invest my time and energy into changing that for other people, I will. Darkhan’s American Corner gives me an opportunity to do so in as neutral a setting (non-profit and secular) as possible.

I’ve started going to their English Speaking Club meetings to support the young people and adults who attend to improve their spoken language skills, and Terra loves going to Game Day to play games with kids close to her age that are also trying to improve their English. She’s made some friends there who sometimes come over to our house to play now.

I’ve also volunteered to give presentations when inspiration strikes. For Jazz Appreciation Month, I put together a playlist and some notes about some important musicians who shaped jazz from the 1920s through the 1940s. A few people came, and I roped them into listening to my favorite jazz genres. We talked about how the artists they had just listened to shaped other genres. For most of them, jazz meant the lounge music that’s been growing in popularity in UB. I get it, it’s a Gen Z vibe, but I wanted to show them how dynamic and electric jazz could be and, most importantly, who created it.

With the wild success of my first presentation, I followed up with another one for Asian American Heritage Month. I put the focus on Giant Robot and how it shaped my Asian American identity and that of so many others. I brought in some back issues, including the ones I had articles and blurbs in. I brought others that I considered to be canon. I also brought in some of my art books by friends of GR. In the same way I wanted to broaden people’s understanding of jazz, I wanted to shake up ideas about Asian Americans for whoever might show up for the presentation. Attendance was low, but the folks who did show up were invested, and it gave me the warm fuzzies to share something I was so proud to be a part of.

I want to do a creative writing workshop this summer and then an essay writing workshop in the fall. In the meantime, I’ll keep going to their weekly events and supporting the youth initiatives they host. As far away as I feel from my American identity sometimes, American Corner has been a nice way to tap back into the best parts of it.

Gilbert is a compulsive runaway. If our gate is open and no human is present, he’s out and on the run. There are times he comes back home on his own, usually after a few hours of being out, but there have also been times when he hasn’t made it back home on his own. We’ve had to go collect him. He came to us as a runaway, so I sometimes wonder if when he runs away from our house, he thinks he might be able to find his way back to his original home.

Cousin Otgoo brought Gilbert to us. She got him from someone in Nomgon soum. That person got him from someone who found him in Ulaanbaatar. They tried to sell him in Nomgon, but no one was interested, so Otgoo was able to get him and brought him to our house. We were in UB for the weekend, and Gilbert was in the yard waiting for us when we got home. We got in late, and I didn’t see him in the dark. Aagii told me to go back outside after we brought in our bags, and there he was; skinny, sad, and confused. He was relieved to be in the house. It was October, and the nights were cold. He had long, thin fur, not much undercoat to speak of, so he was shivering from the cold and anxiety.

His fur was muddy and full of burrs. He sat still in the bathtub, maybe afraid to try to jump out. I shampooed him twice to get him clean. He was grateful to be finished with his bath, and he slept long and hard. He’s been our Gilbert ever since.

A couple of weeks ago, a neighbor stopped Deegii and asked her if she could bring one of our cats over to her house to “play with” for a little while. Deegii passed the request on to me. Worried I didn’t understand what she told me, I asked Terra to translate. Terra explained it just the way I had heard it, and I immediately said no. I couldn’t wrap my head around why a neighbor we had hardly spoken to in years wanted the company of one of our cats. Deegii explained that they were selling their house, and someone had told them they needed to play with a cat in the house for it to sell.
I mulled it over that day. I thought maybe it was an odd set of instructions from a shaman. I felt bad that they were at the point in the real estate process where they had to resort to following wacky advice, so I decided to bring a cat over. Now, the question was: which cat?

George is the solid and sound one. Junior is the wild card. Both were pretty lucky as far as cats go – both were strays we took in, but Junior was luckier because we kept him despite how annoying he was. There was also the “playing” to factor in. I had no idea what that would entail, but Junior was definitely the more playful cat at not even a year old.

The issue was settled when Junior ended up being the only cat around when Terra was home from school, and we were ready to go over. We got him into his walking harness, which he hates, and tried to walk him over. Carrying him over worked a lot better. As we got out of the yard, I set him down to see if he would walk and he launched into insane acrobatics, trying to slip out of his harness. He was nervous about walking past the house with the Night Dog (he spends the daytime tied up behind the house and nights loose in the yard barking at every living thing that passes his gate). He especially didn’t want to walk into the neighbor’s yard.

The disappearance of my access to Terra's old YouTube channel coincided with her newfound love for making stop animation videos. She was inspired to give it a try after launching into the vault of amazing courses that are part of Rama Hughes' Art School of the Future.

Terra's new channel, Terra's Weird Adventures, will still include unboxing videos from time to time, but I think we'll see more of her creative storytelling than before, as long as her cinematographer and post production team can keep its act together...

Without further ado, I'm proud to present the world premiere of "Our Morning Routine", written produced, and directed by Terra Altangerel, with cinematography by Michelle Borok.

An old co-worker from MNB World, Bayaraa, has started a new YouTube channel called Real Mongolia. He's already got some great videos up so far, including this interview he did with me about how I ended up in Mongolia, what I do here, and how I feel about it. Give it a watch, subscribe to his channel, and come visit me here when the plague is over.

Back in January 2020, I came across artwork by Oogonbair. Oogon, for short, is from Inner Mongolia. His mother was a Mongolian language teacher and an art teacher. Her worldview surely shaped his. He’s now a painter studying in Kobe, Japan, beautifully refining an illustrative style of painting that evokes the precision of Mongol zurag, a flatness that contrasts with rich texture, and ethereal color palettes that remind me of the atmosphere of ukiyo-e scenes. He grew up on the Mongolian steppe of China’s Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, but in his work, I see the steppe and the faces I know from here.

He moves easily between worlds of fantasy, memory, and realism. He captures animals and children in a particularly magical way. I was especially taken by his paintings of Mongolian children in nomadic scenes, playing on the steppe, tending to baby animals, standing proudly by their horses. I inquired about purchasing one of his paintings, “Prince of Winter”. It had already been sold, he has a solid base of collectors, but I was offered the opportunity to purchase a commissioned work.  

With the chance to have a commissioned work, I wanted one of Terra, Basar (our Tibetan Mastiff), and Squid (the horse I had to say goodbye to when I moved to Mongolia). Arrangements were made through his gallery in Osaka, Galerie Moustache. I sent Oogon some reference photos of all three of them, and two months later he had created this beautiful image, “Born on Earth from Love”.

Last February, Oogonbair went home to his banner in Inner Mongolia for the Lunar New Year, an important time for being with family, and got stuck there for almost a year because of Japan’s COVID-19 travel restrictions. He’s finally back in his Kobe home and studio. I just got that news this week. I’m happy for him. Mail from Japan to Mongolia is still prohibitively expensive without flights and normal logistics operating normally, so it’ll still be a while before I’ll have the painting shipped to Mongolia. What would be even better would be picking it from Oogon in Ulaanbaatar. He had a solo scheduled in UB this past summer, canceled due to COVID-19. I hope, with Asia seeming to have a better handle on this pandemic situation, that we won’t have to wait as long for a return to things like safe travel and art shows, but it’s anyone’s guess. Until then, this painting is worth the wait.