Passage to Mongolia

On July 18, I found myself on an Air China flight stuck between a very patient woman (she never once left her seat in 12 hours) and an unconscious grad student. My mind wandered in the tedium, and I couldn't help but wonder how I had possibly gotten there. The thought would come up quite a few times in the next month.

I had recently completed a mentorship in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Providence Alaska Medical Center and promptly decided that my life's calling was to join Doctors Without Borders, a French humanitarian organization. I wanted to save babies in foreign countries, and it couldn't wait until after college. So, after persuading my parents, I planned a trip to Mongolia to volunteer in a children's hospital for a month.

The NGO I picked was Projects Abroad -- a British organization that matches every volunteer with a host family in a chosen country. Although Mongolia wasn't my first choice, it was the one my parents deemed the most politically stable, and I didn't protest. I spent the time before my departure with bright-eyed notions of saving children every day and bonding with my Mongolian host family.

I landed in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, a good 24 hours after I left Anchorage, and the first thing I noticed was the soul-crushing heat. According to Lonely Planet, I should have walked into a warm shower of rain -- not a dusty, persistent inferno.

Aside from the heat, I didn't have much trouble at the airport, at least until I passed through customs. Supposedly someone from Projects Abroad was going to pick me up and deliver me to my host family, but no one in the bustling crowd of Mongolians before me was calling my name. I hefted my bags into a corner and waited. Here I had my first encounter with the unique Mongolian brand of hospitality.

I know I looked disheveled and perhaps a little forlorn -- the dark circles under my eyes underscored a 16-hour time difference -- but certainly I wasn't crying for help. Nevertheless, a grimy-looking taxi driver decided to shuffle over and sit beside me. When he brandished a cell phone and began yelling in Mongolian, I could do little more than shrug and give him a wide-eyed look of confusion.

Unsatisfied with my response, he began pointing at signs and grabbing at my backpack. Just as the creep-alert alarm went off in the back of my mind, I saw a woman frantically waving a Projects Abroad sign. With a sigh of relief, I gathered my things and ran up to her. In polite, broken English she introduced herself and asked how my flight was.

Scenes from the last 24 hours came flooding back to me. In Los Angeles, I had managed to drop my tickets and passport into the toilet, and while I waited for my flight to Beijing, someone mistook me for an Olympic athlete. Somehow, the woman next to me had endured a 12-hour flight without getting up to pee, and just now a forceful, prodding cab-driver had accosted me in an incomprehensible language.

"Oh, it was fine," I replied.

Outside the airport, apartment blocks and half-demolished Soviet buildings towered over the broken sidewalks. The streets were littered with garbage and sleeping children. To my left, swarms of rickety cars weaved here and there, ignoring signals and dangling loose parts. To my right, tiny women in even tinier skirts swaggered across the rubble sidewalks on gold stilettos. Young men slumped arrogantly against bars spitting, smoking and catcalling. This was Ulaanbaatar.

Every morning this scene replayed itself on my way to the hospital. Very quickly I realized that I did not blend well in this collage of fake Chanel, cigarette smoke and plastic bottles. I'm at a loss to explain why they detested me so -- all I can say is that I was conspicuous.

As a foreigner, I had expected a bit of staring but not the double takes and revolted looks I was receiving. Nor did I anticipate being spit on, hit on, tripped, photographed or spanked. But however much I wanted to slap the hecklers or give a snarky retort, it would do no good to protest. Reacting would only enforce whatever stereotype they had pinned on me and make life more difficult for subsequent travelers. This was something I had to continually repeat to myself.

Molly Mew is a senior at Eagle River High School.