A busy first day

Chimgee (pronounced  “Chim-gay”, and a much shorter version of her full name, Erdenechimeg Dashdorg) and her husband met us at the train station in Ulan Baatar and took us to our hotel. Khishge is the senior lawyer at the Center for Human Rights and Development with whom I will be working, and apparently will be my principal translator.

A dangerous incident    Monday morning I went for a run, to see the city which will be my home for the next seven weeks. Ulan Baatar is considered to be a very safe city, even though there has  been a rise in pickpockets and larcenies, there is very little violent crime. At about 5:45 AM, on the main street, two blocks from the main square, a man angrily yelled “fuck you”  at me without any provocation that I could see as I ran by him.  I sped up, and then slowed to a walk after about a minute.  Then I noticed that he had been running after me, and was apparently running hard to catch up to me. I resumed running, now looking to see who else might be around, and considering defensive options. Apparently, my antagonist  gave up the chase. 

Later that morning,   the folks from CHRD showed us two apartments: the first an old Soviet era apartment building, about a mile from the office, in an unpleasant looking neighborhood, which would not have hot water until after June 1. The second, which we took, is much more pleasant, has all reasonable amenities, in what appears to be a reasonably nice student area. Apparently, mostly foreigners live in this building. In a future post I will include pictures of the apartment, which we moved to on Tuesday.

 One of my principal assignments is to work with a group of law students, to develop a clinic for public interest litigation. On Monday, I  discussed the initial presentation that I will make to these students and various other issues with Khishge.  My next post will describe this discussion,  the preparation for the presentation, and if I do not get to do this post before the Wednesday presentation, the post will give an account of the presentation itself.