I wanted to write this to keep track of it. There may come a time in the future that I find it interesting. To those reading it in the present, I apologize. It could be boring.
Tanan (I wrote about her a couple of times in this series) agreed to come clear out to Yarmag to translate for me to rent an apartment. She took the bus, and it was almost two hours before she got here. By then, I had seen the apartment, and Tanan had translated a lot of my interaction with the apartment owner over speaker phone. It is a two bedroom apartment in a nice area. Every legal interaction in Mongolia is overseen by a notary, so there are many notaries. We went to a notary close by, and they told us that we couldn’t do the paper work if I didn’t have the original paperwork establishing my business. So, my wonderful attorney sent a messenger out from the city to Yarmag to deliver the papers. That took around an hour. Because I’m not a native Mongolian speaker, I had to have a translator translate the document for me so I couldn’t later claim that I shouldn’t be held accountable to a document I signed in a different language. So, not only did I need a translator, but I needed a translator who was certified by the country of Mongolia to be able to translate legal documents. Tanan is 19. She is not certified to do that. They initially told me I would be fine and that Tanan could translate, so when my attorney graciously offered to come and translate for me, I told her there was no need to make the two hour round trip for that. So, we went to lunch to wait for my documents to get there.
This is a picture of Tanan and I. I belong to a group of people who can’t solve the mystery of the nice looking selfie…
After lunch, we went back over to the Notary and stood in line for 30-45 minutes again. We finally got to go in, and the Notary talked the apartment owner into protecting herself by getting an official Mongolian translator. So. Then we all four got in the apartment owner’s car (her husband had joined us by then), and we drove into town. It took about 40 minutes and we drove within walking distance of my attorney’s office to find a notary who employed a certified English translator. We waited in line again, then spent over an hour with the notary going through the process. By then it was after 5:00, and Tanan told me that she had just pulled an all-nighter watching the World Cup.
Ulaanbaatar is divided up in to districts (duregs). The districts are divided up into neighborhoods (khoroos). Each neighborhood has it’s own government office. Tomorrow, I need to go to the government office for the neighborhood in which the new apartment resides and get a legal document stating that indeed I will reside in that apartment. THEN, I will take a ride into town with all that paperwork, give it to the attorney at which point she can finally file the application for my residence card. They say that I won’t get a residence card for 15 days. Today is Monday (well, very early Tuesday morning). I fly back on Friday. For some reason, once the application is submitted, I can’t leave the country until the residence card is issued. So, I’m really hoping I don’t have to extend the trip.
Tanan. Tanan is an extremely intelligent 19-year-old human. All of the help that she has given me the past few days she wanted to do for free. Same with the Mongolian lessons. She wanted to do those for free. She was available to call for two days last week, and today, after pulling an all-nighter she spent the entire day helping me get an apartment. I am in awe of her kindness and generosity. She didn’t even tell me she didn’t sleep last night until I was teasing her because she fell asleep at the second notary.
To those wondering, if people read this, I did pay her because I didn’t want to take advantage of her kindness, but I absolutely couldn’t have done any of this today without her help.