spectrum 4

earlier in september i had gone downtown to buy some things that i needed to send home. i decided to catch a bus back to my apartment rather than trudging the half hour walk with bulging plastic bags hanging off me. i was very grateful when a virtually empty # 13 pulled up.

however, the driver must have been 14 or so because it was jerk-stop-jerk-go every two seconds all the way home. i was fumbling around with my stupid bags, grasping for a bar or a seat to hold on to as the 14 year old driver learned the gas, break and clutch...all of which was not going well.

then, an older Mongolian man offered me his seat. it was quite comical the process of actually sitting down. i politley refused, but he insisted - hoisting himself up, at one point dangling by one hand gripped tightly on the bar above his head, both of us frantically grabbing at things so as not to fall over, just so i could sit.

i was (and still am) a little shocked at such generosity. such genuine generosity: he didn't hit on me, he didn't try to grope me, he didn't rip me off, he didn't steal from me. what a fallen world it is when one can assume as much about another person in the course of applied kindness. he did it because he was nice. and of all people, he did it for a foreigner - who clearly looked like a tourist at the time. and tourists are always annoying.

he got off the bus at the next stop, tapped on my window and gave me a thumbs up with a huge grin which made me laugh. in retrospect, he was probably signing "good luck," because at the next two stops all of mongolia decided it needed to take the #13 bus. i barely squeezed myself out the rusty doors, all body parts intact, when i reached my stop.