Амар байна уу?

Тодаи ис а биг Монголиан холидаи.

I thought about writing the whole (short) post phonetically in English using the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet, but I'll spare you. Although, on a side note, I think doing that would be great fun since usually I have to write Mongolian using English letters...

Anyway, Mongolians are currently celebrating their lunar new year called "Tsagaan Sar" which means White Moon/Month. It's a holiday that involves greeting others, particularly your elders, eating lots and lots of steamed meat dumplings, and asking if people are well and if their animals are fattening nicely. If you want to read more about it you can check out the wikipedia article Tsagaan Sar or my previous post on the topic... Er, maybe not. It seems I've never brought myself to blog about the wonderful and painful Tsagaan Sar holiday before. Hmm. I have thoughts to share on the topic, but no time at present. For now I'll simply tell you that the Wikipedia article is mostly correct. Maybe 92% right.

Other pictures to come later... when I find them... They seem to have not been put back on my computer after the Catastrophe of Christmas 2006. I'm a little behind here.

How Do You Feel About Cats?

I don't think it matters actually, whether you love them or hate them, either way this video will probably make you laugh. We came across it last night and were laughing so hard (crying, actually) that Tom got upset and started attacking... Poor cat has no sense of humor.

Enjoy!

I voted

Did you? I opted for the electronic voting booth, simply for the novelty of it after years of running around town in Mongolia, looking for a fax machine with international capabilities (since my absentee ballot always arrived so late)...

Halloween Continued...

While I didn't dress up this year, I did dress the cat up. It was highly entertaining to me to see Tom in his cow costume. He wasn't so amused, but he did like the warmth of it.

Halloween

Well, I didn't dress up this year--there is something about working a regular office job in the States that didn't inspire me to want to wear a costume all day. But I realized that I'd never posted pictures from one of the best Halloweens ever: two years ago when we had to dress up for our culture-teaching party at the college. K and I decided to be something along the lines of Russian Hip-hop Choreographers. The costumes were inspired by a chance viewing of the Russian version of "So You Think You Can Dance" and were great fun to pull together. Plus, after all the years of being called Russian, it was entertaining to try and intentionally look like an "Oros khun".

The PET Journal

For fun I thought I'd put a copy of the Practical English Teaching (PET) Journal up on my blog. It's a journal that is put out for Mongolian English teachers. I spent much of the last two years working on the design, layout, and editing of the PET. This edition here is supposed to be published early this fall.

There are a few issues with this online edition, the most noticeable being that shadows were made quite dark. If you wish to see this full-sized, please select "open publication" beneath the picture.

Enjoy!

Get your own - Open publication

Odds and Ends...

First things first: We managed to find fresh lemongrass and galangal (Siamese ginger). Yay!

What have we been doing besides hunting for Thai produce? We've been doing a little renovation on our soon-to-be home:

Before

Now

There is plenty more work to be done, but at least we've made some visible progress. We are both job hunting though, and the actual procuring of employment might slow the apartment progress... until then, it's full steam ahead!

Wedding pictures... Finally

Thanks for your patience, y'all. Thanks to Phil's uncle and aunt for sending us the pics they took. If anyone else has pictures, pretty please can we have them?

Me

Phil and I

The wedding party

The ceremony

My girls

It was so special to have them all together! (L to R) Kathryn was my teammate for two years, Liz is my sister, Danielle was my teammate and roommate for three years, Heather is a friend of mine from college

A Bit of Culture Shock...

The chances are that this year will be fraught with episodes, small and large, of reverse culture shock. It's pretty much a given when you've spent seven years living and working in a foreign, very foreign, country. It's unpredictable and wily and likely to sneak up on you in the middle of a conversation or in the aisles of your local grocery store. In fact, it's such a devious and insidious thing that you usually don't realize what is causing your confusion/watering eyes/sharp response/fill in the blank...

Case in point: Yesterday I was at the store. Exciting, eh? I wanted to find some seasonings for cooking, particularly for making Thai food. I have to tell you something shocking: it was easier to do this in MONGOLIA. That's right; here, in the USA (the "land of plenty" as people sometimes say) the only thing I found was "Thai seasoning" which, when I turned it over to read the ingredients, claimed to be made mostly of "chili peppers & other seasonings". How is one to know if it contains the Thai staples of Kaffir lime, lemon grass, or galangal? What exactly is Thai about "& other seasonings", and why do I have to pay $5 to find out? I just wanted some comfort food in the form of Tom Ka Gai (chicken and coconut soup). Anyway... it wasn't exactly rational of me to be upset at the seasonings aisle, but I was. Blame it on culture shock.

Maybe I should try to make some Mongolian tsuivan instead. Fewer seasonings involved. Now I'll cheer up and post some wedding pictures.

Reliving my past

In the past I've blogged about how living in Mongolia changed my music tastes. One of my favorite groups was a Russian duo, now split, called Smash. I was looking around on You Tube and found some of their songs. To liven up your day, I'm posting them for you.


"Belle" is the first song of theirs that I heard.


Classic Smash