Patterns, patterns everywhere...

Here is just a sampling of the patterns from my one-bedroom apartment here in Mongolia. The question is: Will they drive me crazy in the nine months til I get married, or will I cave and spend money covering them up?

Warp speed

This is the point in my blog where I should have had several posts about the post-Ecuador part of my summer, but quite frankly it was busy and full and I lots to do other than blog... such as hanging with my new niece


Visiting Georgia



Going to my high-school friend's wedding as well as planning my own



And, of course, helping build and then playing in a sandbox with my favorite little guy.

Ahh, summer in a nutshell...

Leaving Quito (Back to the Coast)

Old Quito

We spent a day hanging out in Old Quito which has some really beautiful buildings (although, oddly enough, the vast majority of shops in this part of Quito sell shoes or undergarments... it's a bit bizarre).

These pictures are of the Basilica, a rather old building that is still "in progress". From it you can get great views of the city. Unfortunately that requires you to go up lots of stairs and scary spiral stairs (think glorified fire poles...)A view of another tower of the Basilica, from the tower shown below. The arrow shows how high I climbed. Because I am a wuss, I didn't go higher--it would have required climbing up tall ladders made of rebar .

Teleférico

The Teleférico is a new and very cool thing here in Quito. As long as you can handle heights (or are capable of taking 15 minute naps when and wherever you want) it is an activity I'd highly recommend. Monday mornings seem to be the best time to go, provided the skies are clear.

If you've gone downhill skiing at a large enough resort, you've encountered this type of transportation before--boxes on cables. Quito itself is very high in altitude, but this takes you up to the top of a mountain that is about 4,050 meters.


When you get to the top you can walk to even higher lookout areas and get a fantastic view of Quito.

And yes, in case you are wondering, that is my fiancé :)

Middle of the World

The place where people go to visit the equator in Ecuador, near Quito, is called Mitad del Mundo which made me feel like I was going to see hobbits or something... Alas, the middle of the world is not Middle Earth...

On either side of the equator

The view from the top of the marker/museum

Something new...

To fix it or not to fix it, that is the question

Every so often something will happen that will make me realize exactly how living in Mongolia has changed me. One such event happened about a week ago when my boyfriend came to visit for the day. (Yes, we are now not only living on the same continent, but are living less than an hour apart!) After offering to help with the dishes it dawned on him that I don’t actually have a working faucet in my kitchen (nor do I have running hot water). Of course he asked how long it had been like that and why something hadn’t been done about it. The first answer is easy—it’s been like that since September. The second question took a little more thought… I realized that nothing had been done about it because, quite honestly, it is less of a hassle to carry water in buckets from the bathroom than it would be to get it “fixed”. Besides, since I no longer have to carry buckets of water from my radiator to my bathroom, I need some form of weight lifting. The problem with my kitchen faucet is that both it and the pipe running to it leak continually, and if the faucet gets used, the leaks become downright torrential. I know that not only would I have to wait several days for a plumber to come (should I decide to call one) but when he showed up he wouldn’t have the right tools, which would require another several days of sitting at home waiting, and then when he finally showed up again, with the tools, he would discover that we didn’t have the right faucet and pipe parts (i.e., we were lacking the proper horsehair to tie things up), and, after another long wait, he would come and fix one of the problems, but definitely not both.

Now the light in my toilet room has ceased working (but the light bulb is just fine—I checked) and I find myself having the same quandary—wondering which is less trouble: using candles the rest of the year or waiting for an electrician to come. I’ll give you a progress report in a couple months.

I don't think I used to be this content to just let things be...

A Catastrophe!

You may have noticed the lack of posts in December. Up until the 24th, my excuse was that it was a busy month. I prepped and taught a long seminar in UB, and when I got back home I leapt right into the madness of Christmas and New Year's parties. Now my excuse is that my friend's cat, as a sort of Christmas Eve present to me, decided to leap over my computer in a effort to tackle my cat, misjudged, and ended up sliding--with my computer--to the floor. Now my computer is awaiting a new hard drive that my boyfriend, awesome guy that he is, will bring to me in Thailand in a couple weeks. Where, as I soak in the warmth and devour fresh fruit, I'll put my little Mac back together. Until then I won't be doing anything interesting (besides tons and tons of grading) so it's not like I'd be posting anyway. Check back after mid February!

Who needs workout videos?

I’ve discovered a new form of exercise that incorporates both weight lifting and aerobic exercise. It’s called “attempting to get air out of the radiator by draining water from it” and it lets you feel like you are actually doing something important as you work out. There are ten bars on the radiator in my bedroom, and the bottom 2/3rds of five of them have gone cold. A student told me that if I drained out several bucket fulls of water (or is it buckets full?) that the problem would be solved because the air that is stuck in there would be released. If only! So, three days in a row I tried this. The beauty of it is that I’m always warm afterwards, and my bedroom ends up about one degree warmer for the next hour. Plus, running a relay with yourself, hauling buckets of water to the bathroom to dump out builds both arm muscle and endurance. They are supposed to send a repairman today, who hopefully will fix the problem once and for all, but I’ve taken such a liking to my new exercise that I may just keep doing it…