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!

Thing #7

What's not to love about these fruit and food posters you find in most kitchens?

Thing #4

I'll miss the sense of accomplishment I get from fixing the toilet with nothing but a (green) paper clip...

Thing #2

I'll miss having a hot bath be such an event! Really, when the water comes out of the tap icy cold, and you have to heat the tub overnight, a hot bath is truly something special.

Things I'll miss...

Since my time here in Mongolia is winding down, I thought I'd start posting again--mostly about things I'll miss.

Thing #1: Padded doors. Rather insane assylum-esque, don't you think?

Time fillers

There are many ways to fill one’s time here in Mongolia. (If you recall, last year I was accused of spending my time filling my radiator with sand and sludge…) One of the more recent ways I’ve spent time is by dissecting my stove. I was having problems with the breakers for my apartment (ie, they would trip five million time when I was cooking which would require me to turn off the stove go out into the stairway, undo the zipper that was tying the electrical box shut, and flip the circuit back on). Turns out the breaker wasn’t the only problem with cooking. After asking a few people about my situation, one of them concluded that part of the problem was the stove—it was having mini-fires and melting a key part. Ugh! So, since my stove vocabulary isn’t so hot, I removed the two problem parts and took them to UB to try and find replacements. Turns out no one has the one I really need… So I called my director, since the stove actually belongs to the organization, and he said he’d send someone out to have a look. The would-be repair person requested that I send some pictures so that he could fully understand the problem. For your entertainment, here they are:








All that was a couple weeks ago. In the meantime, the repairman had to go into the hospital and required surgery, and so I’m reliving my life of four years ago when I cooked on a little two-burner hot-plate on my living room floor. This time though, it is a two-burner graciously loaned to me by my fiancé, and it’s on my kitchen table. I’m moving up in the world! Really though, after a period of not being able to cook anything, I feel like I’m living the high life right now. Warm food is an amazing thing!

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?

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...

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…

A Random Assortment...

Olympics: There was actually a Mongolian news crew present at the 2006 Olympics in Italy. In fact, there were probably more Mongolians present there to report on the events rather than participate in the sports. This time around the Mongolian athletes didn’t do so well (in the biathlon, I think, or maybe it was cross-country skiing), but we’ll be back in ’08 with some excellent wrestlers, I’m sure! Back to the news crew… It was really fun to see them interview athletes in both Russian and English (of course it was then loosely dubbed over in Mongolian). I particularly enjoyed the commentary about various athletes because it gave me lots of practice with numbers—height, weight, birthday, etc.

Olympics (academic): Not a big fan. I may or may not delve more into this topic at a later date. At present I need to finish writing a test for the (secondary school) English Olympics, which will be held this coming week in my town.

Nephews: Maybe I’m biased, but I really think that my nephew is actually getting cuter as he ages—and he was a cute baby to start with! I cannot wait to hang out with the monkey this summer.


Milk: I find it strange that in the land of meat and dairy products I had to go to seven stores today before I found milk. Seven!

Lights and Leakage: I finally replaced light bulbs and put the light fixtures in our bathroom back in place today. New year’s morning we’d woken up to find water dripping out of the light fixtures that are in the drop ceiling in our bathroom. This time it wasn’t even the result of the people upstairs flooding their bathroom—rather it was due to warm weather and melting snow. On January first. In Mongolia. (Have I mentioned that the weather has been strange this year?) Unfortunately, the people who live below us are also having light fixture issues. It seems to be a yearly occurrence that while we are in Thailand, our apartment will have some plumbing issue and will flood the apartment below us. Last year our kitchen sink decided to back up and over flow—even though it hadn’t been used in a month. This year a pipe in our bathroom decided to develop a hole and become a geyser. Needless to say, the people downstairs don’t like us much—even though none of the water leakage has actually been our fault.

Kitchen Decorations

Merry Christmas all!

I’m traveling around right now—Danielle and I thought it would be nice to visit some of our friends for Christmas—and as I’ve been in other people’s homes I’ve been reminded of one of the great things about Mongolia: the kitchen posters. They often contain odd combinations of food, most of which cannot be purchased in Mongolia, flowers, which also can’t be purchased in most of Mongolia, alcohol of some sort, and brightly colored backgrounds. Food ranging from fried chicken legs to breakfast burritos has shown up on kitchen walls throughout Mongolia. Here is just one sample from the multitude of choices.



I used to find these oversized posters hideous but now rather enjoy them. I’m thinking about starting a collection and papering our kitchen in a montage of these colorful pictures. I’ve also considered starting an export business. Oh the possibilities with these things!