Life continues on here with long days and fast weeks. It is hard to believe that it is already mid-November and that we have been here almost a year and a half. Never a dull moment for sure.

• In October the other English teacher at school went to Ulaanbaatar for 2.5 weeks for training. There is no substitute teacher system here like in America, so other teachers are expected to take up as much slack as possible. In other words, while he was gone I taught 5th, 7th, and 8th grade in addition to my regular classes. I enjoyed getting to meet kids whom I otherwise don’t interact with, but it was exhausting work. I did partly console myself with the thought that he would come back with exciting new teaching skills, but it turns out he wasn’t even at a teaching training. For reasons I cannot fathom he was at human resources management training. Maybe he fancies himself our school’s next director…
• We have a 4th grade neighbor named Bilguun who likes to come over and play Angry birds, get Santiago all riled up, and watch Brian work on the computer. He also likes to help me cook (and then consume his weight in whatever “weird” foods we are having that night) and to show us his art projects. We don’t think he gets a lot of encouragement at home based on how excited he always seems to be to show us his work. Here he is proudly with a snow boat he built.

• Two weeks ago Lulu came home after we had gone to bed. That in itself was not unusual as she is our adventure kitty, but what was abnormal was that when I reached down to pet her I found myself petting a very crusty and foul smelling cat. Suspecting the worst I got out of bed, turned on the light, and found myself holding a cat whose tail and entire underbelly were covered in human feces. We will never know what happened, but we suspect that she fell into an outhouse whilst out exploring. Fortunately for us, Lulu is the most docile cat in the world and barely voiced a protest as we scrubbed her in a bucket of cold water at 1:30 in the morning. She was probably just glad she didn’t have to clean it all off with her tongue.
• A few weeks ago when we were in the aimag (provincial capital) we bought some artichoke juice on the slim hope it would taste like one of my all time favorite vegetables. Fail. Imagine a bottle of green bitter bubble gum juice and you are pretty close. I can’t imagine drinking it even if it is the health miracle the bottle claimed. Blah.

• Heating is always a big issue in Mongolia considering it is one of the coldest countries in the world and heating systems here tend to be less than great. Hanhongor’s town heating plant has always struggled to actually heat the public buildings in town which includes the school, kindergarten, dormitory, and hospital. This made the installation of a new furnace this year a great improvement, except for one thing-they didn’t get around to doing it until the end of October. This meant that in a land where it is routinely below freezing by the end of September that we didn’t have heat until the beginning of November. My classroom got down below 50 before the heat finally kicked in. I have no idea what planning actually went into the replacement but you do really wonder why it was not done in the summer.
• Behind our ger is a dirt road that curves in and out between the houses in our neighborhood. As more people have gotten cars here that has translated into more idiot drivers going way too fast through narrow ally ways where children play. More than once as we lay in bed we had morbid thoughts about drunks not making the turn and driving straight into our ger.  Fortunately, when we expressed these concerns to our neighbors, we found that they were all in agreement that something had to be done. After a long wait for some metal sheeting, our street is no longer a street, and I think we can all sleep a little more soundly. Our ger is right behind the two blue sheds on the left. The new wall has an opening for pedestrians and super slow motorcycles but not cars.

• Recently my father sent my school a donation of two boxes filled with scissors, glue, pipe cleaners, glitter, clay, and stickers, stickers, stickers. I have spread much of the goodies around to the other teachers and have been using the rest in my regular classes, art class, and with the third grade. I have not managed to get pictures of all the projects, but I did make pencil worms with the third graders which was a lot of fun because they had never before made anything with googly eyes, pompoms, or pipe cleaners. Thanks Dad for all the fun stuff!

• We are excitedly planning our winter trip to America. We have bought all the plane tickets, and we have reserved rental cars and hotel rooms. We will be spending time in Southern California with Brian’s family, in Ohio with my family, in Wisconsin with friends and family, and a few days in South Korea with hopefully the biggest bowl of ba bim bap in the world.
• Last but not least Brian’s website The Mongolist, which I mentioned in my last post, is going gangbusters. I encourage you to check out his many insightful articles on politics, business, and society in Mongolia as well as my guest posts on education. Tell your friends and like it on Facebook!