mini christmas

i have two meanings for the title of this post. one is obviously because i have a small tree and the tiniest nativity scene i've ever seen. the other reason is because "minii" is the mongolian word for "my". so this is "my tiny christmas". hehe

thankful to be with mel's family

wednesday was mongolian independence day, so melanie and hetee had some friends over to make huushuur. huushuur is a traditional mongolian food made with meat inside dough that is fried until it's crunchy. here's a few pix of the process.






on thanksgiving day, we went to melanie's parents' house and had delicious chicken burgers and ice cream with heath bar chunks for dessert. YUMMY!


i love this picture of melanie and me. :)

train to darhan

i took the train to darhan on tuesday. i think muji was trying to tell me that he wanted to come, too. hehe


corrie is another teacher here with elic. we shared a sleeper car together. it was so great to not be traveling alone.


here is my bed on the train all ready for me sleep all the way to darhan......


...and then some. i was supposed to be wakened at 3am to get off the train in darhan. however, this is the sukhbaatar train station at 5am. no one on the train woke me up, so i slept through my stop and went all the way to the russian border! thankfully i was allowed to stay on the train and just return to darhan around 8am. unfortunately, my poor friend hetee was waiting for me at the train station in darhan for several hours. thankfully, he didn't make me feel too bad about it. perhaps it was his promise to get me back someday that made him so gracious this weekend. hmmm. :)


here is a stop between sukhbaatar and darhan. do you see the small building in the background on the left side of the picture? i think this is where people wait until they see the train coming, and then they have to hike up to the tracks in time to catch the train. do you see the man doing just that? i also saw a couple of people using a small sled to bring some sort of goods onto the train. i just thought to myself, "only in mongolia."

thanksgiving get away

i'm so thankful that i could take a short trip out of the city to celebrate thanksgiving. this is what it's starting to look like every morning when i wake up and take a peek out the window. it reminds me of spring in kentucky, except that instead of harmless fog, this is toxic smoke from coal burning stoves in the gers (traditional felt tents) that surround the city.

thankfulness

a rather funny thing can happen when you live in a new culture. it's possible to get a little fuzzy on aspects of your own culture that you thought were set in stone in your own mind... like the fact that american thanksgiving is always the FOURTH thursday of november. somehow this year i convinced myself that it was the THIRD thursday in november. :) i was so convinced, in fact, that i planned a "day late" thanksgiving party for one of my classes on friday, november 21. sheesh!
even though i felt rather silly when i realized the mental slip up i'd had, i've been thinking deeply about thankfulness for a few weeks longer than usual. obviously, i don't need the 4th thursday in november to make thankfulness a part of my life. it's been a good exercise for me to think about what i can be thankful for even now. so here is a list of some of the things i'm thankful for this year.
*a loving Father who provides all i need and then some
*a fabulous family in the states and the ability to talk to them regularly through skype
*an incredible boyfriend who supports me emotionally more than i ever dreamed
*dear friends in the states who love me and keep in touch so well
*my sweet muji and the sound of his contented purrs when he sits next to me
*the sense of being really listened to by the administration at the humanities college
*overall good health and being able to get my ankle checked out in thailand
*going to thailand in 45 days!!!!!!
*the privilege of teaching 250 students...so many lives i can shine His light on
*the chance to see the Father's healing and renewal in our sunday fellowship
*YOU for reading and lifting up my requests and supporting me in so many ways!

what are you thankful for? leave me a comment and let me know. :)

great surprise

last year as i was studying mongolian i read a kid's comic book series about a little girl named tsondooloi and her pet goat named tsundeelei. they are just about the cutest books ever, and i've bought two new ones since i finished language school. today i was shopping and saw the most exciting thing. not only have they released the 6th book in the series, but standing before me were tsondooloi and tsundeelei themselves. thankfully i had my camera with me! i seriously felt like a kid who is in disneyworld and sees mickey mouse walking around for the first time. hehe

my cute kitty

here are some recent pictures of muji. i know i'm partial, but i think he's the cutest cat ever. and since i've been spending even more time at home the past few weeks, i've been seeing more of him than usual. i hope you don't mind me sharing. :)

p.s. he is indeed hanging out in the tub in the second picture. he's a funny cat and actually loves water. the other day i was taking a bath when he came and sat on the edge of the tub and starting playing in the water. hehe

feeling a bit blah

i have been taking taxis everywhere for the past 2.5 weeks, and i'm not finding any improvement in my ankle. it's getting to the point now that i'm starting to feel a bit depressed about it. i don't go anywhere except class, team meetings, and church. i haven't even been able to get groceries because the store is really too far to walk but too close to take a taxi. i've decided today that i'll go between my classes, so that at least i'll be taxing from the school to the store, so it will make it more worthwhile to ride. hehe
there are a few reasons why the whole ankle thing is making me a bit depressed. obviously the pain itself is a big factor. what's really difficult is that i can't find any specific trigger, so i can feel fine one moment and then suddenly be twitching because it hurts so much. if i could at least pinpoint what causes the pain (ex, walking too much, wearing or not wearing the brace i have, walking up stairs, etc) then i could just try to cut out the offending activity and hope for improvement. instead i'm always a little bit on edge because i know that it could start to hurt in the middle of any activity.
another reason i feel sad is because there aren't really any good options here for treatment, so i feel helpless and afraid that waiting until thailand in january or the states in the summer might injure my tendons/ligaments even more. it's awful to feel like my living situation is possibly preventing me from finding a solution.
and then there's the "stuck in my house except for absolutely necessary excursions" factor. as it is, i feel like i can't really go out after dark because of the cold and safety issues. now i feel like i shouldn't leave my house during the day either. i'm getting a bit stir crazy, and i guess i can understand what it must be like for my cat to stay home all the time. hehe at least we have each other for company. :)
it always helps me to talk through whatever's bothering me, and i feel a tiny bit better just getting my frustrations off my chest. please pray for me after you read this. :)

only in mongolia

unitel is a cell phone provider here. i guess it's good to get cell phone service from a company that lenin clearly supports. (do note my tone of sarcasm here. hehe)


today i had a meeting at school and suddenly the teachers got up to look out the window. somewhere in this mass of men in black coats is the mongolian president.


the large building on the left is a new "minii delguur". this means "my store".
the building on the right is a new "tanii delguur". this means "your store". the real irony here is that the "your store" used to be a branch of "my store" until "my store" bought the bigger building and moved about 100 yards to the left.


random street graffitti

election and the internet

even though i use the internet every day, i'm still sometimes amazed by how quickly i can get information here in mongolia. i'm able to keep up with the american election coverage online, and my boyfriend and i are doing skype video chat, so i can actually hear the live reports on american tv. i'm so thankful and blessed to be able to stay connected with technology.

mystery solved

there has been an ever-increasing foul stench emanating from my kitchen for the past week. i bleached every available surface and still the stench grew. on thursday a handyman came and attempted to fix something under the kitchen sink, but still the stench grew. it had gotten to the point of being so unbearable that i could barely stand to be in the kitchen long enough to boil water. i was determined to have someone come and fix it for good tomorrow.

today i had some girls over and they wanted to help me do the dishes. i told them i didn't want them in the kitchen because i was embarrassed of the odor. they said that they smelled it today and had noticed it last week, too. we all guessed that it was coming from the fridge, and they suggested we pull the fridge away from the wall to see if we could find anything. we all nearly gagged when we got a whiff of the exhaust from the back. we unscrewed something at the bottom of the fridge but couldn't find the source of the smell.

i planned on calling someone in the morning to come look at it. so i decided to clean out my fridge tonight so that there would be no way that the smell was coming from food in the fridge. it's a good thing i did! not only did i find the problem, i fixed it, too! apparently some chicken blood from a package of chicken i had thawed in the fridge had dripped down a drain hole in the back of the fridge. i poured some bleach down the hole, and voila!!! the foul, or should i say fowl (hehe) smell disappeared!

fun with my blog

thanks so my friend sarah, i just discovered all sorts of ways to have fun with my blog layout. what could be better than some bling, and a picture of my cat? hehe

a week of feeling weak

this whole "immobilization" thing is rather tricky when i don't have a car and have to walk everywhere. what makes it so tricky is how stubborn i am. i want to just say that the 10 minutes it takes me to walk each way to school isn't going to damage my ankle any more. but then i realize i'm just being stubborn, prideful, and rather foolish. it takes every bit of humility i have to take a taxi instead. i hate taking a taxi when it's less than a kilometer for me to walk and traffic is so bad that it isn't even any faster to go by car. i hate looking like some sort of lazy, spoiled american who would rather pay to sit in a car than walk a short distance. i hate it that i'm not getting any exercise. i hate it that i feel trapped in my house except for necessary outings. and i just hate feeling so weak. but i remember the promise that HIS strength is make perfect in my weakness. i know that he is using this time of limited mobility to teach me - not sure just what the lessons will be, but i'm trusting Him.

all's well that ends well

this week was a bit unusual for me. i spent thursday afternoon at the hospital here. don't get freaked out. it wasn't an emergency. i've been having increasingly bad pain in my ankle since last spring. i was hoping i could wait it out until thailand in january and have it checked out there, but it became absolutely unbearable. i had heard good things about a new, private, korean run hospital, so that's where i went. it was a surprisingly pleasant experience, and thankfully i got a diagnosis. unfortunately the diagnosis wasn't good. i have an old fracture that has been causing inflammation in my tendons and ligaments. the doctor doesn't seem to think that i'll ever have 100% recovery because i waited so long to have it treated. however, he suggested i wear a brace and try to be as immobile as possible for a few weeks. he said that i could hope for a decrease in pain with this treatment.

the tricky part is trying to be immobile when i don't have a car and i have to teach all week. usually i walk back and forth to school a total of 8 times per week. i'm going to try to cut that down to 5 times and hope that helps. i'm also going to just force myself to sit more while i'm teaching. i prefer to be up and about checking on students as they work, but for the next few weeks i'll have to cut that down significantly.

so to explain the title of this post...i had a kind of crazy week but classes this afternoon went really, really well, so i'm happy - even with a bad leg!

on the run coffee

mongolia is a country that seems to be just beginning to adopt the concept of going to a cafe for the mere purpose of chatting with friends and sipping something hot. i get the sense that for most mongolians eating is more about practicality than socializing. or maybe i just haven't made friends who like to go out to restaurants. hehe

anyway, one of the aspects of american life that i miss the most is being able to go to a cafe and just sit for hours either reading or talking with friends. there are a few places in ub that make this possible but most of them are expensive or not really cozy enough to make me want to spend any amount of time there. in the past few weeks however i have found 2 places that i would actually want to return to with a friend. one of these is called "cafe amsterdam", and it was filled with foreigners (not so great) but it was also filled with light from many windows (super great) and serves a fantastic panini (amazing). if you ever come to visit me in mongolia, i will definitely take you to eat and chill out here.

the other such place is called "on the run coffee". it's a cafe attached to a big hotel, and it was quiet and cozy. my friend muugii had gone there before and told me about it. we decided to check it out last thursday, and i'm so glad we did. the walls are painted a deep orange color and we sat in dark red, comfy chairs. the light was dim and warm, and i felt like i could sit there for hours. unfortunately i had a class to teach at 4:00, but at least i know i can return some other time. here's a picture of muugii enjoying the peace and quiet.


ps. i got a new wallet after we had coffee :)