Hot and Cold

All public buildings in town including the school, kindergarten, hospital, and school dormitories are heated by a forced hot water system which emanates from the town heating plant.  Traditionally the heat is turned on September 15th, but this year we are still in the cold. Apparently a new furnace is being installed but the work crew needed for the job has not arrived yet. Cool even when heat is going full blast, my classroom this past week has been down right frigid.  I have been incorporating a lot more exercising into my lesson plans than usual, but it is still very heard to teach/learn in 50 degree and dropping temperatures. Keep your fingers crossed that we will get heat this coming week before I have to start teaching with mittens on.

On a more positive note is that our ger is nice and warm. Brian spent the last two weekends winterizing our ger which involved placing a plastic skirt around the base of the ger and covering that with a thick berm of dirt to keep the wind out, nailing the blanket back on the door, and cleaning up and reorganizing our coal, dung, and wood piles. On Thursday 4 of our 6 tons of coal were delivered and now our coal bin is running over. Perhaps the most important job he performed was to make perhaps the world’s first and only ger cat door. Situated on the side of the ger near our bed it allows the cats to go in and out as they please but very little cold air gets in. It didn’t take the two furs long to figure out its use!

 Hair cutting ceremony

On Thursday our neighbor’s youngest son Tugso had his hair cutting ceremony. In Mongolia most children, boys and girls, don’t get their hair cut until between the ages of 2-5, depending on health and sex. On a day deemed to be auspicious, the family holds a hair cutting ceremony where friends, co-workers and family members visit, eat until they burst, cut off ceremonial chunks of hair, and shower the child with gifts. It is hard to tell in the picture below but Tugso had the cutest pony tail which is now all gone. I guess the weirdness of having semi-strangers cut your hair is tempered by the fact you get a new bicycle and a sack full of money.

Sadie at Work

This past week was exceptionally busy for me at work because on top of my regular class load I taught some classes for the other English teacher who is in Ulaabaatar for a training of some sort. I was left with no lesson plans or instructions, so I took that as the go ahead to do what we want. We have been dancing and singing, tracing bodies, making mini books, and playing charades. The tiny 5th graders may not know much English, but they sure are keen to learn which is a refreshing change.

I also continue to be busy with acting as library for the books we received from the Friends of Mongolia grant. I usually only have about 10 of the 70 books in my classroom at any given time since as soon as they come in they go back out. A few have already needed extensive repair with tape and one looks like it went swimming in a vat of milk, but I love the fact that they are so well used. The most popular are the Chingis Khan comic book series and the Super Friends comic books with Sumerman, Wonder woman, Green Lantern; etc, and I get requests for them all the time.  Through this project I have gotten to know a lot more kids, and conversing with them can be very funny at times. For example here is a conversation from a few days ago.

-7 year old in my classroom yesterday “Do you have any Supermeme (books)?”

-Me: “What?”

-7 year old ” Oh I mean Superman.”

Supermeme in Mongolian means Superboobs. Little kids say the darnedest things in every language.

And last but not least…Brian at Work

After months of research, planning, and hard work Brian’s newest venture is up and running. Best understood through exploring the site itself, The Mongolist is a wonderful resource for cutting edge and balanced commentary on current business and political happenings in Mongolia as well as an ever growing Mongolian language education site. I encourage you to check out the site, read the articles, and share them with those you think would be interested. Also please subscribe to the blog feed.

Awhile back I posted about our neighbor’s cat who had decided to move into our ger.

Well I am sure none of you will be surprised to learn that not only is he still here but he has been joined by a friend.

One morning at the end of September as Brian and Santi were walking me to school, we noticed that Monster was hanging out in our neighbor’s yard with a small, stripy, brown friend. We will never know what Monster told her that morning, but clearly it was enough to convince her that our ger was the place in town to live. I was not home when she decided to stage her invasion but Brian said it was like a sinking ship. He would plug one hole in the ger wall only to find her coming through another on the other side. He eventually gave up and we are now proud stewards of two cats.

Officially named George Hugo and Lucille Alice after couples from 2 of our favorite shows (Arrested Development and the Vicar of Dibley) they more affectionately go by L’il Monster and Little Lady Lulu. We are pretty sure they are from the same litter, but we speculate Monster was taken from his mother very early and then not fed and Lulu nursed for much longer. Monster has been playing catchup. Monster is the one to be found in ridiculous sleeping poses, suckling on your shirt for dear life, and in general doing stupid things that get him all riled up.

Lulu on the other hand, is the calm, cool, and collected hunter who likes to bring her kills inside as show and tell. She also is the more agile of the two and has gone on desert walks with us.

The best part of having two kittens though is that they have each other to wrestle with and sleep with. There is a lot of cuteness in our ger these days.