Tsaagen Tsar Blog...photos to follow tomorrow

January 28, 2011. UB Guesthouse, Mongolia.
Today’s Quote: “You see we don’t have a holiday called Tsaagen Tsar in America. We have Thanksgiving. This is where we clean up our houses and put on our best clothes so we can pretend to the people and family visiting us that this is what we are like all the time and they show up and they are all nicely dressed as if they wore clothes like that all the time too and we have happy-go-lucky conversations about family matters and then spend the whole time eating and drinking wonderful foods that we would not get to have at any other time and then the men pass out watching sport events on tv while the women all go shopping….so having just said that basically we have your holiday but it happens in November.” –I really did say this. Honestly I did.

Credit Card protection methods are racist! The idea of where something is purchased is how the cards decide if they will accept payment or not. Today I was trying to buy my plane ticket to Germany/Europe. It was all going along fine, and suddenly when I try to pay for it by credit card it denied payment. Did it again, didn’t work…
Obviously I was a little stumped. Got my mom on the phone on skype to do something rather funny. With her at the computer in Northern Virginia and me at a café in Ulaanbaatar, she went to the same website and punched in my ticket information along with my passport number and credit card. It went through. They seem to feel more confident it is a legal purchase when it comes from Northern Virginia instead of Mongolia. But you have no idea how small you are until you realize that you are on a computer in Mongolia talking to your mother on the other side of the world as she uses her computer to buy a plane ticket using your credit card and passport information that you relay to her so you can fly to a beer festival in Germany. Seriously what the hell did we do ten years ago??? I was 19 for crying out loud.
Morale of the story? I got my plane ticket. A flight from UB to Munich and back cost me 850 bucks. I am rather impressed how cheap that is. Gives me a nice big safety blanket for living comfortably the rest of my time here.

January 30, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.

Was spending a lot of time unnecessarily drinking, so I decided to come back to my town a day early. I am glad I did. I brought with me some cheeses better suited for pizza making along with some honest to Gods true granny smith apples. I love these apples, they type that you feel like you could crack your teeth on when you eat. Outfreakingstanding. Naturally it cost enough, but with February money arriving early I had more than enough money to draw on.
I got to sit in the front seat on my way back from UB too. I wish I had brought my camera. This is a beautiful country, in many different ways too. Some of its beauty comes in lanscape, sometimes in people, culture, music, hell sometimes an upturned van on the side of the road with the countryside in the backdrop can even look nice. Today when driving back it was windless, not even sub-zero outside, and not a single cloud in the sky. The way the sun shone on the lightly snowed ground in every direction, the degree of serenity and eternity I felt and experienced at the time. It amazed me to my very core. It was like I wanted to believe in a religion just so there was someone I could thank for such a site at the time. As I was sitting and able to see the driver something interesting could be seen. This driver guy…first off he rocks. I hear horror stories from other PCV’s about drivers who literally swig from vodka bottles as they tear down the road. My dudes a real straight shooter. A heavy drinker but always when work is done. Anyways the way I saw him scan the road. This back and forth day in day out job of his in which he must know every bump in the road by now. Even he, he wasent jaw dropped like I was but it was obvious that even he thought that this was a sight to behold.
…or maybe someone put LSD in the Tsuivan I bought from the woman at the black market. No clue.
I return to UB on Tuesday. Tsaagen Tsar approaches!

January 31, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia

There is something screwy going on with one of my teeth. I have had this feeling before when I ate large quantities of meat but I don’t like it all the same. I may like my candy and my soda, but I could adopt a sugar free life and I would still have teeth problems. They are not the strongest part of my body. Fair enough I guess, just requires me to have good dental…or be a Peace Corps volunteer. Ill wait it out till at least the end of Tsaagen Tsar, see what it feels like then.
The schools wireless internet is also offline. Its all plugged in right but is not assigning IP. The servers not at the school, so I imagine its been shut down at the govt center. Nothing for it, and with an Ethernet cord I can still use internet in town. Gotta go pick one of those up while shopping tomorrow.
I have also tonight bought and have been drinking the worst and most expensive bottle of uh…oh sure lets call it “wine” my town has….its a day of a lot of screwy things!
At least one thing still works though. I got my running shoes on and got a good run in. That was a good thing to do. With the upcoming holiday I am gonna get good and bloated on alcohol and it will be a little while before I can exercise again. Even days of broken things feel good after a long run.

February 1, 2011. Nayra’s Café, Mongolia

Bus tickets…yea….well nothing for it. I came to UB a day early believing that since this is the eve of the biggest holiday in all of Mongolia people would be buying bus tickets out of UB like mad to go see their family members (like me) in the outer soums.
I imagine if I live here my whole life ill learn about….half the quirks I need to be as sharp as my fellow Mongolian. People aren’t trying to travel OUT of town, people are fighting to GET to their relatives who live in UB instead. Makes sense now that I think about it, but it means when I went to the bus station today and tried to buy a ticket for tomorrow I got a good laugh from the teller. She by the way looked shockingly like the woman who I had the runabout with the world “Dadal” last summer. Maybe that’s why she was laughing at me. Or it could have been that I was wearing my winter dell.
Yep. Broke it out for its second one time use of making me look quite high brow for Tsaagen Tsar. Its thick as anything and hot as hell once you get in a building, but when walking around Mongolia in the winter there is nothing more comfortable out there, bar none!
Well, a day early, and nothing to do until 10:30am tomorrow. I put my stuff down at UB Guesthouse again and just walked coatless to the nearby café to sit down and update a blog and eat a good sandwich. Being early does have its advantages I suppose. Pick up some fruits and the like as gifts for the holiday, then park it at a bar for some beer drinking. Ive had worse Tuesdays.

Postscript: Hey, someone tried to rob me and my friend! I went over to the state department to buy some fruit for the wonderful M21 named Allison who lives in Erdene at the moment. It was your typical method of two guys push in at a doorway while one grabs your stuff from behind. We have been trained in such methods and Cameron (the PCV who they tried to do this to) shook them off very effectively. They obviously didn’t try to rob me because as I was wearing a dell my pockets are behind layers and layers.
I tell you they were angry as hell it didn’t work either. They did seem quite professional, and it was only because we really knew what we were doing that we didn’t get robbed. Actually as I got a little down the road they still stood at the doorway getting ready to get back in position and I did something…risky. I …hehe….i waved at them. They saw me do it too. One of them nudged their friend who was not paying attention to see me wave as well. I let them know just how much I knew those asses were common thieves…and that they not only had failed…but I was going to mock them for it! Now yes, I was on the main road of UB and they wouldn’t want trouble with the police but there was no way of being certain my act of mockery would have gotten them hot headed enough to just run over and start beating the crap out of me…they didn’t, and I think in that ONE instance it was totally worth it.
Worse still was that later that night a thief was successful. Levi, one of the guys I trained with was also going to Erdene for Tsaagen Tsar and was bring his friend with her. A VSO volunteer from Portugal. A very sweet woman who owns a blackberry phone. Some jerk came to the restaurant we were at and was pretending to beg for food. She had placed her phone down on the table and then the dude had thrown the menu down atop of it pretending to ask us to buy him a meal. He slid the phone from behind the table right off and then took straight off. Jerk… It goes to show you it really only takes that one terrible time for them to rob you blind here.

February 8, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.
Today’s Quote: “Now that…was one hell of a wild ride” –If I don’t get to die Kamikaze style I want those to be my final words…For the record, if I do get to go down in a blaze of glory like say firing proton torpedoes at a death star I want my last words to be “SAY CHEESE!!!!”

Well…a week without blog entries. In all fairness this has been one hell of a wild ride this week so it goes without saying my lacking in blog materials is something to be expected, but now its time to bring everything up to speed.
So I woke up February 2nd and checked out of the guesthouse. Putting on my winter dell is a little more labor some than I thought it would be. When its -50 and your stationary it will keep you nice and toasty, but if its only -20 and your moving around a lot, well that’s when you start to sweat. Sweat is not a good thing to have happen when its cold out. Eventually the sweat runs cold and your body now has to heat itself more in the process.
Also, I am walking through UB in a dell and its not Tsaagen Tsar till tomorrow. Tall white guy in a winter dell. I was the king of the eye traffic! Lotta looks and points. I mean, as a tall white guy in Mongolia that already happens, but now it wasn’t looking at me like that is cool. Now I was wearing something indicating that I was not a tourist. This…puzzled people. Got on the bus and made my way to the east bus station. Boy howdy. Compared to the nightmarish Dragon Center bus station that services the west of Mongolia this one handling the East…oh gods its infinitely better. Line….THERE WAS A LINE!!!! Four people sequentially standing behind one another patiently waiting for ticket purchases. I was afraid to move or breath for fear of disrupting this utopia. I stood behind them and the line moved briskly. No 25 ticket orders by one person or anything like that. The ticket cashier was alert and courteous. When I got up and said “Be neg billet tegeed autobus Erdene soum auoooarraee.” (I would like to buy one ticket on the next bus to the town of Erdene please) The teller didn’t even break stride. They had just understood every word I just said. Seriously I was in some alternate universe where Mongolians stand in line and understand my Mongolian speaking in the capital no less!
Ten minutes later my bus left ten minutes early. Buses are a lot different than the meekers I usually drive. They actually have seat seats that you alone get to ride in. This bus was also heated, though I was still warm enough I could have done without that. The drive to Erdene went on without incident, and the person I was sitting next to was neither fat nor drunk. WTH????
We pull up to Erdene and I file out. Erdene…looked just like I left it in July. Actually it didn’t even have all that much snow on the ground either. It was nice to see the big mountain again which my town has in the background. This country is stuffed full of mountains just like it, but dammit if I did not think this one was the best.
Some new stores, some stores had closed down. They had set up road indicators up the dirt areas and the basketball court had a coat of cement the 21’s had made over the summer, but all in all Erdene was just like I had left it.
I walked up the dirt road towards Allison’s ger, located in the yard of my old language instructor Shagai. Shagai’s yard was a bright red picket fence, and she had built a garage at her place too. Very cool looking indeed. If this town had a wealthy district Shagai definitely lives there. Allisons ger was a little bigger than mine, and her yard as always is defended by a dog. Allisons dog though….wolf….i mean it that was a black wolf. Chained and with good reason, that thing looked like it could take down a lion.
Allison however, is very very cool. Her gers size allows her a slightly different setup than mine. She has a very nice and large bed that puts mine to shame, and her refrigerator is also a freezer. She’s got quite the setup! Her family (as she is a woman….sexism!) also does her water errands and prepares a lot of her wood (though she chops some too) Lucky! So like all volunteers we met and just chatted for pretty much two hours straight. She rocks, and sounds like she’s in the same situation I was around 8 or so months into service. Doing okay language wise, getting the routine down and working hard even when hardly working. Good for her. I thanked her for her hospitality and gave a batch of granny smith apples/real oranges and even a lemon. It seemed to be a good gift.
We were later met by two additional M21’s named Boelyn and Ellie who had trained at Erdene last summer. All perfectly nice ladies I was glad to have met. Yet, after hours of chatter I got a txt from my sister telling me to head over by around 7pm to help with the preparations. No idea what that meant as last year when in Ondortolge no one really was here to involve me that much. Yet before I even left the yard I got to bump back into Shagai who had returned to her house at last. Mongolians don’t really hug, even old friends they haven’t seen in a while. So instead I sorta just stood in front of her with my arms out jumping up and down very lightly acting like a ten year old. She found it hilarious. She had just given birth to her 2nd son a few months back, and was way skinnier than I last saw her.
So after that intro I walked back over to my moms house on the edge of town. I always liked that walk when I was training in the summer. It was a long quiet walk that let me either clear my head or reminisce. The weather was mild, the green roof of my mothers house was in sight, and as I walked into the yard….a lot had changed, and a lot had stayed the same. A brand new white car was parked in the yard. Seriously just sitting there. I thought at first okay maybe it was a friend dropping by or something but as I looked around the yard and saw another change that was related to the car. Just didn’t know it yet.
The sheep and the goats were all gone. Yup…the only thing in the pen was the three cows and two very pregnant goats and sheep. My family had close to 100 animals last year. Its too late for them to be grazing…so where were they? This was explained to me later but I think ill put it in here. So my brother graduated from vocational school and got a job as sorta a mobile engineer here and around UB. It requires him to drive so a car would be of vital importance. Additionally, it meant he is seldom at home anymore. My sister works as a teacher and as my Mongolian mother is pressing 60, the handling of her livestock pretty much had fallen only on her. I made this deduction myself but I believe I am right. My mother, who loves her lifestyle could not continue to keep doing as she had as sole herder/animal caretaker for the family. Selling the animals gave them the necessary funds to pay for a car which would greatly increase my brothers degree and pay of work and also. The cows were kept so my mother could continue to gather milk from them. It was not a bad change, just something I never really saw coming.
So that’s what was different. Everything else? The rail car/shed, the outhouse, the homicidal guard dog, the garden, yup…they were just as I had left em. I went into the house to see my family hard at work cleaning the house from top to bottom. I really do have the Mongolian family doppelganger. Everything needed to be nice an clean prior to the new year. Oh why not…I got to work scrubbing the floor. My mom, brother and sister were all curious about my life and I relayed all relevant data. My sister had grown out her previous swim team haircut but I still had longer hair than her. My brother as always continued to remain very quiet and only initiated conversation when it was absolutely necessary. Good gods it my doppelganger family! After the cleaning was done I got to see something happen that I hadn’t before….we made the cake! VERY cool. Every family makes a cake out of flat breads and “white foods” of a sort. I got to take lots of pictures during this process as my family got the food ready and it really was interesting to see it happen. A base layer, the flat breads, orum on top, butter, goober like chocolate balls on the top. More butter and sugar cubes. We made a kick ass cake. Then they arranged the sheep meat, the salads (my family had cabbage salad unlike the potato salad so popular at Bagakhangai) and a giant airag bowl. Airag as you probably recall is the fermentation of horse milk and has roughly the equivalent alcohol content of beer. Its hard to come by, especially in the winter, and my family alone had it in town. Really a good treat. So one by one all the platters of food were set up and when all was ready you would really not be able to tell the difference from American Thanksgiving except for the types of foods prepared. My family all put on nice clothes and we sat and ate the “Pre-Tsaagen Tsar” Feast. This was completely unknown to me as last year I had no such guidance in these matters, I am very glad I came this year. So we ate a lot, good stuff too. They had all seemed to forget that I am willing to eat fat. I recalled to them when I nearly choked on the stuff a few years ago and they all double over in laughter. Didn’t find it quite that funny but hey…whatever works. We drank all the typical drinks. Milk tea…(ah..my moms is the best) sodas, airag, and of course vodka. I really wanted to go lite on vodka this year, so I made a deal with my mom that I would drink the required three shots of vodka on the day I came with all the other PCV’s. The horse airag though was excellent, and of course…buuz came out. Ah buuz, its more a winter than a summer food, but is by far Mongolians favorite meal except for maybe meat right off the bone. Whats not to like right? Its meat with the tiniest layer of flour to contain it as its steamed….Nothing not to like.
So I ate my fill and my family was kind enough to give me a life back to Allisons ger. We all went to Shagai’s house and did some more reminiscing. I like Shagai. She’s sorta your “have it all” Mongolian life type setups. Shes married, children, both her and her husband work good jobs, plenty of money, no alcohol problems, a nice house and nothing but a bright future ahead. The Mongolian Dream I suppose. She sounds very happy, and so am I for her.
As we later that night adjourned to the ger for rest I encountered something I hadn’t thought of. I was in a small round tent with three women, and we needed to change clothes. We did each other the courtesy of looking at something important on a wall as one gender and then the other changed. It did remind me that I do indeed live alone though usually. Was glad not to be seen though. Winter life is making me fat. This binge eating didn’t help either!
So I got out the subzero sleeping bag and took up residence on the floor. It was the second time I had ever used the sleeping bag, both times in this town and around this time! That’s funny. Allisons ger is also sort of built on a slant so for the entire night my body wanted to roll to the corner. But still, not all that hard to sleep. Boy I hope I didn’t snore too loudly. They didn’t complain but then again I don’t know if that means that I didn’t.
So the next morning we all had to…ugh…get up early. I hate getting up early, especially after a night of heavy eating from before. This was where we would have our first “Amar Bahn UU?” with the family to christen the new year. Each of us went straight to our host families alone and greeted one another. You basically get the closest human contact to a Mongolian without having sex with them during this time too. You ask each other basically if they are having a good new year and you “kiss” by sniffing the side of each others cheeks. If your younger, you support the persons hands in the “hug” portion of this too. Its funny, this is a country where we stack ourselves till were practically humping someone when riding a car, and yet we don’t actually hug all that much in this country…theres some psychology behind that I just know it!
After that I gave gifts to each member of my family. I gave my mom and sister money and some oranges and apples. For my brother, a pack of cigarettes. Not the crummy one he smokes either. The actual cigarettes that cost more than a dollar a pack to buy! Got my first sounds of grammar from my brother as he said thank you for the gift. Go me! We then sat down…and ate again. Pretty much the exact same thing, but they did spare me from having to drink that much. As it was 9 in the morning I was thankful.
After another feast my family told me that they would take me to Allisons hosfamily so I could meet up with the other PCV ladies and “we could start doing our rounds” Another quick car ride and then we reached the house near the school. The house I was taken into was stuffed full of Mongolians I didn’t recognize, and Allison was off collecting the other ladies. So basically I sat there and did the routine of greeting everyone and then drinking all the nice drinks and eating the foods. This family also had what is known as “Mongolian Vodka” it’s a clear drink about 10% alcohol content and tastes like slightly odd water. I had actually seen how this stuff is created last summer when I had been on my Hovsgul Nuur trip. It’s a machine as old as the Pyramids themselves, probably older. It takes a liquid, boils off the non booze and leaves you with the greatest percentage of alcohol you can get without a more modern distiller type thingy.
Perfectly drinkable, and Mongolians consider it their most dangerous drink. The idea is that unlike actual vodka this stuff doesn’t hurt to drink, and unlike Airag this stuff is potent enough to get you drunk pretty quick. More so, it sneaks up on you as well…
Ten or so minutes later explaining who I was the three other ladies show up and we drink the many drinks and eat the many foods. Pretty much the first day of Tsaagen Tsar was us tearing through houses. We went to Aditya’s ger, the other PC language teacher and the gers of several other volunteers who were not present, it was also during this day that Levi and his friend made it to town. Our group of four just became six! The first day….that was more liquor than food, not by our choice either. I as a man am expected to drink more, and while some houses were considerate some demanded I drink more. Never got drunk, but as night fell I was certainly done with drinking. You know whats not served at Tsaagen Tsar? WATER!!!!!! And being an idiot I forgot all the stores would be closed so there was no water to be bought.
We awoke the morning of the second day….not with a mind splintering headache, but one of a person who had forgotten to drink water before going to bed. Bleh. I almost never get headaches, and a hangover to me usually feels all around cruddy and not head splitting. Bleh to too much vodka!
The second day had also brought a blanket of snow to the town. We made our way over the hill together to my mothers house, who was thrilled to see us all having returned from seeing distant relations in UB. We sat around and had a great morning feast. They like the horse airag and Levi agreed my moms tea is best. I got some great pictures of us all feasting too. I know its home field advantage and all that, but I do think my family had the best Tsaagen Tsar spread. Small, but hardy. That sort of thing.
We went to mostly PCV families houses the second day. By the second day there were some drunken men passed out near houses. I guess the booze and food caught up to some. Not for us though. Actually the second day was more foods than it was alcohol…and some did not settle that well. I knew the feeling, the feeling of food in my stomach that my body refuses to process. Not drunk at all, just one or twelve too many buuz that one was not agreeing with me. As night fell the second night I knew what needed to happen. I just needed to puke it up. Or at least that which had not digested and just sat in my stomach. I timed it well, and not even all that intoxicated at all I made my way to the outhouse and had one really really good vomit cession. It came out in the chunk stuff, I could really feel pieces of buuz passing by as it came out.
One good puke later and all felt fine again. I love my body! We all returned back to the ger at the end of the day thoroughly Tsaagen Tsard out. The following morning my brother would give me and Levi and her friend a lift to UB. Charged us a little bit for it too, but I get that gas doesn’t grow on trees. After a few decompression showers I sort of spent the afternoon convalescing from the nights of alcohol…with a Gem beer. Good Gods I love my body!
Sunday was a meeker ride back to town. I had to go to the annoyingly infamous Bars market…I hate that place, but Naarantuul was closed, and my meeker had to go somewhere. We got back to town and I saw that my ger looked in pretty good shape. It was so warm that the water in my ger had not even exploded my water barrel! Kick ass. Sunday night I get a text from Sarango that our boss Tsetsge was having a teacher Tsaagen Tsar that I would be attending….luckily the day of no eating and only beer drinking had sharpened my appetite again.
Last year I had made the mistake of sitting in a spare room with the men instead of joining the women teachers in the main room with the cake and everything. This year I was much smarter. I was ready to rock this year, and rock I did. We all sat together, and the tradition of passing many many bowls happened. We drank and drank, and then salads appeared and we ate and ate. One was even tofu salad. Go progressive Monoglians go! There were a LOT of bottles of vodka and though it was a long table there were three serving maidens who each had a “sector” They were merciless, and not just to me either. Really they would not let you give back anything but an empty cup.
One woman next to me committed what is probably the greatest party foul in all of Mongolia. She had been taking her shot of vodka and then looked like she was drinking a juice bottle for a chaser, when she was in fact spitting the alcohol into the bottle. The men next to her on the other side found out…and…wow…. They were so mean to her. The women too!!!! Good gods folks, she meant no offense. I really tried to have her side but she seemed too ashamed of herself. Come now people, its vodka, not the blood of the Sky Father!
When the buuz arrived I ate my three. I knew was the perfect amount of full at that and I was insistent, so when they realized that was a dead end they proceeded to force vodka on me. That I could do. I was having one of those days again. I don’t know how but some very rare days I have an insanely high tolerance to vodka. I am talking about 3/4ths a liter of 40% stuff and still not drunk! Other times it kicks my ass after four shots. This night was the former. I didn’t get loud, or obnoxious, my Mongolian was still understandable and I really did just continue on as though it were a perfectly fun party.
Then it was time to sing. Singing at a Mongolian party is both mandatory and unavoidable. They give you some horse airag in one hand and a shot of vodka in the other and the idea is your supposed to earn your hosts hospitality by entertaining them with a song. I was about halfway through the line of people to sing when they handed it to me. I rose, looking and feeling very clear headed and sharp. So I made a bold move, and in Monoglian I made the following speech to everyone:


“Thank you host for having me to your home for Tsaagen Tsar. Almost two years ago I came from America and I moved to Bagakhangai. In that time we have all been able to work together at the school to continue to help improve in the teaching. I am happy I have been able to work with you and next year, perhaps both schools will have a new Peace Corps volunteer and you can all laugh at them for once again not knowing how to speak English.”


Mongolians don’t laugh all that much, the blatant display of emotions thingy… but somehow maybe its how I said it but they all really laughed at that…I sorta froze that moment, me with a shot of vodka and a cup of airag standing before people I had worked with for nearly 2 years and having them all agree and laugh with me. There are moments in life where you don’t take an actual picture, but you must truly burn them into your memory…because at that exact moment, life was more than good. Life was worth…anything really ….ah hell…happiness may be relative but id live a thousand years in misery if it meant I got to have one more experience like that again.
…but now I had to sing. I don’t know the title of the song I sang, but its one of the only ones I know. Not exactly Mongolias national anthem but something similar. A lot about pride and greatness. Everyone sang along, and I think it really helped to hide my own signing (see “12 Days of Mongolian Christmas” for reference) and at the end they actually applauded me. I took the whole shot and downed the entire cup of airag. I felt like the king of the world.
We did the rest of the teachers songs, and a little after that it was time to go. We were given a “parting shot” which mine was about three times larger than everyone elses. I think the teachers were all aware that I was acting way too calm and collected for the amount of alcohol they had given me and as usual were trying to figure out what it was that would finally get me euphoric or at the very least don the drunken grin. I drank the last shot and they let me out like everyone else. It was when I finally left that the wave of drunkness finally got to me. Luckily I stumbled safely back to my ger and downed a liter and a half of water before passing out. Yesterday I woke up still drunk from the night before. One of those where you don’t feel bad but rather really unnaturally light and euphoric…ie: the rare “still drunk from the night before” teaching in that state is harder than you think!
Finally today and a full 24 hours removed from alcohol I am writing up the crazy ordeal of everything. I love this country, I love this town, I love this job, and I love this life.
GO MONGOLIA GO!!!!!!

February 9, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.

Life slowly returns to normal. Its been 2 days sober now. I needed it. I can feel myself slowly getting back to full strength and regaining all my wits. Dangit…used to only take one day when on a bender. 30 approaches I guess. Still between a size 30-32 though, even after gaining over ten or so pounds probably over the new year. Go body go!
Tomorrow I move the pictures to my computer. May actually cut this month in two blog wise and post this one because later in the month I have the birthday segment of my blog as well. Sounds about right. Nothing left to do but to go back to work. We are no longer having -40/50 nights though. At its worst at night it only hovers around -30, meaning that I JUST….barely need a fire before I go to bed at night. During the day? Heck I sit around without even socks on!
A very very mild winter here in Mongolia. Suiting, given the conditions of last year. Now that we are in post-Tsaagen Tsar mode a great deal has been happening in the office of my school. I eventually need to take a picture and post this office to demonstrate the size of it in relativity to what I am complaining about. Our school is only 4 classrooms, and so much of the time teachers do not have class as we have classes going on from 8am to 630pm to accommodate all subjects and classes. Next year we have a new school built and I am sure the M22 will be all thrilled about it, but for now it means that a lot of the time the teachers are sitting around with much ado about nothing.
I, doing my darned to intergrate and not spend my time locked away in my ger watching repeats of Psych and Firefly instead try to remain at the office for the majority of the day and contribute where possible and at least to sit and read or post something on facebook. It’s a room built for about 5 people, and now that tsaagen tsar is over people have excess buuz and bring them to school. Teachers, otherwise uninterested in sitting in an office with nothing to do often retire to their apartments to relax or watch tv. When food is present though, they converge. Imagine me in a student dormitory, now add this in. 20 loud, hungry, chatty, sometimes a little intoxicated, teachers running around bumping into one another and creating a huge ruckus as they all try to eat incessantly. I feel like my head is going to explode when they do that! It only usually lasts as long as the food…around an hour today…but G.M. Chrysler people. Calm the hell down and stop shuffling around especially behind me randomly slapping me on the back!

January 10, 2011. Bagakhangai, Mongolia.

Oh dear, I am bored. Not bad though, not like last month bored. This bored is more like on this particular day I have four hours until I get to teach again and as for right now I don’t feel like watching things on youtube for the 2,000,000,000th time. So, I figure ill cut my blog in half this month. One for the the Tsaagen Tsar section of February and one for the birthday section at the end of the month. I can also then post some pictures and videos relevant (and irrelevant!) to the blog as well. Fun fun…