Ploofle

So, fyi, I am at home writing this freshly bathed and in my heavy long underwear top, flannel-lined pants, and down booties. I will dress more appropriately for the outside in a bit, but for now, my feet get to breathe a bit from their week-long entrapment in heavy wool socks and my heavy boots (woo Amy and Jordan! They are very useful now.)

This week or two has been eventful at least from a personal life standpoint. Due to my impending weeks-long trips to UB, US, and elsewhere (woo host family!) I started putting more pressure on getting my pipe fixed. In case I didn’t write about this before, the short version is – two weeks or so back, toilet incoming water pipe doo-dangle jury rig disintegrated, shooting water uncontrollably out of the pipe, and me wearing no pants as I was just getting ready to do laundry, thus conundrum while I stuck my finger in the pipe to stop the water, tried to figure out how to contact my landlady with my cell phone in the kitchen, and get my pants on before she arrives. Resolution to that was to re-jury rig but with a plastic bag, but then I made the pipe valve thingy leak as I was trying to shut off the water pre-calling her and post-putting pants on. Both of these were still leaking, albeit slowly, but it wouldn’t do to have em leaving without someone to empty out buckets of water – and actually the toilet leak issue was worsening such that I had to empty out water once every 8 hours or so. So, in comes the chain-smoking fanny pack/tool-bearing plumber, which quite effectively fixes the leaky pipe while admonishing me to not touch the valve again as he ashes into my toilet bowl. The solution involved horse hair, several bolts, and a home-made washer made on the spot from a panel of rubber he had. Ta-da.

I partially sealed my windows with this putty stuff you can buy at the market for 1200 tugriks a kilo. For the first time ever, I actually get some condesation fogging on my windows, so I’m gonna get another kilo to finish it up.

Then the next evening was the local-ish christmas/holiday/etc party. Other foreigners were invited as well as Mongolian friends, there were wonderful sugar cookies by Stacey, a white elephant gift exchange, a string of christmas lights, punch made with Tang, and other goodies. The donuts (cake donut holes, more like it) I made were sad because I didn’t blot them very well and so when you ate a few the inside of your mouth would be coated with a thin layer of mutton lard…plus they didn’t rise much which is also why they went from my imagination of jelly donuts which I would fill with my apricot jam to cake donut holes. Pfft. The sugar cookies had icing and thus I was very happy, and my white elephant gift was in summary a toy camel that plays the miami vice(?) theme song or something like it, walks across the room, and has red flashing eyes. It will be coming with me to the US and probably back.

I bought my winter meat and veggies per the advice of my counterpart, who said the prices go up a lot later and the quality isn’t as good, as pretty much the meat you buy is probably the sheep that was killed in the past few days or so, and animals get awful skinny by the end of winter. Thus, 10kg (22lb) of mutton later, I am set I think until early March. I spent a few hours on Sunday trimming fat and deboning and packaging into 1-2lb parcels for easier use. I’ve also experimentally trimmed all the tops off the carrots to keep em from sprouting in the big flour sack in my closet…the mutton and soup bones are residing on my balcony (I live on the 4th floor, so I think they’re safe from animals). Here’s it mostly sorted out:

Re: my first real experience playing soccer – I don’t know how long my legs are, and this isn’t a contact sport, and 16-year-old Mongolian men are way too hard to play against when you don’t get to shove em to the ground or actually have foot contact with the ball.

Jeff and I are going to bring our controllers to training in UB and with my laptop and AV cables set up some fun SNES games, bwahaha…

I will also be an aarul mule this trip.

Alrighties, on to lunch (mutton japanese curry) and then work. I believe I’ll be getting a treat tonight – someone’s making horse sausage tsuivan and I’m invited.

P.S. I just found out my grater can also make crinkle-cuts, say for crinkle cut fries, and in a fit of enthusiasm last night my curry is now full of crinkle-cut potatoes and carrots. Maybe I’ll make fries for a meal before I fly out just for the experience…

P.P.S Bah proper writing style – I see a variety of problems above. I’m busy.

Tags: mutton, plumbers, soccer, travel

Me: Umm…Is there any mail for UNFPA?
Post office worker: No. Do you know this foreigner? (they don’t actually say this; they shake their head no vigorously then wave random pieces of mail in my general direction, or try to give me every piece of foreigner mail in their posession_
Me: Maybe. But no thanks… (what is actually done: backs away slowly, muttering incoherent panic-Mongolian, aka hello, goodbye, thanks, it’s ok, oh man, where is the toilet, my stomach is bad, etc.)

Tags: mail, running away

Since about thanksgiving or so it’s been awful hectic out here. First off, a few random observations:

I really like how so many songs, in particular men’s songs, focus on talking about how much you love your mother. Even the modern rap music mostly is about loving your mom. That and men in general seem to sing beautifully. And women, but the men sound very full and round, almost operatic, and this is men of all ages.

Secondly, I do not like how when I first go outside now I have to not breath in too deeply at first, cuz the cold air makes me cough.

I learned how to properly play poker (texas hold’em) last weekend. I haven’t won any pots yet, but I have to admit my yahtzee experience is helping bigtime in figuring out hands. Unfortunately my first successful poker experience involved me also eventually falling down and putting a hole through my jeans and long underwear, not to mention scraping my knee pretty thoroughly. It’s still purple now, but I hope it’s good by Monday as that is the first day of the indoor soccer league Jason here is organizing. It can’t be any worse than volleyball, and I need exercise, so I’m looking forward to running around.

Thanksgiving dinner was awesome! I didn’t kill the chickens but I helped pluck and gut them. Overall I would say that it’s not worth killing and eating chickens here if it takes at least an hour to prep them. We had everything I said we’d have and more…in particular we ended up making a banana cream/pudding pie with a decent meringue and shredded coconut. Meringue should only be made by hand if you have at least 5 people present so that you can share the beating job. Anyway, we ate by 7pm and then rested a bit, then ate again, then ate again the next day the remainder of the leftovers, so we’re following some of those Thanksgiving traditions, like being so full after the first round that I had to lay on the ground and rest a bit. Jen makes buttermilk biscuits that are awesome, so I need to watch her some more to improve my rolled/cut biscuits. I’ve been told that we’re technically high altitude, so maybe that’s why my biscuits don’t turn out well, but that’s always been the case regardless of altitude.

This past work week has been amazingly hectic. I’m editing a 100+ page report, finishing coding the qualitative responses to a DV survey, turning in a UNFPA distance ed adolescent sexual and reproductive health course, random other normal work, and had two Mongolian lessons to boot. With this being a 4-day week (but really more like a 6, as I’m working today with supporting a training, and tomorrow with the disabled children’s society) I’m already pooped. And last night we had a MDG (Millennium Development Goal) contest amongst college students, and I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. This was no mere quiz contest – there seemed to be three “events,” including musical/dance show about the MDGs, dramatic interpretation of MDGs, and a quiz section. Each team competed in each event and it ran from 4 to 8. I’m sure there was the usual drama about ballot-stuffing, etc but the judges were prominent local people so it looked very legit.

World AIDS day is today, but due to logistical shenanigans here Stacey and I (and others) are making it into a World AIDS month…at least yesterday all the invited guests, judges, and announces were bedecked with the ribbons Stacey made, and a couple people are wearing them at the training today too. Bleh.

Anyway, gotta run – going to now post this at the post office, then run back to do more work and maybe eat lunch. Pictures of dinner, etc., really are coming eventually when I get a chance to breathe.

Tags: cold, singing, thanksgiving, work