Liz and her husband lived in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia where Liz worked with trafficked women.
Traditionally, at Mongolian New Year (this year, 14-16Feb), at the center of the table is a "Boov" or tower of bread sticks. 
After working 20+ years as a Safety Manager, I have to take pictures of scary things. No barricades. No person holding the ladder. And I doubt that this ladder is designed to be used like this?
Garbage recycling Mongolian-style:
On the way back from church last week, we noticed a large object by the apartment sidewalk that wasn't there 2 hours earlier. 
The steel door has no "bumpers" so it "Bangs" every time it closes.
No elevator so we have 5 flights of steps. 
Spencer Garner (in the picture) is a Pastor from Tennessee, USA. Because you cannot work as a foreign Pastor in Mongolia, he and his wife have been teaching English for almost 10 years in Mongolia. He is great and also counsels the Mongolian Pastor in his village.
Ulaanbaatar is in a valley. 400,000 people in the city live in felt tents heated with coal stoves. Many nights have no wind so the morning air pollution is often terrible. The picture above is taken at 0845. The haze is coal smoke. We can barely see 2 telephone poles away. Respiratory disease and asthma are common illnesses.
In the US, kids have cup of hot chocolate on a cold day. In Mongolia, a special warm drink on cold winter days is boiled yogurt; sour, curdled and warm. In the picture are Suvd, JCS Finance Manager, Odnoo, JCS Editor, and Altantsag, JCS cleaning woman, back up receptionist and cashier. Yes, I had a cup. I burned my tongue. Wimp!
On our 2009Nov15 blog I said that on my walk to work, the safest place to walk was on the sandbags stacked along the road. Not necessarily. This week, just before I walked across the sandbags, a van lost control on the ice and drove up the sand bags. In Mongolia, the saying is true, "If you don't like my driving, stay off the sidewalk (or sandbags)."
On the street market with the socks, gloves and winter hats, buy a frozen fish! No need to rush home before it thaws. It's -40F outside and inside the bus isn't much warmer.
In Mongolia, Father Winter is accompanied by his "daughters" as he gives gifts to good boys and girls. Every young Mongolian girl would like to be one of "Father Winter's Daughters" and you can buy a dress/costume for the part. Much more useful than elf costumes.
Wall construction layers; Inside to outside - 1. Paint, 2.Plaster, 3a.10-inch concrete block, 3b. Maybe another 1/2-inch layer of plaster, 4. 3-inch styrofoam, 5. 4-inch brick, 6. 1/2-inch plaster, 7. Paint. (Just try pounding a nail into this to hang a picture.)
Approximately 400,000 people have no "running" water in the capitol city of Mongolia. To get water, they take small barrels to the closest pump house, pay for the water, and carry the barrels back. JCS sponsors a hospice that has no drinkable water. Therefore, staff take barrels to this pump house, 400 yards away and across the street. They joke and tell us this is their "running" (or walking) water. JCS is raising funds to put in a tank at the hospice where drinking water can be brought to them and pumped into the building.
Last week I represented JCS at a presentation where World Vision donated jerseys, shoes and hats to the junior high team that JCS leads. The team practices 3 times/week and has Bible study off the school grounds on Saturdays. I prayed with them that some of these kids will become the future leaders of Mongolia and the world.
So it's -40 (C and F) and your car is frozen; how do you warm it up? DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME! First you cover the hood with blankets. The blankets should be large enough to keep the wind from blowing under the car. Hold the blankets on with a brick or boulder. Then start a FIRE on the ground under the hood. Be sure to put the fire where it will NOT heat wiring, dripping oil or gas leaks. If the car catches fire, it is warmed up.
For 25+ years we have shared cocoa and cinnamon rolls with our daughter on Christmas morning. Thanks to Skype we can still do this. Of course, our 8am Christmas Day is 4pm Christmas Eve Olympia time. And 8am Christmas day in Olympia is midnight 25Dec Mongolia time.
When a big piece of cake is at eye level and the fork is way too challenging, who needs a fork?
Altho Ariuna, Liz's tutor is a strong Christian, her parents are cultural Buddhists. They rarely go to a Buddhist temple or confer with a lama, but in their home they keep a cabinet with Buddhist idols, photos of the Dahli Lama, Prayer beads (right) and a Shaman blue-silk scarf (khatag). This is very common in Mongolian homes.
Liz's tutor, Ariuna, invited us to her mother's apartment for Shin Geel (New Year's) feast. 
Usually we walk to work, school, church and shopping. But there are many ways to travel in Mongolia. We live on one of the 3 busiest streets in Ulaanbaatar (UB), and horseback riders are a common site.
Here's the local coal salesman breaking up the blocks of coal and bagging them. When I was a kid, Tennessee Ernie Ford sang, "You load 16 tons (of coal) and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt." That's the life of this man. It's -30F.
Remember when we said that sometimes the manhole covers get stolen for scrap metal? This happened outside our apartment last week.
