Winter Walk

2012 Promises Continued Change in Mongolia

Aslan Telling Jim His Secret

Cola Clause in Front of One of the Fanciest Bldgs in UB

A Favorite Path, Walked it 2x/Day Back in our School Days

These Temperatures Are Good for Something

Much More Common to Travel the Frozen River than to Use the Bridge

D.C. on Ice

May Have to Try to Capture the Ribbon Graffiti in Better Light

Happy New Year 2011pdf

Less than Perfect

     Not the perfect presentation. If I'm lucky, my Mongolian may have been as good as a kindergartner's. A group of hecklers (led by a jr hi boy) sat center front. People kept chatting, as I shared. It was like pouring my guts out in a bar. Not the perfect setting.
     But share I did. After-party feedback was that everyone had loads of fun. Most of the guests said they had never heard about Christmas, the gospel, or how God can radically change a life. It is unlikely that these 'ladies of the night' have ever been inside a church. So it might have been as strange for them to hear a testimony in a 'bar' (really just a coffee shop), as it was for us to speak there.
     Partly, as a result of this annual Christmas party, 2 new women have started working with us. I guess its just not about a perfect presentation in the perfect setting; nope, not about OUR perfection at all!

Color Camels and Culture

“There are 200 wolves in the town square,” our friend Edith reported in a rather urgent voice over the phone. We hurriedly donned our winter outerwear and 10 minutes later were standing on the square block of pavers surrounding a metal communist hero. Wolves were indeed everywhere. But to our disappointment and disgust, they were all frozen stiff. The winner had displayed 50 corpses, proving he was the best wolf hunter.

We didn’t expect to see wolves at a camel festival. Just shows our ignorance of the herding world. The colorful parade and races were less of a surprise. We felt privileged to take it all in and seemed very welcome as 2 of just a handful of foreigners in Gobi Altai for the weekend.

The exhibit hall was teeming with excited shoppers eager to see and buy treasures. Rope, milk, alcohol, yogurt, butter, boots, saddles, nose-piercers, harnesses; all made from or used with camels.

“That was one of the best days of my life,” I said at the end of the parade day! 500 camels, riders and animals dressed to a tee, strolled through town. An occasional ger (yurt), or kid-filled basket was strapped around humps showing how practical camels can be. Before and after the parade, we visited with herders, admired their medals, and even got to sit between a few of the warm furry Bactrian humps. The people were eager to be photographed, patient with our Mongolian and just as eager to show their animals as we were to see them.

The Gift

Yesterday, Erik was delighted to open a Birthday card holding $25.

Today, his money had been converted to new glasses.

"Let's see if they work . . . "

"The words look perfect. Amazing!"

"I can see!"

 

The Happy Glasses Club

                  Liz's commute has shrunk to a geographical triangle between our apt, the Streams shelter, and the JCS office. Occasionally, I venture into another part of the city and am always astounded at the changes that have evolved. Buildings are popping up everywhere. But I pass this site daily so was shocked when suddenly the playground had become a growing edifice. It's common to have a ger and guard live on a building site.

Celebrate Change

      Balloons and banners decorate the school yard. New uniforms. Fresh clean notebooks in shiny backpacks. Proud students in white shirts, big hair bows and pleated skirts. Flowers for the teacher and excitement to re-unite with the gang.
      In Mongolia, Sept. 1 is always the 1st day of school and it's done up big. Parents are late to work so they can participate in the door opening ceremony. Bribing the teacher with expected flowers is part of the deal. I passed a kindergarten around 5pm this evening. (K-g is really pre-school here and little ones start attending at 2 y.o.) At this daycare door, Moms and dads picking up their wee ones were holding tired, crying toddlers.
      Change is like that. The anticipation is part of the process, Jim says its the best part. Preparation, supplies, strategy, and celebration lead to hard work, discipline, struggles in adjusting, even sadness, but hopefully progress. Along the way there are relationships, growth, laughter, tears, frustration, and victory. Feeling like a pre-schooler myself some days.

Sweetened Tree Water

Today Streams received an exciting assortment of donated items including a microwave. Woot. Thank you Ai Vee and family! Among the goodies was a bottle of what the ladies assumed was some kind of soap. I explained that it came from trees and was like sweetened water. "So, its for cleaning wood?" "No" I answered, "its for eating." One brave madam said they should taste it. B liked it. O couldn't stand it.  Oh well, too bad. John and I will gladly share the precious maple syrup between us.

Healthy Snack

 These girls are holding what looks to me like a dead mouse, and they're nibbling at it! But mice are not pink . . . but neither are pine cones. They have purchased this cone at a local street stand for about $.25 and are happily picking away at its tasty seeds. Since the cones are not hygienic processed, we are are advised not to eat them. But I'd love to find a way to sterilize them so that I, too, could chomp away.

I think that's Strange

They're smiling now but b4 I talked with them, they were looking at me with furrowed brows, perhaps saying to each other, "Why in the world is that crazy foreigner taking pictures of a window??". Meanwhile, I was indeed pointing my camera toward the building and thinking, "Why in the world are there baggies of water hanging there??" So, I approached my neighbors and asked. They said it was a deterrent against fly invasion. No idea why it might work or if it works, but I won't knock it 'cause I haven't tried it. Beats chemicals.

What game are they playing?

Scissors, Rock, Fabric . . . of course. 

FIRE!! almost

We've been smelling a faint hot wire odor off and on for a month. The neighbors always seemed to be to blame. Sometimes it seemed to come when we were using the toaster. Other times, the oven but never the fridge, hair dryer, bathroom fan. Last night as the pizza baked the smoke alarm went off and the smell was stronger than ever. The alert went out to our landlord and fix-it guy. This a.m. we started the wash which prompted the smell again, leading Jim to the circuit box as the source. Chuga came and totally dismantled the wiring and found a tangle of tape had been the culprit. A trip to zone aisle (equivalent to Home Depot), 2 hours of twisting wires, a test or 2 and prayers for safety and we're good to go. We are baking granola and doing the wash again but this time odor-free; grateful that we didn't have a full fledged fire.

Local Graffiti Art

We walk past this urban artistry most every day. Decided to record it. I like the color and creativity it adds to the neighborhood. The bright red and blue word in the middle picture says "Mongolia" and is on a garage door.

4 bday cakes (so far)

You only have one 60th birthday!

Shades of Pink

 Summer brings out lots of paint in UB. The winter cold and blowing spring sands reek havoc on buildings. The color of this season seems to be pink. These are all buildings I pass daily on my walk to work. The bright, flamingo colored building above is a small grocery store. Next, is a basement apartment or work space. The picture below is of an internet cafe, just outside our apartment building.

This a a residence where a jijure or guard/maintenance family lives in exchange for taking care of a an apartment building's grounds and stairwells. Behind, that is a public school. 

Lessons in Peace

Let there be Peace on Earth. Happy Children's Day

Joy in a Baggie

         Jim and I would like to have a dog. But a dog would not please our landlord and would be too much hassle for us, living on the 5th floor in this climate. Amazingly, there are a few hobby fish stores in UB, so we got an aquarium. Yesterday, I bought 3 Glofish at a shop down the street and carried them home in a water filled baggie.        
          When I rounded the corner to the front of our building, I saw one of my neighbors, sat down beside her, and exclaimed, "I have fish." She blandly said, "Za" meaning ok. I repeated my declaration and she repeated her 'Za'. Then I pulled out the baggie and held it up to her. She has poor vision, but immediately her face lit up and her finger traced the neon orange spots as they darted around their bagged lake. "Can you see them?" I asked. "They are orange with black eyes" she answered, laughing and pointing some more.
           My friend's giggle was cute and contagious. I don't think she thought she understood me. I really did have fish. Just then Jim came around the corner and snapped some pictures.
          The 3 Danios are happily chasing each other in our tank now but they have served their purpose in life already, by bringing my elderly friend and I a few moments of ecstatic joy!

Lost Bible found!

   According to literature, all the 1856 London Bible Society copies of the Mongolian  Bible were destroyed by Communists in the 20th Century.  But in 1970, an unbelieving student at Bowdoin College - Brunswick, Maine found one when they were moving the library.  The librarian didn't want to keep it because it "wasn't old" and no one had checked it out for 50 years.  The student asked if he could keep it and the librarian said, "Sure."
   Forty-one years later this now believing-graduate presented this 155 year old Mongolian Bible to the Mongolian Evangelical Alliance at the 20th anniversary of the modern Mongolian Church.  It's probably the only copy left and perhaps the oldest surviving Mongolia Bible.

We have met the Khan

I'm guessing that besides the airport, this monument to Genghis Khan has the biggest parking lot in the country. From the traffic we saw today, it is a successfully busy Tourist attraction tho you have to hire a driver and travel an hour outside the city to find it. When you are in his neighborhood, he looms over everything. This is gigantic hunk of stainless steel.