Posts from February 2006

City in Winter

February 18, 2006

By Rachel Views from the afternoon of January 30: Here is some equipment in a neighborhood playground. The snow gets packed down into sheets of ice covering streets and sidewalks. On some streets crews of people break up the ice and shovel it to the side. Other streets are left alone. The afternoon light is […]

The Wok Man: Revised with Pictures

February 18, 2006

By Charlie We could be spending this year eating our way through Asia. From Thai, to Vietnamese, to the many tastes of Chinese food, there is a great variety of delicacies on this continent. Sadly, the good food never made it to Mongolia. There is no other way to put it: Mongolian food is just […]

Finally, An Assistant

February 18, 2006

By Charlie UB is full of characters. One of them is this guy: That’s Jimme. He’s a Dutch guy who has, among other jobs, worked as a test pilot for the Dutch Air Force. I first met Jimme last fall at a World Series party. I met him again a few weeks ago at a […]

Eagle Redux

February 18, 2006

By Charlie Lest you forget how amazing this country is, here’s a picture of a hunting eagle. We met this eagle on a trip outside of UB two weeks ago. On our way to the fabulous Ayenchin lodge, our driver spotted a guy in a field training this eagle how to hunt. The eagle didn’t […]

Mongol Hillne Hichel

February 18, 2006

by Rachel I have been slogging on through Mongolian. In an effort to actually accomplish something I started studying five days per week. I meet my teacher, Sovda, at the Stupa Café. It is a very calm and pleasant restaurant and hangout place next to a Buddhist center. I usually drink a cup of peppermint […]

The Court Has Spoken

February 17, 2006

The Mongolian judicial system has now had its turn to weigh in on the issue of our apartment. The details of this are explained below in an e-mail I sent today to Byamba, our original landlord. —————————————————————– From: Charles Mayer Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 2:44 AM To: ByambaSubject: apartment Byamba, The court has made […]

Valentine’s Day

February 16, 2006

by Rachel My main thought about Valentine’s Day this year was wondering what would happen to all those parties that were cancelled by the East Coast snowstorm. I e-mail with one of my students from last year, and she was very excited about the party and card exchange. She figured that this was something that […]

Alpha Bravo

February 8, 2006

By Charlie We moved the tables and chairs and laid out the airport complex on the classroom floor. The terminal and hangar were trashcans. The taxiways and runways were pieces of paper marked with the appropriate numbers and letters: 32, 14, F, C, E. With this makeshift airport, ten MIAT pilots practiced something that they […]

Reality Report

February 8, 2006

By Charlie Here’s everything you need to know about our apartment, the Central Post Office and today’s bus ride from the airport. The Apartment There is now some dispute over who owns our apartment. A fashionable lawyer named Burenjargal descended into our lives about two weeks ago and claimed to have bought the apartment from […]

A Good Deal

February 7, 2006

By Rachel There are basically two food economies here: one in local food, which is quite cheap, and one in imported food, which is more expensive. The good deals happen when the food we want happens to be food the Mongolians want too. Yesterday at Mercury I got this bag of garlic for 1200 tugrugs, […]

Posts from February 2006

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