How I live without running water – taking a bath, washing clothes, going to the loo

For the past 2 months, I’ve been living without running water. It may sound appalling to many people, but surviving without running water is actually quite simple. Well, simple enough for me because I’m not the one in my family who fetches the water, but nevertheless… Just stop for a second and think about how much you rely on running water in America. How many times a day do you use it? What tasks require running water? For example, when I got ready for my day in America, I’d use running water for brushing my teeth, washing my face, taking a shower, using the toilet, assembling oatmeal, boiling water for tea, washing my hands, etc… That’s at least seven tasks that I used running water for within one hour.

Now, how do I get by without it? Before I arrived at my host family, PC told me that I’d be living without running water. I was ready for it, but it wasn’t until I moved into my host family’s house that I realized how much my daily life would be changed.

The first task is to fetch the water from the well. My siblings usually fetch the water from the well while I’m at school. We have four water containers; maybe two are full at one time. Once, I went with my sisters to see how it’s done. We pushed a cart to the well. Then the well worker filled up our container with water. We paid her 60 tugrik (5¢), and then pushed the cart home. The well is covered with a building, and the water is distributed with a hose. Check out the photo below:

Fetching water at the well

I use the water from this type of jug for everything water-related. I have a $300 USD water distiller that produces about 1 gallon of water in 4 hours. I fill the white container with the unprocessed water, and then the distiller boils and cleanses the water. The clean water drops into the clear blue container over the course of 4 hours. The distiller has a fan on the top that produces hot air – therefore I have to decide what time of day I want to distill my water, or else my room may get too hot to stand. I usually distill my water during the night, or while I’m at school. You always have to be keeping track of when you’ll run out of drinking water, or you’ll have to wait 4 hours to drink clean water. Although, when I forget, I buy a 1.5 liter bottle of water at the store for 400 tugrik (35¢). It’s not too expensive, but my daily allowance is a mere $1.40 USD.

My water distiller

I bathe and wash clothes in the same tumpin, or tub. I wash my hair and bathe every 4 days. However, when it’s really hot outside I’ll bathe every 2 days. Before bathing, I have to make sure that my family has water. If they don’t have any water, then I have to wait to bathe until they get some. This means I have to strategize when I want to bathe. If I see that the water is running low, I’ll pour my bath water into the tumpin up to a day before I actually bathe. When I bathe, I usually use cold water. If I want hot water, then I have to boil it, and that’s just too much hassle for me. The amount of water I bathe with is about 1-2 gallons. How much is a usual shower in the states?

I wash my hair first. I soak my hair with the water in the tumpin, then suds it up with 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner. (2-in-1! I would never use this in the states. I like my hair to be thoroughly cleaned and conditioned.) I rinse my hair with the same water that’s sitting in the tumpin. Therefore, my hair is never completely free of shampoo because I’m rinsing with the water that already has shampoo suds in it. Next, I wash my body with the same shampoo-y/dirty water that’s already in the tumpin. I just stand over the tumpin and try not to splash water all over the carpet in my room. I’m never free of dirt, but always feel much better after washing most of it off. After I’m done bathing, my hair is usually in a ratty, dangly mess and I have to comb it out. Then I dispose of the tumpin water by pouring it in the yard or down the “dry” sink – into a bigger pail that my brother takes outside later.

My tumpin

I wash my clothes in the same tumpin that I bathe. Once again, my clothes are never free of dirt or soap because of the inadequate rinsing process. I wash about half of my clothes in the soapy water, which, with time, begins to acquire more dirt than soap. I wring the soapy water out of my clothes into the tumpin, so later on less of the soapy water will mix with the clean water. I dump the dirty/soapy water into the yard. Then I fill up the tumpin with clean water. I rinse out my soapy-ish clothes in the “clean” water, which, with time, begins to become soapy water rather than clean water. I would be wasting too much of my family’s water if I changed out the tumpin water too often. I have a clothing line in my room to dry my clothes. In addition, I hang my clothes outside.

My family owns a washer and dryer, but it isn’t like you would find in the states. Like I said before, we don’t have running water. So, how does the washer get water? My mom pours the amount of water she wants into the washer. The dirty water runs out the back into a tub. The same dirty water is used for every load – but more soap is added. My mom washes the loads from light to dark colors. The dryer is just a spin dryer. The extra water comes out of a tube, which is deposited in another tumpin. The clothes are hung outside to dry.

In order to go to the bathroom, I walk outside to the outhouse. Mongolians dig a 10-15 foot deep hole into the ground and build an outhouse over it. The floor has wooden planks. You do your business between a single missing plank on the floor, into the 10 foot hole. There’s no seat, it’s a squatting toilet. A toilet paper dispenser holds the toilet paper. This is helpful when it rains because the toilet paper isn’t ruined. When you’re done, you throw the toilet paper into the hole, too. In bigger cities and populous places, Western toilets exist but they are of very low quality. We found a Western toilet in the Sukhbaatar Post Office, but that’s the only one we’ve seen so far. (Besides in Darkhan at our hotel and training school

What other questions do you have about running water?

This week has been fun. I’m learning a traditional Mongolian dance to perform at the M19’s swearing in ceremony! The solo dance is 10.5 minutes long. I’ll get to wear a traditional Mongolian dancing costume. My Mongolian dance teacher is a 16ish year old girl. She comes to my school and teaches me in one of the classrooms. At the swearing in ceremony, I know that there will be 3 Mongolian speeches, a love song duet – sung by a married couple, and my traditional Mongolian dance. All of this will be performed by M19 PC volunteers.

On Sunday, the Americans in my community came to my house to eat hamburgers, fries, and watermelon. My host family claimed to like the American food that we cooked. So, that’s nice.

I find out on August 12 where I’ll be placed for the next 2 years. All of the other trainees are speculating and strategizing where they think everyone will be placed. I’ve figured out that I won’t be in UB. Therefore, I’m predicting that I’ll be placed either in Erdenet or Sukhbaatar. This is just my prediction, based upon many random theories and rumors that are milling about the PC. I’m counting down the days until August 12! But before then, I have to pass my Mongolian Final LPI! Back to studying for me…

Funny stories – falling down, having pretty eyelashes, and dominating the line at the bank

The past 1.5 months, a bunch of funny/awkward things have happened to me. I’ll fill you in on some of the more exciting bits of my life.

 

My house is the second to the last house outside of town. Therefore, I walk a bit more than everyone else to get to where I’m going. On my way to the store, to another volunteer’s house, or to school I always pass the taxi stand. The “taxi” stand in my bagh is merely a gathering place on the dirt road where people “know” to go. It’s at the top of the hill, so the cars can just descend the hill in neutral mode. One Saturday morning, I was going to school for language tutoring and the taxi stand had 5 cars at it! Usually, there’s only one car or none. As I was walking past the taxi stand on my right, to the left in the field were three goats fighting. The goats were putting on a huge show – running all across the field, jumping, hitting each other with their horns, etc… Of course, I’ve never seen three goats fighting with each other – so I was intensely staring. I should’ve been looking where I was walking because I tripped and fell over some uneven dirt. All of the drivers were also watching the goats fighting, so they all had seen me fall, too. The drivers and their passengers busted out laughing. I tried to think of something in Mongolian to “save” myself. The best I could some up with was “Zuger, Zuger,” which can be translated to mean “okay, okay.” I walked away as quickly as I could, watching the ground all the way to school. I’m sure that news got around town fast.

 

Supposedly, in Mongolia, eyelashes are a key physical feature. The best eyelashes are long and curly, even on men. My Mongolian teachers always comment on my eyelashes and how “goi,” or pretty, they are. It took me a few weeks to realize what they were talking about when they pointed to their eyes and batted them at me. I sometimes wear mascara, and my teachers always made comments when I wore mascara. I finally figured out that they liked my eyelashes. I’m glad someone notices when I put on mascara. J

 

When I walk to and from school I’ll usually pass through a herd of cows or goats grazing. Usually the animals will already be standing in the middle of the road and I’ll have to awkwardly shuffle my way through them. But sometimes, the animals will be walking or running from one side of the road to the other. That’s the most awkward situation because I always picture them running and hitting me with their horns. Even though that’s never happened, it’s always a thought that runs through my head. I usually get nervous around the animals and probably make a few weird faces. But I walk by myself, so no one sees them.

 

A few weeks ago, my sister called me on my cell phone from Skype. It was 4 a.m. so I went out into the yard so I could talk louder. We had to re-try a few times before we thought the connection was good. During a few calls, Rachel could hear me, but I couldn’t hear her. Or I could hear her, and Rachel couldn’t hear me. I thought we finally had some sort of good connection going on because she didn’t hang up the phone and re-try. I figured she could hear me talking because she didn’t hang up the phone – however, I couldn’t hear her. Therefore, I talked for 7 minutes without getting a response from her. I just figured that she could hear what I was saying because she hadn’t hung up yet. After the phone call, Rachel sent me a text that said, “Could you hear me?” It turns out that neither of us could hear each other and both of us were talking for 7 minutes without the other person being able to hear the other. What a funny situation. It really cracked me up.

 

The concept of waiting in lines, or queues, isn’t as prevalent in Mongolia as it is in the states. Mongolians push to get to the front of a line. If the line moves forward, and you don’t notice, they will just slip in front of you. You always have to be aware of your surroundings when waiting in a line. For example, when five PC trainees went into town to the bank we had to create a plan to keep the Mongolians from cutting in line. Instead of standing perpendicular to the counter, we stood parallel in order to block any others from going around us. It took about 30 minutes to get to the teller. While one of us was dealing with the teller, the other 4 stood in a half circle around him/her. This method proved to be quite successful in blocking anyone wanting to cut in line.  Just go in a group to the bank, or anywhere else you must wait in line. I’m sure we looked very ridiculous to the Mongolians in the bank. Oh well, maybe they think it is how we stand in line in America.

 

I have more funny stories, but I’ll save them for another time. I’m back to my regular schedule of morning language class, then technical sessions in the afternoon. This week, CED and CYD are combining to learn how to teach business and basic English. Teaching English will be one of the first things I’ll do at site. It will build the capacity of the people I’m working with, plus it’ll be a good networking tool to begin secondary projects in the community.

 

 

Last week I fetched water with my sisters for the first time. We went down to the local well and filled a canister with water. Last week, I also learned how to chop wood and build a fire. I built my first fire at my teacher’s house.

Nadaam Holiday – Slaughtering sheep, watching wrestling, and eating hoshur

Sukhbaatar Nadaam began two days before the National Nadaam holiday. My holiday ran from Wednesday until Sunday. On Tuesday, as I was walking out my front door – I saw my brother and his friends killing, skinning, and gutting a sheep. The funny thing is that my brother didn’t bother to tell me that they were getting a sheep and that they were going to slaughter it. It just so happened that I was walking outside at the time it was happening. I have two theories, either my family just likes to keep me in the dark about what’s going on, or my brother didn’t think killing a sheep was a big enough deal to tell me.

 

The dead sheep and I 

 

Mongolians have a special way of killing the animals so that they don’t suffer or make a big noise when they die. I felt special that my family slaughtered a sheep, and that I got to see some of the process. Many of the other volunteers didn’t have a sheep slaughtered. I think I was the only one in my town.

 

On Wednesday, a group of volunteers walked into the Sukhbaatar square for the Nadaam opening ceremony. It was quite uneventful, besides the fact that the band played a few United States’ armed forces songs. The Mongolian army/people in uniform weren’t very “in-line” with each other. Every 5 seconds the uniformed people would adjust their hats, belts, and guns. It looked sort of like a Veterans’ Day celebration with a brief parade around the square.

 

After the opening ceremony, I walked to the Nadaam stadium. Nadaam is a holiday celebrating the Three Manly Sports: wrestling, archery, and horse racing. Plus, it’s a holiday to celebrate the food named, hosher. Hosher is a meat- and fat-filled fried hot pocket look alike.

 

The opening ceremony at the Nadaam stadium was beautiful – much more entertaining than the opening at the square. Regionally famous singers and dancers wore elaborate traditional Mongolian costumes while giving a traditional performance. The place reminded me of a high school football stadium with a track around it – with the grass growth intentionally nearly a foot high. The performance incorporated all of the three manly sports with archers, dancing wrestlers, and singing horseback riders. After the performance there was a longer parade around the stadium by various groups, such as sponsors, nurses, and the performers.

 

Mongolian dancers at Nadaam

 

The wrestling was the first sport on the agenda for the day. Each wrestler put on their uniforms and went out into the arena to do their “eagle dance” and to do a practice round. After their practice, the real wrestling began. One of the Peace Corps Trainees that lives in Sukhbaatar, decided to join the wrestling tournament with the Mongolians.  He signed up that morning and borrowed a Mongolian wrestling costume from some of the soldiers. He ended up losing during the first round, but it was quite entertaining for both the Americans and Mongolians who were watching. Everyone gave him a lot of props for even entering because he might have been sent to Thailand with a bad injury. It was better that he easily lost than got flown to Thailand for medical injuries.

 

Mongolians “worship” or respect the Blue Sky. Mongolia is nicknamed as the “Land of the Blue Sky.” One of the ways that they incorporate this respect into their wrestling is by doing an “eagle dance.” From what I gathered, both opponents do an eagle dance before they compete. Then the winner does an eagle dance around the Mongolian flag. The eagle dance consists of slowing waving your arms in the air like bird.

 

Wrestler doing the eagle dance around the MN flag

 

After the wrestling, it was everyone’s goal to buy hosher from a food stand. Mongolians say that if you don’t have hoshur on Nadaam, then you haven’t really celebrated Nadaam. I didn’t get any hoshur at the stadium because the “lines” were incredibly long and the cooks seemed to be making the hoshur on order. Plus, many Mongolians kept cutting in front of us by passing their money up to a friend. Luckily, that evening I had hoshur for dinner with my family.

 

After the defeated hoshur run, I went by the archery area, which was outside of the stadium. There weren’t very many spectators watching the archery tournament. It was kind of sad, considering that the wrestling takes place in the stadium. The archery was just behind a building with about 10 people watching. Next to the archery area, there was an airag tent, where Mongolians were passing out free airag, an alcoholic drink. I think it is fermented milk. When you walk up to the stand, they pass the airag to you in a communal bowl. The airag was quite sour, and not easily digestible. However, I had to drink the whole bowl to be respectful.

 

We didn’t make it over to the horse-racing in Bagh 5 because it was too much of a hassle to get over there. The group headed back to Dao’s house to watch the Goonies in the afternoon. (Guess who just got arrested in LA at a club? One of the Goonies characters!) On Thursday, nothing much happened around my house. My host family didn’t do much for Nadaam. However, random people kept showing up in the middle of the night, and then leaving the next morning. I think they were relatives passing through for a short visit.

 

On Friday, I had language class from 8-10 a.m. – which all of our families thought was preposterous, considering that Friday was the national Nadaam holiday. In language class I didn’t want to learn a lot of new information, so I suggested that we learn a song. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that we’d be singing the same song for the whole 2 hours. It was a good Mongolian song about the countryside and how everyone loves Mongolia, etc… After class, I headed home to watch Nadaam on T.V.  My two sisters and mother didn’t want anything to do with watching the sports on T.V. This seemed odd to me because all my family does is watch T.V. So I watched some horse racing alone.

 

Friday afternoon, a group of people went over to the other bagh for a get together. We walked into the city, and then took a taxi ride to the other bagh. We got ripped off by the taxi driver, even though we fought for our price for about 10 minutes. Oh well, no big deal. I visited other volunteers’ houses during the afternoon – then went back to my house. My mom had prepared a huge dinner, which she never does. My brother wasn’t there, so I asked if he was out drinking beer with his friends. My mom said “Yes,” then asked if I liked beer. My first thoughts went to the cross-culture sessions that reminded us to, at first say that you don’t like alcohol or at least not that much. I said, that I barely liked beer. Then my mom asked if I liked wine. I figured that they couldn’t make me drink too much wine – so I said that I liked wine. With dinner, I drank white wine in the form of shots with my mom. It was quite a funny scene.

 

Saturday began as an uneventful day. I had Mongolian language class again from 8-10 a.m. Then I went home and played solitaire for 2 hours, read a book, and watched a few episodes of Friends. Randomly, Patrick showed up at my house around 7:30 p.m. He was with Garrett, Dao, and Garrett’s parents. We were all going to go to the park at the border! This was where we hiked to, but couldn’t enter about a month ago. Garrett’s dad drove us there, so it took no time at all. We took photos of the sunset in the beautiful park while swatting the millions of bugs away from us. After sunset, Garrett’s dad acted like he was driving us back into town, but he actually took us on a wild ride all over Sukhbaatar. All of us went to see a lone tree standing at the top of a mountain. It was beautiful and had an Ovoo next to it. We drove back into town, thinking we were going home… but nope! We were just cutting across to drive into a random field. The Americans had no idea where we were going! We were just driving across an open field for a while. We arrived at a broken-down statue of Sukhbaatar that was standing alone in the field. What a random place to have a statue! Sukhbaatar was torn down into pieces.

 

The fourth place we drove to was a different mountain that had a beautiful night view of the Sukhbaatar city. The bugs were really eating us at that point. Garrett’s dad took us all home around 10:30 p.m. It was a really fun, random night sightseeing around Sukhbaatar.

 

Now Nadaam is over, and I’ll go back into the regular routine of attending classes all day long. I’ll be studying the Mongolian language every evening. This Thursday, I have my placement interview, to determine where I’ll be placed for the next two years.

This Friday we will be presenting business recommendations to Precious Jewels, a disabled craft co-op. At the weekend, we’ll be having a postponed 4^th of July BBQ for ourselves. We’ll cook horse steaks on an old radiator at the top of a mountain, hopefully.

 

What’s the news in the states? Until next time…

Summary of Mid-Center Days – “Kid” computer training and dodgeball tournament

July 2-5, M19 gathered in Darkhan for training. We covered new topics in health, safety, cross-culture and technical. It was quite “ironic” that during Mid-Center Days, the Mongolian President put the country under a “State of Emergency.” Don’t worry, it wasn’t because the PC trainees were all together, it was because of riots going on in UB. The riots concerned the recent election – Please search news articles online to get the rest of the information. I’d rather not talk about it on my blog. Peace Corps Volunteers and Trainees weren’t harmed during the riots/state of emergency. Although, it seemed quite ironic that many PCTs wanted to drink a couple of beers together during the evenings – but couldn’t because of the ban of alcohol sales. The restaurants were certainly strict about the alcohol policy, but some of the stores weren’t.

On July 2, the CED-ers couldn’t visit the Business Incubator Center and Government House in Darkhan because there were worries that there’d be protests at those places. However, there weren’t any protests. Peace Corps can’t be associated with any political happenings within the country.

A group of trainees at Texas Restaurant

For dinner, a group of us went to the Texas Restaurant in Darkhan. The Texas Restaurant serves American food, not “Texas” or Tex-Mex food. I had a steak with mushroom sauce and steamed veggies. It was one of the best meals I’ve had in Mongolia! Although, it certainly wasn’t up to U.S. standards of a good steak, it was better than most of the stuff I’ve had recently. The music in the background was Garth Brooks’ Greatest Hits Album. It was classic!

On Thursday, we were able to choose particular information sessions to attend. I went to the sessions about One Laptop per Child and TIP (Trafficking in Persons). The One Laptop per Child session was interesting because TEFL volunteers can get laptops in their schools. Last year, the Mongolian Ministry of Education purchased 20,000 laptops for rural schools. Only about 2,000 have been given out. I was able to play around on the small computer, called an XO. There were 4 other computers in the room and we all connected to each other to chat, paint and make songs together. My group made a video displaying how “dumb” we were at using the XO. For a person that already has experience using a computer, the XO set-up is completely different from what we’re used to. It was a bit awkward trying to figure out how to use the tiny computer.

Brad and I figuring out how to use the XO

The TIP session was very emotionally moving because it talked about trafficking people throughout Asia for reasons such as the sex trade, domestic labor or factory slave labor. Peace Corps Mongolia has been putting on presentations for the past few years to inform Mongolians about the situation. Many Mongolians know that the situation is possible, but many haven’t looked into it in detail. We learned how we, as Peace Corps Volunteers, can put on a TIP information session for Mongolians.

Thursday night, all of the M19 CED volunteers went to an M18 CED’s apartment to cook American food. We made the best pizza evvarrrr. If you look at my photos on Flickr, you’ll see that we used pre-sliced cheese. It actually worked quite well – don’t judge until you’ve tried it The M19-ers were able to meet the M18 CED volunteers to find out what their experiences have been so far. We got a lot of interesting information that we wouldn’t have got from our trainers – just because they shouldn’t be telling us the juicy stuff.

On Friday – the 4th of July!! – the PCTs had multiple training sessions – but my favorite was the CEDs trip to the local Darkhan businesses. We saw a successful wool manufacturer, vegetable grower, and sewing group. On the meeker ride to the businesses, we sang some American songs. Fun, Fun. At the veggie grower’s house, she served us a plate of fat, which was salted and spiced. It really was yummy. The CED group was late to get back for a medical session all about sexual relations and STDs… how exciting and a repeat of high school, right?

Just kidding, it’s good to have a repeat of information you may already know about, because someone else may not know about it and it’s a good refresher. In another medical session, we learned how to splint a broken bone. I’m glad I learned how to do that! It may take up to 24 hours to get to UB, the capitol, from where I’m placed. And all of that time, I’ll be dealing with my own splint, if I have a broken bone.

For the evening of the 4th of July, the M19 group had a dodgeball tournament against our trainers, including some M18s, M17s, country staff and language teachers. It was great fun – although, the staff won. We listened to Mariah Carey, Enrique Englesis, and other popular 90’s music. For dinner, we ate some odd-tasting hot dogs and mutton burgers – along with Mongolian pizza, which definately does NOT compare to American pizza. Mongolians always say they don’t like pizza, well that’s because they’ve never tried American pizza! The four cities that don’t have Internet swarmed the wireless cafe, so much, that a dozen people had to sit outside on the steps. I must say, that I’m very lucky to have Internet this summer, even if it is just for 2 hours per week.

Internet-less PC Trainees, now using the Internet

Tomorrow is the beginning of Nadaam celebration! I’ll go to watch wrestling, archery, and horse racing in the Sukhbaatar. I just came to the Internet cafe from my host family’s house where…. guess what…. they just killed a sheep. How exciting! I was able to watch my brother kill the sheep and skin it. I’m sure I will be eating the sheep’s intestines for dinner tonight. I’ve never tried intestines before… hopefully they’ll be tasty.

I’ll update with pictures and a post after Nadaam. I hope everyone had a nice 4th of July! Write me an e-mail if anything interesting happened!

My Mongolian language progress… test results, plus interesting MN words

On Tuesday, within my host community, a Mongolian language tester came to give the Mid-LPI. (LPI = Language Proficiency Interview) Over the past month, we had 16 days of Mongolian language training. We’re taught through games, songs, and skits. Peace Corps, supposedly, has the best language training techniques in the world. I can certainly believe it! Within 11 weeks, each volunteer is expected to be at a Novice-High level. That’s equivalent to about 2 semesters or maybe 3 semesters of learning Mongolian. We move pretty quickly in out classes and I always have to study in the evenings at home. By December, each PCV needs to be at an Intermediate-Low level in Mongolian.

At the end of the summer, I will have an LPI where I’ll have to score a Novice-High in order to swear in as an official volunteer. The Mid-LPI was just a “practice” for the Final LPI. It’s to test where we are and to determine what we need to improve on. On the Mid-LPI, I scored a Novice-Mid, which I’m very happy about! I’m very happy with my progress in the Mongolian language. I’ll be learning more over the next few weeks to score a Novice-High in August – maybe even an Intermediate-Low by then.

Overall, the M19 group did quite well on the Mid-LPI exam. Here’s the distribution of the test results:

• Novice High – 15
• Novice Mid – 36
• Novice Low – 13

Here’s a list of interesting Mongolian words, to keep you entertained.

Za. A word that can mean many things. It’s the equivalent of saying “okay” or “mmhhmm” or nodding in English. It’s generally a sign of agreement. People usually say “Za” after every other sentence or don’t say it at all. Someone is usually a “Za” person or not. I haven’t developed an addiction to saying “Za”… yet.

Meh. It means “here,” as you are passing an item to someone else. I just think it’s such a funny word, when you compare it to the English language. It kind of sounds like, “Eh – whatever,” but it doesn’t really.

Margaash. It means tomorrow, or any day after that. If someone asks you to do something, your response can be “Margaash, margaash.” You can put off the task for tomorrow, or just never do it, and the person wouldn’t be offended, supposedly. Others can also say “margaash” to you, so you have to be careful of the trap from the other side.

Timo. It means “Really?!” Every time I’ve heard a MN say “timo?” it’s always in a very high-pitched voice. In response, you should say “Tim,” meaning “yes.” My MN language teacher always says “TIMO?!” when we make a funny statement in class, like “I drank water, therefore, I had to go to the toilet.”

In MN language class, I always try to make up funny sentences to keep the class entertaining. The language teachers are usually quite entertained, as is the rest of the class.

In class when we learn the different tenses, we always use the verbs “eat” and “drink.” Even though we know the MN words for most of the foods and drinks – most of the time, when we are put on the spot – we say “boats” and “water” as the item of choice. The same sentences always come about in the different tenses, like:

• This morning, I ate boats. This morning, I drank water.
• Two days ago, I ate boats, Two days ago, I drank water.
• Tomorrow, I will eat boats. Tomorrow, I will drink water.
• I would like to eat boats. I would like to drink water.
• I’m eating boats, while drinking water.

Maybe some of you have heard about the riots in UB and the state of emergency that is currently in Mongolia. I’m completely fine, no there’s no need to worry about me. Until next week… have fun in the states!