2022.10.14. Getting warmer

Did a tiny bit of work, some shopping, and some chilling out (but also warming up, ha!).

In the morning, there was a meeting at the embassy which I’ve also attended – we talked about what kind of events we’ll have for the October 23 commemoration here in Ulaanbaatar and such. They also gave me some books and maps that I can take to the university and use in my classes or during any events that might take place there. I now have a few things I need to do for Oct 23 over the weekend and I also need to figure out how to teach the vocab for numbers and months in my classes next week when it had been so perfectly planned out that I would teach them the very basics in the first week and then move on to numbers and time expressions and such in week two, just in time for Oct 23 – only we start a week later than I’d planned so now it’s all messed up and impossible; there’s no sense in teaching them numbers and the names of months when they can’t even say ‘I am XY, I am Mongolian’. Shoot.

After the meeting, I came home, had lunch with my husband, then went to Emart to get groceries and a few things for the apartment. The original plan was to get a small space heater until our heating problem gets resolved but they only had one of those at Emart and that didn’t seem very effective or safe, so – consulting my husband on Messenger – we decided not to buy it. I got a nice deep green throw instead, and some veggies and tofu and juice and such. A surprisingly healthy haul, if I do say so myself, at least healthy according to my standards in Mongolia since it’s so hard to get our usual healthy stuff here. They also had chia seeds and flex seeds and stuff but I can’t just buy the whole store out all at once. Anyway, I carried all things home (it didn’t seem that heavy at first but by the time I was halfway my shoulders were aching), enjoying the nice weather (out and about without a coat on again!).

Found some cool street art on the way to Emart.

Also, may have found Heaven in Emart (if Heaven was super expensive, that is)

Stores here seem to have a lördagsgodis-like display of individually-packaged, bite-sized sweets
(this time I managed to find brands that I know - even though I didn't buy any)

Very Asian-looking, fancy gate with the building where the embassy is (left) and the university (right) in the background

In the evening, we were mostly relaxing (and putting stuff away as my husband finally got enough of our things lying everywhere – it hadn’t even been that bad, I swear! – and cleared off the whole kitchen table so I had to find a new place for everything I had been keeping here in the past one and a half weeks), re-watching eps of The Mentalist, doing stuff on our laptops. A chill evening. I was also thinking about going for a swim but decided in the end that I would rather do that tomorrow.

And the absolute best news: heating seems to be working again! (It’s lucky I didn’t buy that shady-looking space heater in Emart, after all.)

We kinda managed to out-grow our fridge already (it's very small, to be fair!) so here we are using one of the windowsills as additional fridge space.

Juice boxes here have weird filling weights sometimes: 1.93 l and 0.95 l and such. Why?