2022.11.30.-12.04. – Mediocre experiences

 Living life, going shopping, trying new things, visiting a museum, and just chilling out.

2022.11.30.

I read some research papers before my class, then had a class (they had their mid-term tests), went to the embassy (had a chat, there’ll be no big Christmas charity event after all), invited the intern over for banana bread, and she stayed for dinner and afterwards while I was grading the tests.

2022.12.01.

I had a meeting in the morning with Munkh. After coming back home, I did some more reading (research papers) and we went to E-mart (we started walking but it was so cold we ended up getting a taxi). After we had some fries in Burger King for lunch (after my small piece of banana bread for breakfast, I am not doing good with eating a nutritious diet nowadays), we went to explore the upper floors at Emart (nothing interesting there, really), then did some grocery shopping. We also bought a pizza there, finally (Mongolians seem to eat this a lot, there's always huge queues there); had that for dinner, it seems nothing special, but not bad either.  I watched a movie (The Swimmers) in the afternoon, recommended by my mother-in-law – it was okay, but I liked the book better.

The pizza from Emart.

2022.12.02.

I taught a class in the morning, and then chilled at home, reading some. I also made a chickpea ‘tuna’ salad-like thingy for dinner, which we love, but since there’s no actual vegan mayo here, it’s not nearly as good as it is at home. In the evening, we got a new washing machine delivered (but not installed), so now we have a working washing machine in theory but it’s not, in fact, working yet.

2022.12.03.

Had a swim practice in the morning; it was really cold outside (I put on underpants too, for the first time since coming here). We had chickpea tuna salad sandwiches for a light lunch, then we went to the natural history museum to check out the dinosaurs there. We actually got a family ticket – posing as a family with the embassy intern; I can’t believe how easily they believed us… we either look really old (old enough to have a 21-year-old daughter) or Asians have as hard a time at guessing our age as we do when trying to guess theirs. The museum had huge empty spaces (which is kinda weird for a museum, imo), but there were also some really cool dinosaur skeletons and eggshells. We were not allowed to take photos (but we did sneak a few until some guards came and told us not to). Afterwards, we had a late lunch/early dinner at LovingHut and I finally got my vegan cake slice. It was amazing. Also, I’m very tired from not having slept enough for many days in a row.

So this is what happens to your eyelashes if you go out in such cold weather - they freeze.

So many hand-made, detailed elements in the museum. Like a science project.

Some huuuuge shiny rocks.

The museum (Natural History, I think, but we just called it Dinosaur Museum).

2022.12.04.

We spent the day at home, me mostly working (working on my research and lesson planning).