2023.01.27. – First proper day back - busy visiting my usual haunts

University, embassy, swimming pool

When we were up for a dinner at 3 am (hubby woke up hungry and kept tossing in bed until I woke up too and told him to just go eat if he can’t go back to sleep), I got an email from Otgontuya to meet her today at the university, so I had to get up at around 9 am today – after a full night of sleep with breaks scattered over (mostly bc my husband kept waking up/not being able to go back to sleep and his fidgeting and tossing kept waking me up in turn).

I met Otgontuya at 10 am and talked to her about classes and timetables (I’ll probably have two groups from the presidential scholarship programme, my old one and a new beginner course). My office looks about the same – everything does, really – and I even met the assistant there briefly when she came to work, and gave her the pen I’ve brought for her from Budapest as a souvenir.

Going over to the Embassy, we had a meeting there at 11, to discuss all kinds of things (classes, scholarships, cultural events, news from the embassy/university). We’ve also talked about the open-for-all language course and whether we should do it at the university or at the embassy – we’ll see.

It’s so strange to be back; everything is so familiar yet somehow weird at the same time, having been away for over a month. My husband remarked how it’s strange for him to NOT find the city and the apartment strange and new – we remember all the Mongolian shopfronts and signs being unusual when we first arrived, and now that we are back, they feel kinda familiar. And he says it’s strange to find things that used to be strange not strange anymore. I agree with him, although for me, it’s less prominent because it was similar when we went back to Ireland for a trip (after me having lived there and then having moved back to Hungary). Granted, this is the first time I move back to a country other than Hungary, but the experiences still keep adding up and make it less of a curiosity.

Coming back home for lunch (leftover Namaste), I’ve sent some emails and talked to the real estate agent who helped us rent the apartment – we had to fix the internet and the washing machine needed to be installed. We also had some groceries from Emart delivered (just some basics, mostly drinks - since tap water is not safe to drink).

The ice sculptures at Sukhbaatar square are still there -
even the bright sunshine can't melt them in such cold

This ice slide is super cool.

In the afternoon, I went to the swimming pool – first time swimming since my surgery two weeks ago – in Shangri-La. I bought a monthly pass for 450,000 MNT – it was the same price when we first came here in October, and that time I paid around 60,000 HUF for it – now that equals 46,400 HUF. Exchange rates were not good to us in the autumn which means we really enjoy not having to pay that much for the same stuff now.

After my swim, I grabbed some VegArt snacks from the shop next to the gym; we’ve really missed VegArt products at home. For dinner, I was going to whip up a quick tofu pasta, but my hubby is really tired and to be honest so am I, so we just decided to order something on TokTok (which is like Foodpanda in Hungary). This way, I have some time to work on my lesson plans, syllabus, and possible cultural event plans.

We've missed VegArt so much (especially the breadsticks)