2023.01.28-29. - A pretty usual weekend

Swim practice (in another pool!), chilling, preparing for classes, and catching up with people.

2023.01.28.

Had a swim practice with the Mongolian Masters team at Bayangol Swimming Pool. It’s pretty far away from where we live, so I asked if someone could pick me up on their way there, and thankfully, the coach and a girl could. The girl speaks English so we were even able to have a conversation in the car. This pool is less fancy than Shangri-La and has some strange rules (you need to give your coat and shoes to a cloakroom right at the entrance, then go further in and purchase your ticket by transferring the money (which is actually pretty common in Mongolia, paying by money transfer instead of cash/card) – but the ticket only allows you entry for 45 mins. If you overstay, you have to pay the price of another ticket in addition. Since we stayed longer, we ended up paying 20k MNT (still pretty cheap compared to Shangri-La, but then the facilities were also pretty lacking, so…). We went to this pool because there’s a competition next weekend and it’ll be held in this pool, and also because they have blocks so that they could practice their starts. I only did one start but – predictably – both of my knees hurt quite a lot from that one jump, so I decided to just sit the rest out and watch them for the last half hour or so. As for my ride home, the coach (and the girl) didn’t go home after practice, so it was a couple that took me back to Blue Sky (a building right at the Southern edge of Sukhbaatar square) and I walked home from there. Fun fact, the woman’s name (from the couple) is Almaa – at least I’ll be able to remember that.

Casual nosebleed in the morning - some things I did NOT miss

I mean... at least they tried making it more stable?

4 lanes, 25(-ish) meters - welcome to the competition pool of the capital city!

In the afternoon, I was mostly reading fanfics and chilling on the couch. I should have been working on my lesson plans and materials, but I just didn’t feel the energy (or the pressure of any imposing deadlines). Then in the evening, I’ve had a lovely video chat with my Polish friend. We catch up only a few times a year (one of them usually being our birthday) but it’s always so fun.

2023.01.29. –

Today’s agenda was: lesson planning, worksheet-making, doing administration, and trying to figure out if I’ll have a class tomorrow or not (Otgontuya says not, students say yes). Also managed to tick some things off my to-do list like paying membership fee to my home swim club or write a few emails. In the evening, I talked to the visiting lecturer in Ankara; we shared our experiences so far (we both started as newbies in September-October) and commiserated on the chaos surrounding (seemingly) most Eastern cultures, as opposed to what we are used to seeing in Europe when it comes to the organisation of education.