2023.01.30. – Csapjunk a lecsóba!

Fair warning: long post about a long day

Since Otgontuya told me yesterday that I wouldn’t have a class today (well, she didn’t say that explicitly, she just said ‘You’ll have a class on Tuesday’) and that I should meet her in the office after 11 am today, I came to the university at about 10.30, figuring I could print materials for my first classes so that if I do, in fact, end up having to teach a class today (as per our previous agreement on timetables and my students’ info), at least I’ll have everything ready. Well, I’ve printed everything and have been sitting here for almost an hour now. I messaged Otgontuya – since she’s still not in her office – and she told me she’s in some meeting and I should wait another 20 minutes or so. I mean, she didn’t say ‘meet me at 11’, she said ‘after’, but how hard would it have been to just say 12 or something, if she knew she wouldn’t be able to make it anyway? Nah, doesn’t matter.

In the meantime, my (former and new) students keep me occupied, because they keep messaging me, asking if we’ll have a class today, where the class will be held, and such. Honestly, I have no idea, because I’d asked exactly the same questions yesterday, but got literally no answer to either of these. Just a ‘meet me’. So here I am, looking stupid and uninformed, telling my students ‘no idea where we’ll have the class’ and ‘I think there is no lesson today?’. This is just so Mongolian… (However, I don’t feel that bad about it since I know what the situation is in Ankara – at least I have language courses to teach, if a bit chaotic.)

After all, I did have a meeting with Otgontuya, and we discussed timetables – I asked if, since I have a class on Tuesdays (I will have at least one class every day, actually, and I am not so happy about that, but I am here to teach, so it’s not like I’ll complain), I should then start teaching tomorrow, and she was unsure and had to call someone higher up the hierarchy to ask! Like, wtf? Teacher is here, students are here, timetable is ready, semester has started, we have a classroom… why on Earth wouldn’t I start teaching then? Well anyway, they said I could, so I will. Tomorrow it’s only the complete beginners (Group 2, now that I’ll have at least two groups, yay), but that’s fine. I can't wait to learn if they have at least a bit more knowledge about Hungary than the students last semester.

Once my meeting with Otgontuya was over, I tried printing the worksheets for tomorrow’s class, but another teacher was using the printer and I didn’t have much time before our commitments for the afternoon, so I decided to just leave and go to the office a bit earlier before my class tomorrow and print everything out then. So I headed home, dropped my bag off, and grabbed my husband so that we could have a quick lunch in the vegetarian café right across the street from the university (meaning it’s about a 2-min walk from our apartment). We love their PB veggie stir-fry with rice; it’s cheap and delicious.

After lunch, we met our usual Mongolian guide/driver, and she took us on a shopping trip. We had a list of things we needed to buy, so she compiled a list of places for us to visit where we could get them. First we went to a fresh food market which turned out to be closed, but there was a mall right there, and on the uppermost floor they had a pretty vast space with all kinds of plants and gardening tools, and we picked two plants for the apartment. First task done. Then we went to another market selling lots of fruits and veggies (well, a big amount of fresh produce in not much variety – they had like 5 types of fruits and less than 10 types of veggies, I think, and every stall had exactly the same products, but at least they seemed pretty fresh and the price was also better than Emart or Good Price, I think). We got some grapes, bananas (yeah, I know, very seasonal and local, but it’s not like any fresh produce is seasonal or local here anyway), dried kiwi (never tried it before, never even seen it before I think), garlic, and bell peppers. We were the only non-locals at the market and everybody was staring at us, two men (on separate occasions) even stopped to wave at my husband, smiling widely, and kept talking at us in Mongolian. Our guide said they’d said something like ‘my friend, my company’. Well anyway, I guess we looked foreign – to be honest, we are.

This is the mall where the uppermost floor was basically a garden center.

dried kiwis

Our two new babies (hopefully they'll survive my not-so-green thumb)

Our next stop was at three electronic stores basically next to each other, on a hunt for a microwave, a power strip, a monitor for my husband, and maybe a vacuum cleaner. We checked the products and the prices in all three places, compared them to each other, and ended up buying a monitor (HD only, they simply didn’t have higher resolutions anywhere…. one small store had a single 2K monitor but it was really expensive) in one shop, and a microwave (this one was pretty cheap, at least) in another. All vacuum cleaners seemed to be either too expensive or of very poor quality, and they simply didn’t sell power strips in the two shops we tried looking for them. As for our last stop, we went to Emart and got some food items – mostly breakfast stuff, vegan things like tofu and some vegan egg that completely took us by surprise (I mean, its mere existence here), and some frozen fruits (so freaking expensive, even the frozen ones).

They sell flavoured ice cubes!
(Way too expensive and you can make it at home so easily but it looks fun.)

Look how much it resembles an egg. What is this even?

Finally stocked our fridge!

We got home at about half past 4, pretty tired, but as it was still sunny outside (and very warm too, for January in Mongolia, only about -11 degrees or so), I could convince my husband to go for a walk and check the ice sculptures out on Sukhbaatar square. I’d seen them from afar before, on my walks to the swimming pool, but I didn’t go very close on purpose, wanting to explore them together with him. So we went and looked at them today, and they were pretty impressive, I must say. Obviously, it’s not really about the detail (they are all open-air sculptures on the main square of the capital city, obviously not delicate swan statues or anything) but it’s just so crazy to think that they are all here for weeks, and they don’t melt, and they are made of actual ice. There was an ice-skating rink too, made completely out of ice – all the walls, all the sculptures, and obviously the ice for skating on. The ’walls’ of the rink even had twigs and traces of nature frozen inside, as they were not made of ice made specifically for this, simply ice from nature, brought to the middle of the city. Amazing. My favourite part, though, was probably the slide-thingy right in front of the Parliament building. It has two stairs, a sculpture of a person (I don’t know whom it was made after) up in the middle, and 4 ice slides – mostly for children, I think, but people of all ages seem to use them. If it weren’t for my still healing knees (bones will need another 3-4 weeks or so to mend), I’d definitely have tried it. Looks fun, and it’s such a cool idea to build it on the main square for all to use. (Also super dangerous, could never be done in Europe with all the safety regulations, but I guess that’s a perk of being in Mongolia – nobody cares.)

A huge yin-yang right in front of the Parliament building.

One of the ice-slides.

The quality of the ice in the rink seemed to be horrible but it's not like I'd skate on it anyway.

Sláinte!

Two ice-kids playing.

This place is starting to grow on me.

Some parts of this 'ice house' were already ruined but it's been at least a month since they're up, I think, and many people come here, so I guess it was bound to happen.

In the evening, it was time to make dinner, (for my husband to have 3 Teams-meetings with his colleagues back at home,) do some (not much, admittedly) work, and finally chill. I say ‘finally’ as if I haven’t been chilling just two days ago, but it was quite a long day, okay?