Work is going great and I have built up quite a rapport with my desk. It allows me to put things on it and I try not to draw on it. But seriously, Sometimes work can be difficult. This is mostly because there is nobody telling me what needs to be done and when it needs to be done by. That might not sound like something that would make a job hard but like it or not, this is what most people who grow up in the West are used to. As a result, I have found myself in an environment where this doesn't happen. Some days can be a battle to make myself do something, others can be a battle to conquer the mountain of work I have created for myself. I prefer the latter. Happily, the days when it's a struggle to find something to do are few and far between.
Before I came to Mongolia one of my biggest concerns was that I wouldn't have much of a social life. I had a visions of myself hanging around my apartment with too much time to think. So it is with no small amount of relief that I find that my social life is, if anything, overactive. My budget is strained to breaking point due to my inability to say no. Actually, it's more likely to be because whenever someone mentions the word 'party' I get an uncontrollable urge to buy enough alcohol to drown a Rhino. I am slowly learning that my current lifestyle is unsustainable. A fact which was painfully demonstrated when I went to a market and realised that I only had enough money to buy a small bag of lentils...and I hate lentils.
Despite my current fiscal woes, I don't regret spending my money the way I did. The parties were pretty awesome. A couple immediately spring to mind. There was one a couple of weeks ago which was remarkable partly because I didn't know, or in fact, meet the host at any point, but also because I accidentally-on-purpose consumed a whole bottle of vodka. Though my memory is hazy, I do remember spending the entire night with said bottle of vodka holstered like a gun in my pocket. I also remember that there was a power cut so most of the partying was done in darkness. This meant that most of the conversations I had were dominated by comments such as "ow", "you're standing on my foot", and "that's not a bottle of beer your holding, it's sunflower oil". The following days' hangover was fairly spectacular as well. I woke up in the morning fully clothed and spead-eagled on my bed with an empty bottle of vodka in my jeans. When I stumbled into the kitchen it also became apparent that I had attempted to cook something when I got home. By the looks of it, I had tried to invent a new dish involving flour, bread, and another ingredient which I couldn't quite indentify. Needless to say, it didn't go well.
There was also a halloween party which would have been better had I not been wearing the worst halloween costume in Mongolia. In my defense I didn't choose it, I foolishly let a Scottish guy arrange it for me. My 'costume' consisted of a long, dirty, yellow raincoat. That's it. No one could quite decide whether I was dressed as a pervert, a serial killer or a fisherman. In the end I settled on a combination of the three. So I became (hopefully) the worlds first 'serialfishervert' (see below)
Still, I had a good time so no harm, no foul. There has been a bunch of other gatherings and shindigs but they can be summed up in the words 'I got drunk, had a good time, regretted it the next day'.
In other news, any warmth that was left in Mongolia has up-sticks and headed south. The temperature has dropped firmly below zero and won't be hitting the positives for another 4 months.
As I write, the temperature is -12° C which, whilst cold, is nothing compared to what's forecast for the weekend. According to weather underground (http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/44292.html), the temperature on Sunday will be a beer freezing -37° C. That's right folks, you read correctly. I am amazed that Mongolians don't just hibernate during winter.When a country is this cold it affects everything. True, there are some days when you can get away with a fleece and hat, but mostly you have layer-up. Leaving the apartment takes a good 5 minutes as one has to pile on the clothes so that you don't lose an arm to frostbite. If it has snowed then walking anywhere requires all you attention in order to avoid slipping and sliding into on-coming traffic or a large, possible angry, Mongolian guy. I am seriously considering investing in a pair of ice skates! The other problem which I learnt about the hard way is that of things freezing. This may seem obvious, but when you have spent 23 years living in countries where your hair dry's if it is wet when you go outside, I was quite unprepared. For those of you who have never had frozen hair, I can tell you that it is quite disconcerting. I didn't even notice the first time (yep, it's happened more than once) until I tried to run my hands through my hair and was met with more resistance than usual. The dampest sections of my hair had literally frozen. I never expected to have to thaw out my hair when I came to this country.
That's all I've got time for now. I'll try to be more dilligent with my blog in future.
Thanks for reading. -37° C. That's right folks, you read correctly. I am amazed that Mongolians don't just hibernate during winter.
When a country is this cold it affects everything. True, there are some days when you can get away with a fleece and hat, but mostly you have layer-up. Leaving the apartment takes a good 5 minutes as one has to pile on the clothes so that you don't lose an arm to frostbite. If it has snowed then walking anywhere requires all you attention in order to avoid slipping and sliding into on-coming traffic or a large, possible angry, Mongolian guy. I am seriously considering investing in a pair of ice skates! The other problem which I learnt about the hard way is that of things freezing. This may seem obvious, but when you have spent 23 years living in countries where your hair dry's if it is wet when you go outside, I was quite unprepared. For those of you who have never had frozen hair, I can tell you that it is quite disconcerting. I didn't even notice the first time (yep, it's happened more than once) until I tried to run my hands through my hair and was met with more resistance than usual. The dampest sections of my hair had literally frozen. I never expected to have to thaw out my hair when I came to this country.
That's all I've got time for now. I'll try to be more dilligent with my blog in future.
Thanks for reading.
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