"Mongolia is a very poor country and is relatively far away from everything."

That quotation comes from a newspaper article that was brought to my attention by fellow M21s Ryan McGibony and his lovely wife Katie Leitch. The article is pretty amusing on its own, but that line is just priceless.

Oh, and here's a pic of Aagii with one of our very silly seventh grade classes.


So it's been slightly longer than average since last I posted, and if anyone besides me noticed that, you probably didn't care. Which is a good thing. I suppose the main reason for that is that not much of interest has happened recently. The biggest deal was, last weekend, I had my first CouchSurfers here in Mongolia! It was pretty awesome. Their names are Valérie and Stéphane, and they're a really interesting and lovely couple from France who are in the midst of a one-year trip around Asia. They drove from southern France to Finland, left their van there, hopped the train out here, will head down through China and southeast Asia, come back through China, hit up all those 'Stans, and then return to their van and, eventually, la France. When I wasn't fuming with jealousy, I got the opportunity to bone up on my French, which was awesome, though it was simultaneously frustrating, amazing, and hilarious how impossible it was to sift out the Mongolian words. I had a whole conversation with them about Mongolian houses without realizing I was using the Mongolian word for house instead of the French one. No wonder they seemed so confused.

Having them here gave me a good excuse to see a lot of the city which I hadn't had the motivation to on my own just yet. We walked down to some crazy cool old Soviet monuments (see below), chilled by the river, and even saw a little theater. Unfortunately, the theater was freezing cold and filled with loud, whistling, inattentive children, rendering an already unintelligible play all but enraging. Another bummer was that I got somewhat sick during their stay. However, they were totally wonderful and it was actually quite nice to have them here taking care of me. They even cooked me delicious French meals that were easy on my stomach. They left on Wednesday, but I hope to see them again, perhaps at their pad next time. I'm gonna have to hear the stories that come out of this trip of theirs. Hopefully I'll have a few more of my own to share as well.

Well, as I said, not too much to share. I'm headed to UB on Wednesday for a seminar. It'll be nice to go back to the big city, eat a burger, see some fresh faces. And it'll probably spice up the blog a bit too!