The Nine Nines

Welp, even though I've been freezing my butt off for two or three months now, winter only officially starts on Tuesday, when the sun is going to set at about 4:20, and with that begins the Nine Nines. The Nine Nines refer to the way Mongolians traditionally measure winter. They believe it lasts eighty-one days, which breaks down into nine sets of nines. This is how they classify them:

1. The First Nine- Milk vodka congeals.
2. The Second Nine- Russian vodka congeals.
3. The Third Nine- The tail of a three-year-old ox freezes.
4. The Fourth Nine- The horns of a four-year-old ox freeze.
5. The Fifth Nine- Boiled rice will thaw.
6. The Sixth Nine- Roads (where they exist) blacken, as in the snow melts off of them.
7. The Seventh Nine- Hilltops blacken.
8. The Eighth Nine- The ground becomes damp.
9. The Ninth Nine- Warm days set in.

The Ninth Nine will end sometime in Mid-March. Even back in Maine you'd be lucky if that were truly when "warm days set in," so I'm not holding out too much hope, especially since Zoloo's father claims that this is going to be the coldest winter in one thousand years. "The coldest winter since before Chinggis???" I asked incredulously. "I guess so," came the response. Ө янаа! At least it's been relatively warm the last few days.

So what else is new? Well last week there was a ginormous teacher's sports competition. Each department formed its own team and vied for the title of most athletic. Four different games were played: ping pong, tug-of-war, basketball, and volleyball. It was actually pretty fun (even though I hate basketball), but I was a bit shocked by how seriously a lot of the teachers took it, as well as the school administration. Classes ended hours early two days in a row for the sake of this event. That's cultural differences for ya. We actually fared pretty well. All my teammates expected me to be awesome at every sport for some reason, so I participated in all four. I completely let them down in ping pong, getting eliminated in the first round, but Muugii, another English teacher, took third in the women's section. I sucked pretty bad in volleyball too, and we didn't win a single match. I did much better than I expected in basketball, however, where we also took third (see our exhausted line-up above). Where I really shone, however, was tug-of-war. We came in second, only losing to a team with twice as many men as we had. It would be cool if American teachers did stuff like that, as long as they could keep from getting so intense about it. There was a lot of foul play in many of the events, especially basketball, away from which many of us walked with bloody scratches.

Not much else going on. Christmas is next week, so we're all figuring out what we're gonna cook for that. I'm planning on doing some more mac n cheese as well as a pumpkin pie, thanks to some key ingredients sent over by Mummuh LaMarche (velveeta and canned pumpkin... mmmboy). Jagaa is doing pretty well. She's slowly getting the idea that I don't like it when she poops or pees on the carpet. I also managed to find her a collar and a leash this weekend. She's been reacting to both of them surprisingly well. This raising a puppy stuff sure is a lot of work, though I've heard it gets easier. As for now, it just adds to the ever-growing list of reasons I wish Kaede and I lived together already. We'd make a pretty good team with the little rascal.

Hope you're all done your shopping! Stay warm!