John the Red-Nosed Volunteer

...had a very frostbitten nose
and if you ever poked it
he'd swat your hand and whimper quietly...

Actually it's technically just frostnipped. And it's pretty much gone. I lost my scarf a month ago or so and decided it wasn't worth buying a new one. Last year, the coldest month was December, so I figured it was all downhill from there anyway. Well, this year January was a lot colder, and one day last week while walking to school, my face getting colder and colder, I felt an abrupt pain in my nose, like someone had just punched me with a very hot fist. By the time I got inside, I'd forgotten about it, but a day or two later, that spot had turned bright red. Fortunately things are warming up around here, and Merrie lent me a scarf just in case.


The school year has progressed out of the first semester, when it's possible to get some work done, and into the second, where there are holidays and concerts and standardized tests every two minutes which make it nearly impossible to do anything except get stressed and frustrated, or, as I prefer, just stay home and watch movies with the wife and cat. In the last two weeks, we've had six performances, five of which were on the same day. We're raising money for new chairs and audio equipment to put in our auditorium. I have to bite my tongue whenever they tell me this, as I feel there are many more obvious places any money we raise ought to go. For instance, it would be nice to have classrooms warm enough that students didn't need to wear their jackets inside, but I suppose it's hard to argue with a killer stereo system.

Lucky for me, I have my lovely wife to come home to, as well as her inimitable cooking. Mongolia has made us both better chefs, but she's the true master around here. Our friend Pico was visiting from the countryside again, and on his birthday, Kaede made bacon and ricotta ravioli, squash soup, a fresh garden salad, garlic bread, and red velvet cake from real beets. I was supposed to help with all this, but his birthday happened to fall on the day we had to perform that same damned concert five times.

We're glad February is here. While things at school can be difficult, a lot of our other projects are going well. We launch a new group of Access students this week, we just gave a practice TOEFL exam, and the International Creative Writing Contest is only a few weeks away. Perhaps most exciting is Tsagaan Sar, the lunar new year and biggest holiday of the year, which will happen at the end of the month. Last year, we didn't get much of a chance to celebrate it, so we're looking forward to round two. Kaede and I are having some nice new Mongolian jackets tailored just for the occasion. Very exciting.

In other holiday news, last Friday was Teacher's Day. Every school has a huge party and every teacher gets hilariously wasted, and of course we offered the TOEFL exam the next morning, much to the groggy, hungover dismay of many of our particpants. At our celebration, I was unexpectedly given an award for using good methodology over the three to five years I've been working. Doesn't really make sense, but oh well. Can't complain about a nifty medal!