I Wear My Sunglasses At Night

...so I can, so I can
hide my nasty pink eye from the worrrrrld...

That's right, I got the stink eye. You can see it ruining a perfectly nice picture of Kaede, Jagaa, and me on a frigid walk down to the river above. In spite of the fact that Kaede had it and I've been spending a heck of a lot of time with her, it seems like it may have come from a different source, as she had bacterial conjunctivitis, and mine is viral. She claims it's because I keep rubbing Jagaa's poop in my eye, in spite of my repeated assertion that I do no such thing. Other than the unsightliness (no pun intended!), it hasn't been that hard on me. Actually, the worst part has been that, since it's pretty contagious, it's kept me from working. Oh, and now Peace Corps is a bit worried about it so they've flown me into UB to do some tests or something. I'm not entirely sure. That's a major bummer though, since that means Kaede is now alone in Choibalsan. Hopefully they won't keep me here long, but they've yet to give me an estimate. Ideally I'll be heading back to Choibalsan on the Friday flight, but I fear that's a bit unrealistic.

How bout a story! So at 6 or so tonight, I left the apartment and went to the road to grab a cab to the airport, which is a good ten miles or so out of town. The first cab I stopped told me he couldn't take me because his car was too small. I needed to find a big car, he said. Considering the one other time I'd been there it had been in a small car, I thought this odd, and I flagged down the next sedan to come by. This guy wasn't such a wussy, and off we went toward the airport. Or so I hoped. He was going a different way from how I'd gone the other time, but I figured, hey, it's the airport for the fourth biggest city in Mongolia... there's probably more than one road to get there. Well, that's probably true in the summer, but this is the winter, when, as is the case with many places in this country, there's only one road to get there, and then there's lots of would-be roads that are covered in snow. It soon became evident we were on one of the latter. At first the snow drifts were small enough for the Hyundai to overcome, but as we got farther from town, they got bigger, and it wasn't long before I was standing behind the car, pushing with all my might and regretting my earlier wussy accusation. To no avail, of course. After fifteen minutes or so, the driver got out, scratched his head, and walked over to take a leak. When he came back, he told me I could walk to the airport if I wanted. I saw a set of four lights on the horizon. Pretty humble, but so is the Choibalsan airport. I asked him if they were in fact the airport. They are, he said, and they're only a kilometer away. I mulled it over. Compared to recent nights, this one was relatively warm (about -10). Also, I was pretty warmly dressed, and I didn't have too much luggage (just a backpack and my laptop bag). Who knows how soon he'd dig himself out, or how accurately we'd be able to give a rescue vehicle directions to come pick me up, so I decided to go for it. I asked him how much I owed. At first he said 8000 tugriks, the standard rate for a ride to the airport. I was a little peeved at that, considering I definitely wasn't at the airport, but I didn't feel like arguing. As I was getting the money out, he changed his fee to 10000 tugriks, citing the fact that his car was now stuck in the snow and he was going to have to spend a lot of time and energy digging it out. This was a bit ridiculous, as it was his fault he took a bad road, but I did feel sorry for him, and I really didn't want to argue. I forked it over and headed for the lights.

His distance estimate was pretty accurate, but it was soon apparent that this was no airport. Rather it was a large remote dwelling with lots of angry barking dogs that added to my slowly building sense of impending doom. An image of freezing to death on the steppe flashed through my head, and I couldn't stop thinking of "To Build a Fire" by Jack London (at least that guy had his dog with him, as well as the means to make a fire, whether he screwed it up or not), but I snapped out of it and told myself I had to press on, and that, worse come to worst, I could always see the smoke stack of the coal plant at the edge of town, even if it was ten miles away, and I knew I could make it there if I had to. And part of me kinda hoped I'd die anyway, so that that lying driver could hear about it and feel like a jerk.

I left the "road" and started to hike overland along a set of power lines which I assumed led to the airport. It wasn't long before I crested a tiny hill and was rewarded with a view of the airport's squat little control tower in the distance. Distances are notoriously hard to eyeball in Mongolia in the daytime, to say nothing of the night. It looked far, but I figured no more than half an hour or so. I struck out, occasionally breaking through the snow to my crotch, occasionally catching my foot and falling on my face. I walked and walked and walked and the airport didn't seem to be getting much closer. I began to think I was losing my mind. Meanwhile, I was losing feeling in my feet. If you ever plan on doing some winter hiking in Mongolia, wear at least three layers of socks. On the bright side, the rest of me wasn't that cold at all. There was no wind, so my face was pretty much fine. I was wearing US military long underwear (thanks Uncle Phil!) under my jeans, which kept my legs plenty warm. And thanks to that goddamned coat, my torso was actually sweating profusely.

So I trudged on and on, and of course, eventually the airport did in fact get closer. After an hour and a half, I made it. And I didn't even miss the plane, as it had been delayed, though to be honest I was hoping I would so I could go back home to Kaede. I was quite a site when I finally arrived. First of all, there's not much of a parking lot, so people could tell I hadn't gotten out of a car. Here comes a crazy American, walking in from the darkness of the empty steppe covered in snow, his beard a big hairy icicle, one eye beet red. And when I took off my coat, my shirt was completely soaked from the sweat. It's a wonder they didn't have me arrested.

Anyway, I hope that's the most grueling physical challenge I have to face during my time in the Peace Corps. I'd been hoping for a story like that one, though it was a bit harrowing to live. But as unpleasant as it may have been, it's not a fraction as bad as knowing that Kaede is back in my apartment, the one place I've wanted her to be for months, the one place where I've dreamt awake and asleep of her magically appearing, and I'm six hundred kilometers away in stupid UB. But I guess that's just the way things go.

On a more uplifting note, we got a kitten! His name is Muurbaatar, which means "Cat-hero"! You can call him Baagii. Here's a picture of him after his first bath, and from the looks of it his last if he has anything to say about it!


He's a stray too. It's probably a little crazy to have two animals while serving in Peace Corps, but Kaede is gonna take one of 'em back with her to Tsetserleg when the time comes. Originally she was planning on bringing Jagaa, but she's beginning to take a real shine to Baagii, especially after he put the dog to shame by peeing in his litter (read: dirt) box the minute we brought it in the house. Jagaa still can't manage to do anything but eat the newspaper we lay down for her. Hopefully she'll learn a thing or two from the little kitten. As for now, she alternates between irrational fear of Baagii and terrifying excitement. Kaede, Baagii, and I are eagerly awaiting the middle ground. Here's a peek at what it might look like when it comes. And a shot of Baagii looking less emaciated and terrifying. As well as a nice view of my crotch.

Surprise Attack!!!!!!!!

So my Christmas wasn't so blue after all. As you may be aware, my lovely girlfriend Kaede rode for two days on dismal buses halfway across the country to surprise me on Christmas Eve! She had told me she wouldn't make it out here until mid-January, but she had been LYING! Anyway, it was just about the best Christmas present of all time, especially seeing as she's going to be here until mid-January, and then I'm probably gonna go with her to UB and then Tsetserleg, where she lives until the end of the month. That's a hell of a lot of time together for star-crossed lovers like us. We'll have to find someone to take care of Jagaa while we're there. I think Kaede's gonna miss her more than I will. They're becoming fast friends. Above is a pic of my two girls having a doze. Ain't they the cutest?

Christmas itself was a lot of fun, especially if you like eating. Which I DO. We had a big potluck at Bob's. There was turkey and steak rolls and mac & cheese and mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberry (actually lingonberry) sauce and pumpkin pie and apple pie and eggnog and Kenyan food from our friend Easterlina and a bunch of other stuff and even GUACAMOLE!!! That's right! Merrie had just returned from a brief check-up in Thailand, and she smuggled a bunch of avocados back with her. My god I'd forgotten how delicious they were. So we all stuffed ourselves and laid around under the Christmas lights and talked about a variety of things, and even though it felt nothing like Christmas, it was all very nice.

Over the last week Kaede and I have just been hanging out, doing crosswords and cooking good food and meeting and greeting the Choibalsan community. She's quite popular with all my counterparts and the like (just as I expected). Last night we went to my school's New Year's party (below is a picture of Zoloo dancing with Kaede, who is clearly pumped for me to be taking her picture... as usual). There was a lot of heavy drinking, which my counterparts told me was mandated by the administration... so much heavy drinking in fact that school was preemptively canceled for today. It was fun though. The highlight may have been when Kaede and I were forced to go up on stage and compete in a competition wherein each couple were given an animal and then made to impersonate two of said animal in love. And guess who won? Me and Kaede! Or should I say, Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel! We squeaked at each other lovingly and then Kaede pretended she was hungry, so I ran up to a pole which was clearly a tree in our little pantomime and I found her a nut. She ate it and we won! I think perhaps only because we were the sole couple whose performance wasn't totally perverted. You should've seen the bears.

Happy New Year!


ADDENDUM: I didn't manage to get this post out last night before we left to celebrate the holiday, so I may as well add in what we did. It was fellow volunteer Susanne's birthday, so we all went out to dinner and then back to her place to cook onion rings and french fries and generally be as ridiculous as possible in the last few hours of 2010. It was a good time. At midnight fireworks went off all over the city. Here's a pic I took of one from Susanne's chilly balcony. Hope you all had/are having a great time too!

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!

John Russell owns a dog???

Yup! And her name is Jargalnokhoi! Look at her!

Or Jagaa for short. Or Puppy Khan as my family has dubbed her. I decided a real Mongolian name would be nice for a real Mongolian dog. Mongolians tend to get their (people) names by taking two words and sticking them together. My main counterpart is named Zolzaya, which means "Luckdestiny." My male counterpart's name is Altansukh, or "Goldenaxe." Pretty badass huh? My mother's name is Shinekhuu, or "New Son," even though she's a daughter. My teacher from this summer is named Bolortuya, or "Crystalbeam." So what does Jargalnokhoi mean, you ask? Why, Happinessdog, of course!

Here's the story. On Thursday night Bob was walking home from work when he saw the most adorable little puppy shivering and getting teased by children. The helpless lil gal wandered out into the road, right in the line of traffic. As a car came speeding down the icy street, Bob found himself running out and snatching her up. Once he'd saved her from getting run over, he was unable to set her back down, feeling the way she shivered in his arms. So he took her home, cleaned her up, gave her some food, and set about figuring out how to find her a nice home. At school the next day, he showed his fellow teachers and all his students pictures of how cute little Jagaa is. Everyone really wanted her... until they found out she was a girl. You see the concept of veterinarians, let alone that of spaying, doesn't really exist in this country, especially outside of UB. Therefore, a female dog basically equals puppies. Lots and lots of puppies. Puppy after unwanted puppy. Even with Bob offering to pay for the spaying, no one would bite (ha!). Until he ran into this sap that night at our weekly dinner. He showed me some pics (including the one above), and there was already something about Jagaa I really liked. Afterwards we went back to Bob's and I met the little critter. She's got a lot of energy, but you play with her for a while and she'll chill right out and fall asleep on your lap (see pic below... though that's actually Bob's lap). Something in me decided, what the hay, you're here for a year and a half, you've got a good support network at your site to take care of her whenever you have to leave town, and you can figure out what to do with her when you leave once you reach that point. So I brought her home that very night!

Having a puppy has been... interesting so far. You don't have to know me very well to know that I'm more of a cat person. So in addition to training Jagaa to be a good dog, I'm trying to train her to be a good cat. The biggest difficulty, you might guess, is getting the girl to pee outside. I guess it's more than I really ought to expect, what with the poor bladder control puppies have. I'm gonna designate a place in the house where I'll set down newspapers and hope that, if she can't hold it until I bring her out, she'll at least do it there. I tell ya, winter in Mongolia is a rough setting in which to raise a puppy. Standing outside for twenty minutes or half an hour waiting for Jagaa to pee would not rank among the most enjoyable parts of my day. Actually, what with my new wondercoat and other warm accessories, it's not so bad for me. I just start to feel bad for her. It's been between fifteen and thirty below all weekend, and after a minute or two in that, she starts to look pretty miserable. She hops around from foot to foot so she doesn't have to touch them any one of them to the frigid ground for too long, and she spends a lot of time searching for a way to sit down without having to put her ass on the snow (she has yet to find it). Anyway, we've been making some breakthroughs recently, and I figure once she starts to get the idea, getting out of the cold will help motivate her to do her business more quickly.

Needless to say I don't really know what I'm doing (thank god for the internet, as well as Kaede, who has a great deal of dog-rearing expertise), so if you have any experience training puppies, especially in a third world country, holla at me. Also, Choibalsan ain't exactly teeming with PetSmarts, so if you feel like sending a package, please include some fun puppy treats and toys and whatnot for Jagaa! She'd really appreciate it. One thing that might be especially useful is that bitter spray you can use to help teach her what not to chew on. Cuz right now, she chews on EVERYTHING.

Blue Christmas

So Kaede and I received some bad news yesterday. Apparently her school decided to postpone her winter break by three weeks, which means she won't get here until mid-January. We were really looking forward to being able to spend Christmas with each other (even though she was actually gonna get here two days after Christmas... close enough), but now I guess we'll just have to start planning for a Martin Luther King Day celebration. She will get here in time for January 22, which, hard as it is to believe, marks six months that we've been together, so that's something. I'm pretty bummed though. Coming back to site after the fun-and-fancy-free atmosphere that ruled in UB for two weeks has been quite difficult, and so this is just adding insult to injury. Oh well. My counterpart Zoloo just gave me some nice pics her brother-in-law took when Kaede and I went to have dinner with her family in UB recently, so at least I can look at those for the next six weeks. The one above is the two of us with Ochka, Zoloo's adorably sassy niece.

And of course, when it rains, it pours. Another sad thing happened this week. Franz, one of our VSO volunteers, left Choibalsan for good yesterday. He was supposed to be here for the whole two years I am, but a variety of forces conspired to keep that from happening. It's a real shame, since he was one of my favorite people here at site. It was very sudden too, so we barely had a chance to give him a proper goodbye. We did get to go out for dinner and sing some karaoke one last time. That was nice.

On a slightly more neutral note, yesterday I got to help the students from my school shovel the roads of the city. There aren't very many plow trucks round these here parts, so apparently that's a task that gets delegated to students and workers. It was kinda nice to do some manual labor, even if it was in the freezing cold, but I mostly enjoyed it just to see how much fun the students were having. I have a feeling if American students were asked to do a similar task, they wouldn't be quite so peachy about it. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, but, seeing as its only December 9, I'm sure it'll happen again.

Here's a pic of me and Pookie (as we all affectionately call Franz) on his last night in town. We'll miss ya buddy!

Хагас жил

That's "khagas jil," which means "half a year," which is how long I've been in Mongolia now. Six months. Holy eff. And since it's looking like Peace Corps Mongolia is becoming a twenty-five month program, that means that in a week or two, I'll be a quarter of the way done my service. A QUARTER!!!!! Not to rehash the same wow-time-is-crazy-in-Peace-Corps litany that I've expressed a million times on this blog, but I simultaneously can't believe I've completed such a significant fraction of my service and yet haven't been here the whole two years already. Absolute insanity.

I flew back to Choibalsan from Ulaanbaatar today. How perfect that the first time I return to Chinggis Khaan International Airport is exactly six months to the day after flying into the country. The flight was short and pretty, and it made me wish I was a millionaire so I could fly myself back and forth whenever I wanted. It was unbelievably easier than that damned interminable bus ride. An hour and a half with an inflight meal versus fifteen hours with no leg room? Not even a fair fight. They should slow the plane down just to keep it from being so ridiculous.

So I was in (and around) UB for over two weeks, which makes it really weird to be back in Dornod, especially considering I spent pretty much that entire time with Kaede (see pic above... she's so happy she can't even keep her eyes open!). Oo yanaa, it's rough being here without her now. We had a really great time after having gone so long without each other. We watched Hitchcock films and cooked delicious meals and walked around town and ate soup at 24-hour soup restaurants (gotta love Mongolian fast food). Lots of good times were had in general, and my adoration for the girl was only reaffirmed, which makes it all the harder to be away once more. Fortunately, if everything goes as planned, it'll be barely three weeks til we see each other again. As a university teacher, she gets pretty much the entire month of January off, and she's looking to spend it here with me in sunny Dornod aimag! I'm the luckiest guy in Mongolia!

In addition to Kaede, I got to see all the rest of my friends from the summer. The majority of volunteers come in for PC's mammoth Thanksgiving celebration (which was delicious and coma-inducing), and those from my group who wouldn't have made it in normally came in anyway, for the week that followed was In-Service Training, or IST. The seminar itself was fairly helpful, if also quite demanding and mind-numbing at times, but it was definitely worth it for the chance to catch up with everyone who comprised my life this summer. Of course, our lives are radically different at this point, but everyone seems to be hanging in there. It's sad that we aren't guaranteed to see one another again until MST (Mid-Service Training) which will be in August. A lot of people head into UB for spring break, and most whom you don't run into then pop up at some point in the summer, but still, it's a bit sad.

The tough part is ahead; basically that's what this all means. For Mongolian volunteers, getting through the first winter is often the biggest hurdle of one's entire service. You're far, far away from the overwhelming majority of the people you love, you're still probably settling into work, cultural and linguistic difficulties continue to abound, and you're colder than you've ever been before in your life. It's only December 5, but the days are already dipping below zero with mustache-freezing regularity. Fortunately my new coat could protect me in even the most nuclear of winters, and my apartment is still plenty warm, so I'm not too worried about the weather stuff.

I probably ought to have more to say. I'm sure I do. But the thought of it is kinda exhausting to me right now. So I'm just gonna go ahead and sign off. Love you all, miss you all. Hope your holiday season is gearing up jollily. As you can see below, it is in Ulaanbaatar.

Баяр Баярлалаа-Өгижийн мэнд!

That's my crappy attempt to say Happy Thanksgiving in Mongolian. Probably makes no sense, mostly because I never really figured out how to make a gerund, but it'll just have to do.

So whoa, it's been a while since I posted. I'm becoming quite the deadbeat blogger. And actually a fair amount of interesting stuff has been happening these past few weeks, at least comparatively. Let's see if I can list 'em out real quick.

• I went with Marg (an Australian VSO volunteer/all-around Wonder Woman) to a place the locals call Diviiz, which is their way of saying Division 5. It's an abandoned Soviet base of sorts about 10 km out of town which many of Dornod's poorest citizens now call home. After millions of livestock died in last year's devastating winter, many Mongolians lost their means of survival, so they moved into derelict buildings like the ones at Diviiz. When they arrived, there was no water nearby, no school for miles, no food to be easily accessed. With the help of people like Marg, they now have a kindergarten for the younguns (it's adorable! made of two gers!), a well, a greenhouse, a chicken coop, and many other awesome necessities. It was pretty inspiring to a lazy volunteer like myself.
• I traveled with some friends to a place about 90 km west of Choibalsan where there used to be a city which was built by the Khitan Empire. Nowadays all that's left is a single tower, maybe sixty feet high, and the foundations of a few walls. After living in a place like Egypt, this ruin was not all that impressive, but it was neat to see something a thousand years old in a country whose inhabitants barely built permanent structures until the last hundred years.
• We visited the local power plant, which provides electricity for three aimags!!! It was built by the Soviets and was actually quite interesting. We didn't know if we'd be able to get a tour, so we just showed up and asked. A moment later, we were donning hard hats and walking through crazy big boiler rooms and whatnot. I felt like I was in an episode of The Simpsons (even if it wasn't a nuclear plant), which, if you know anything about me, you'll know was a very exciting way to feel.
• I came to UB (in spite of some crazy Peace Corps flight arrangement mishaps... I had to take the bus instead of getting to fly... UGH!). Next week, we have a week long training seminar, as I may have mentioned before, but thanks to some very light work I've been assigned here for my school, I got to come in a week early. As luck would have it, Kaede found some similar work in the city, so we've been hanging out and cooking lots of delicious food together, which has been wonderful.
• I bought the warmest coat in Mongolia's largest black market, which is one of the largest markets in Asia. At least they told me it's the warmest. And since, standing around in single digits temperatures I find myself sweating even if I don't zip the thing up, I'm inclined to believe them.

I probably missed some stuff, although I'm sure it was on the boring side. Sorry I don't have any pics of any of this stuff with me. I didn't bring my computer to UB, so I'm at an internet cafe right now. Anyway, I should get going, but I hope you all have a very happy thanksgiving!!!

I don't like making blog posts without pictures, so here's what I found when I did a google image search for "Mongolian Thanksgiving." As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with the holiday, but I think you'll agree with me when I say it's a pretty sweet pic.

There is now a thirteen hour difference between Mongolia and America!

This post is copied nearly verbatim (with a few obvious changes) from one I made two-and-a-half years ago on the Pete and John in Cairo blog. I'm just that lazy.

The East coast, that is. Which is the way it's supposed to be. You guys just stopped observing Daylight Saving Time, and us Mongolians never observe it, so it actually is a thirteen hour difference between these two places. And while that makes it sound like we're farther away than we thought, it actually means we're closer, since in fact there's only an eleven hour difference in where the sun is relative to us. It's just eleven hours in the wrong direction, so says the man.

So yeah... just thought you all should know. Here are ten other quick fun facts about Daylight Saving Time.

1. While Benjamin Franklin didn't invent it, he was the first to propose anything similar, albeit sarcastically. In 1784 he anonymously published a pamphlet in France which suggested that shutters be taxed, candles be rationed, and cannons be fired at sunrise in Paris to encourage people to get up earlier and take advantage of the daylight hours.
2. William Willett was the first to develop the idea. He came up with it in 1905 on one of his daily pre-breakfast horseback rides. It made him sad to see how many of his fellow Londoners slept through the best part of an English summer's day. Additionally, he was a little miffed to have his golf game cut short at dusk each evening. He never saw his plan come to fruition during his lifetime, but one year after he died in 1914, the Central Powers became the first nations to implement DST. By 1918, it had taken much of the world by storm, and Willett is aptly remembered by a memorial sundial which is permanently set to DST.
3. Contrary to popular belief, DST actually increases energy use! While it is true that there is a decrease in energy costs used for lights, there is a much greater increase due to the greater amount of cooling required when awake during those hotter parts of the day.
4. DST hurts primetime broadcast ratings.
5. One of the biggest negative impacts of DST involves its effects on the body's circadian rhythms, which can be quite severe and last for weeks. Kazakhstan cited such complications as a primary reason for abolishing DST in 2005.
6. The esteemed Canadian writer Robertson Davies said of DST, "[I detect] the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, to get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves."
7. To combat some of these difficulties, some parts of the world skew their timezones westward, effectively establishing permanent DST. That is, their clocks always read ahead of mean solar time.
8. Most countries near the equator don't observe DST, for the obvious reason that the sun's cycle doesn't vary all that noticeably. Countries like Brazil, however, where the Equator runs through part of the country but a sizeable portion is far enough from it that the sun's cycle changes significantly, the farther parts observe it while the nearer parts do not.
9. I don't like Daylight Saving Time.
10. Perhaps most interestingly, and here I must quote the Wikipedia article to which I am fully indebted for this entire post, since it is described almost too well there, "In the normative form, daylight saving time uses the present participle saving as an adjective, as in labor saving device; the first two words are sometimes hyphenated. Daylight savings time and daylight time are common variants, the former by analogy to savings account. Willett's original proposal used the term daylight saving, but by 1911 the term summer time replaced daylight saving time in British English." Wow. Fascinating!

"I like to kill somebody in my free time."

The past week has been dominated by a series of various vaguely Halloween related activities. They've been far more amusing than authentic, but whatever. It's pretty neat to see people so far from America getting excited about our most bizarre of holidays. Excluding, perhaps, Groundhog Day. We'll see how they deal with that one come February 2. Anyway, I kicked the whole thing off by judging another school's Halloween competition on Saturday morning. It was very long and drawn out, and by the time I'd been there for four hours, I really wished I'd grabbed some breakfast first, but it was nice just the same. There were some particularly interesting performances, the highlight of which was definitely a zombie séance set to some weird spooky new age music. The zombies gathered in a circle around a silver coffin and a pile of flowers, the latter of which soon birthed a nun carrying a giant cross. She used this to bless each of the zombies, ending by waving it at the coffin and saying something like "Jesus is loving you!" What happened next you ask? Why a flowery zombie Jesus erupted from the coffin, of course! And what did the other zombies do? Why they lifted him onto their shoulders from where he emitted perfectly timed spirit fingers in a most demonstrative way. And how did he bring this all to an appropriate close? BY LEADING THEM ALL IN A SLOW MOTION NEW AGE ZOMBIE MACARENA! As the MC said afterwards, it was truly terrible (the title of this post is another hilarious construction made during the performance). I felt like I was on some kind of hallucinogen. Bob took a video. Hopefully I'll get it up here at some point.

On Halloween proper, Geoff and I taught a special holiday lesson to our ACCESS class (the one from which last post's picture comes), and then we watched The Nightmare Before Christmas in the film club, which everyone loved (how could they not?). That was about it. Also, I ate lots of chocolate chip pumpkin cookies (see below), which I made with the canned pumpkin my mummuh sent me and with mummuh's famous recipe. They turned out amazingly well. It was almost like I was home. Almost.


The last event in the Halloween festival came on Tuesday when we celebrated it at my school. The party was pretty haphazardly thrown together, but it managed to be a success just the same. Almost entirely as a result of bobbing-for-apples, most likely. When people asked me what games Americans play on Halloween, that's the one that jumped immediately to mind. Funny thing is, I'd never played it before that night. But thanks to all sorts of blindfolding and hand-tying and other trickery, the kids loved it (see pic below of Aagii and I fighting for the only apple in a big ole bucket).

In other news, next week we have a one-week vacation to mark the end of the first quarter. I wish I could go west to see Kaede, but apparently there's some work to be done around here, and anyway I'm gonna see her the next weekend! The week after Thanksgiving we have Inter-Service Training (IST), which is when we get to choose a counterpart to bring into UB (no easy matter, which is the understatement of the year... ask me directly for more details on THAT fiasco) for a seminar on English teaching methodology and grant work, but Kaede and I both are going in a week early for other work-related reasons. That means we get two weeks together! Needless to say, I'm very excited.

I hope you all had a Happy Halloween back stateside, and that the election results haven't spooked you too badly. Bwahahahaha...

Exquisite Corpse

I just had my ACCESS course. Every Monday night, I teach English to a small group of motivated students from some of the poorer families in town. It's arranged by a program called ACCESS, which was started by the American government. I don't know a lot of the details of how or why or when though. Anyway, it's pretty much my favorite part of the week. The kids are so motivated, and it's nice to have something I get to plan on my own. Above you can see a picture of me teaching them. It was Halloween, and I went as a lumberjack. I normally dress much more professionally. Tonight we played exquisite corpse, which is a game with which I'm sure you're all familiar. It's when everyone take turns writing a story, one line at a time, and you wind up with something really disjointed and ridiculous and funny. I thought I'd share a few of the cuter ones with you all.

1. There once was a little boy named Danny. Danny really wanted to get a puppy. He was always thinking about it. Once a day his father said if you study good, I will buy puppy. But he doesn't agree. She is crying for 3 days because. So she wanted happy. But she thought it is not possible. She just wanted to stay at home and never go out. So she did, but she ate all the food in her house, and then she died of starvation.

2. Bob & Mike are very best friends. They live in Dornod. One night they go to the river. They saw very beauty girl. They fall in love. So Tom wanted to marry her. But she didn't agree to marry him. And she run away to another country. The first country she came to was called China. In China, every man wanted to marry her. And they all smelled so good. Suddenly she become monster... She is very sad because she become monster. She looks like witch... Suddenly her mom saw she. She surprised & afraid.

3. Rabbit is cooking a pie just now and decorate home because tomorrow will be Halloween. She decide to collect all animals at home and celebrate Halloween with animals. But animals don't like to celebrate Halloween. Because Halloween is very scary they scared so they went to at home. When they were going suddenly one man came and told that there was a ghost on their way. "I'm not afraid of ghosts!" I told them. "Ghosts aren't real. I'm not afraid of things that aren't real." He think I am grave person? Because he is a man.

4. Not once upon the time now one dog lived. The dog named Jack. He lived with a small family with people. But one of family member hates Jack. "Why do they all hate me?" Jack cried. "I'm a really friendly person! And I love everyone!" But... He doesn't want to do it. His opinion it's so very bad thing. And he cried and his soul is broken.

Classics.