Beware of Tuesday!!

I wish I could get a good answer for it, but Mongolians believe that Tuesday is a very unlucky day. Because of this several buisinesses are closed on Tuesdays including the largest market in town.  We have asked several Mongolians about this and no one can give us a real answer, maybe it is like our Friday the 13th superstition.  So life here has to revolve around this notion, and you have to really consider your shopping days and where you might need to go on Tuesday.

Today's the Day

Today is the election in Mongolia.  Not for a new president, just new parliament members and district leaders. It would be the governor/mayoral elections in the states.  Anyway, the Mongolians are SO into it, but here is the deal, this is only the 4th election of this king in the 801 year history of this country!  They were controlled by China and Russia for hundreds of years and are just now able to vote on their own.  I have no idea what anyone stands for or plans to do, I will just be glad that they won't be driving by continuously blaring through loudspeakers!  I vote for some peace and quiet!!Yeah

On the 26th, my husband and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary.  We went away for one night to a place about 30 minutes away from the city.  It was such a nice, relaxing time away.  The place we stayed is beside the river, which is up quite a bit after the rain all the rain we had last week.  The hotel is a walled in compound with a central courtyard area.  The top picture shows the resteraunt and fountain.  Then a close-up of the fountain which is a replica of a fountain in the original capitol city of Mongolia, Harhorin.  Then the last picture is of our room.

We were in the states this past winter for 7 months of break, medical visits, etc.  6 weeks before our return we were informed that our landlord in Mongolia had sold our apartment out from under us and we would have to move as soon as we returned to Mongolia. So we returned on March 29 and moved into another apartment May 1.  SO yesterday we found out that the landlord, who we begged and offered to pay higher rent to, was now looking to find foreign renters again.  It seems that she thought she was going to run a guesthouse in the apartment, but doesn't have the money to put in it, so now she needs renters again.  I am truly glad that we have moved and it is over, we are in a much better situation here for the kids, and for the most part it is quieter.  The Mongolian buisiness sense is non-existant!!!

It is June right?  Our high temperature today was 55F.  Yep, I had to wear a jacket to go to the store.  But good news, I found canned tomatoes, and the store had 7 cans of green beans, and I was feeling generous and only bought 6!!!  Haven't seen them anywhere else in town, the only other canned vegetable available is green peas.  Praise God we are able to get some fresh vegetables now in summer.  We even found some radishes the other day, that was a first.   This place takes "grocery shopping" to a whole new level.  It becomes a whole lot more like hunting.

Meat Market

Today we went to a meat market.  I hate to say I forgot the camera, because there just aren't words enough to describe everything.  Thankfully it was s cool, rainy day, because when you walk up to the meat market there are probably 15 trucks piled up with animal carcasses just sitting out in the open.  SO we walk in this building, a large room about the size of a small school cafeteria.  There are tables all around the edges and up the middle, every table is piled up with pieces of meat.  There are signs hanging overhead with the different types of meat listed: Cow, Horse, Sheep, and Camel.  You just walk around the different tables and the people just call out wanting you to look at their meat, the lift it up, turn it over, trying to prove to you that their meat is better than the person standing right next to them.  Each person is selling their own meat, so there are probably 50 different vendors in this one room.  We bought meat, and one woman cut the meat for us and after handling raw meat, with no gloves, proceeded to eat an apple, no hand washing here.  Yuk.  I will take the camera next time.  The funniest thing is to see whole sheep carcasses hanging from hooks against the wall and they have this huge fat tail which is a real delicassy to the Mongolians.  

   From there we just needed some things from a regular grocery store, but even after trying 5 different stores all over town, we never did find canned tomatoes.  Another day, this is normal.

A whole new world

I am truly new at this and really don't know what I am doing, but hope to make an interesting sight to show some of the day to day things I experience while Living in Mongolia.  I hope to have lots of pictures because some things are just not understood fully through words.