December: the month of Christmas music, decorations, movies, and food. While I still miss my eggnog lattes (and our family, of course), things are going well. I guess it helps that, unlike last year, we know that this is our last Christmas in Mongolia -- also, for whatever reason, winter has not completely "arrived" yet. Daily temperatures are still hovering between 10 and 30 degrees. I feel like this time last year we were battling -20F -- not to mention making fires, shagging water, and chopping coal. Yes, we are a bit spoiled in our apartment this year.
There have been a few developments since my last post. The one I'm most excited about is a project we just started with our landlord. Our landlord, Kuzylbai, is the director of the Olgii museum, which is surprisingly nice and apparently award-winning. A few weeks ago Kuzylbai invited me to his home for dinner. After the usual chitchat over 8 cups of tea and boiled sheep's head, he asked me if I could help him arrange a traveling museum exhibit to America. Basically, he wants to visit America before he dies (his specific words) and the only way he figures he can do this is if someone else pays for him -- specifically, a museum. I told him I'd look into it.
Long story short: after firing off a handful of emails, I got a response from the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana saying that they were interested in hosting an exhibit. Before they could even begin to make a decision, however, they need a lot more information -- specifically, exactly what sorts of items Kuzylbai could transport to America. Just yesterday, Ashlee, Justin, and I had a meeting with Kuzylbai (along with some translating help from Agii) explaining the situation. Needless to say, the man looked very happy. He says he will need about three weeks to compile a detailed catalog complete with pictures and captions, which we will then translate into English before sending off to the museum. He says that he has taken similar exhibits both to UB and Kazakhstan, so he some experience in the area. So yeah, I think this is pretty cool. I'll keep you all posted on whatever develops.
In other news, Ashlee has been busy planning our Thailand trip. It sounds like we'll be spending 3 or 4 days in Bangkok before heading south to the islands off the west coast. She hasn't made any exact plans yet (she's still waiting for some travel tips from a friend), but she has been looking into places like Phuket, Ko Phi Phi, and Krabi. We're excited!
We also got a couple of early Christmas presents the other day: care packages from both the Riggins and Shawn and Kay. It was a glorious morning and it was quite the take: tortillas, refried beans, peanut butter, fancy candy, hot sauce, canned chicken, and all other sorts of good stuff. The big surprise item that Ashlee's mom sent that she was eager for me to receive was a "Yard-o-Beef." It is three feet and three pounds of Hilshire Farms summer sausage. After getting it, I immediately texted Brian and Justin and they both said it set their mouths a-watering. She also included blocks of cheddar and jalapeno cheeses.
Let's see, what else is going on. Work is humming along. This semester I am working with Bahitgul and Sophia. My afternoons are busy with English clubs -- I'm having a lot of fun teaching Christmas songs and showing clay-mation movies. Oh yeah, our weekly teacher's workshop has finally crashed-and-burned. Attendance has dropped down to three teachers and the past two weeks we haven't even been able to locate the key to the conference room at the Education Center. Don't ask me why. If we want to continue with this, we will need to plan a major reboot -- maybe after the holidays.
Brian and Adi both made it back from their training seminar in UB and Justin is headed there this Saturday. We're planning to all be together for Christmas though. We'll celebrate Christmas Eve at our place and Christmas Day at Brian's -- he's going to prepare eggs benedict, which he says is a family tradition for him. We're also doing a little Secret Santa. Ashlee and I both did our shopping when were in UB last week. We got some good stuff! Also, Ashlee and I are having a Christmas party at our place for our counterparts on the 18th -- we haven't yet settled on what food to make (Ashlee thinks maybe meatloaf and pasta salad) but I'm hoping to get a White Elephant gift exchange going. I think I explained it well enough. I also had to explain what BYOB means.
That's all for now. Happy holidays!
This is a picture of our Thanksgiving feast from Brian's camera.
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