Answering questions

by cinda

The town is not big, but the apartments have a very urban feel.  However, there are hills all around us covered in grass/sage/weeds.  Weeds are considered pretty — as long as its green, Mongolians think it’s good.  We guess this is why they don’t mow the grass . . .  This year has been excessively rainy so there’s more green than normal, but not something you would necessarily sit on for a picnic.  We did have a nice picnic by a river last weekend. 

Annika and Isaiah play in the playground area right outside our apartments.  They mostly play adventure games, using their imaginations, climbing piles of dirt.  I think they like to play spies and other such things.  There are lots of places to climb around on monkey bars, too.  There’s a children’s park across the road behind our apartment; it was probably very nice when it was new, but it has some problems now.  We still try to go there when we get time, but I don’t let them cross the road alone so they have to play on this side most of the time.

The bridge is very close to our apartment.  It goes over the main road, between the buddha statue and a Mongolian monument of uncertain significance to us.  We can’t get good pictures of it at night with our camera — it just blurs all the flashing neon lights together.  It’s just interesting that they chose to put up and light this bridge but Toscon, an outlying section of town where Lains and Fields are living, could truly use more electricity for the homes out there.

It seems like they might be getting prepared to turn on the heat before long as we have been hearing noises of repair going on in the basement below us and in our radiators.  The hot water was off yesterday which also indicates they could be preparing for the heating system to turn on, or maybe not?  We haven’t needed the heat inside at all.  It’s been cold outside off and on, but the apartment has stayed warm even through the night.  We still have mosquitos coming in so that lets you know it’s still summer.

Toby in the living room      beads from Michelle!

outside the church in Sukhbaatar

being silly for the camera