Some Things Are Different in Mongolia

What a lovely piece of beef. 


I selected this hunk from a table full of unwrapped pieces at the market.  The meat ladies poked and prodded their products, showing me how wonderful each piece would be for me to purchase!  After turning several pieces over, we decided this one was the one for us and it was put into a baggie for us to carry home.




Let the butchering begin!

Okay, I know, the butchering has ALREADY happened.  But, sometimes I feel like a butcher as I spend time de-veining, de-gristling, de-tendoning, and de-fatting my beef here.  I have a new appreciation for the butchers at HyVee and Sam's Club where I bought most of my beef in Minnesota!



Forty minutes later...

Yes, forty minutes!  I timed myself.  Note the little plate of fat and tendons I collected, as well as the fact that I still had a slab of beef that hadn't been tended to yet!


The fruit of my labors

I was tired of  making stew meat, so, I plopped the larger piece of beef into a jar for the freezer.  The smaller stew-meat pieces were combined with olive oil, onion, and garlic to begin a delicious pot of beef vegetable stew. 

So, moving on to other things in life, I just had to show you one of the classrooms where we teach our Mongolian English teachers.  Note the condition of the wood floors.  Also, note the color.  Orange is a very normal color for school floors and ger frames.  But don't think that just because the floor is in disrepair that we have a group of shabby teachers...oh, no!  These ladies and gentlemen always come to class dressed in their teaching clothes, their hair beautiful, jewelry donned.  These are well-groomed teachers who find honor in presenting themselves well.  Note that most of them have moved into wearing boots.  All winter, 95% of the women throughout UB will be wearing boots.  It's really quite amazing to me.



Peeling floors and wobbly desks are the norm for many of the schools.



Personal space?

Here is a perfect illustration of a different view of personal space.  I have become more comfortable with being up-close and personal in other's "space" (at least, what we would consider another's invisible bubble in America), but it's still not second nature to me.  Here, you see three teachers squished onto a bench that's built for two students, but it's totally normal and comfortable to them as they discuss the lesson we are teaching.




Wrestlers outside our apartment window.

It was mid-day and I looked out our living room window to see two men wrestling in the parking lot below.  Were they angry?  Were they going to kill one another?  I watched for about five minutes as they backed off, then reconnected, grunting and groaning, and finally.....


the man in blue overcomes the man in red and we have a winner!

I think this was a friendly lunchtime exercise.  My guess is that the loser bought lunch.  They got up and dusted themselves off and walked away...together.




An alternative to Panera's?

 Well, it's not exactly Panera's, but it's a vegan restaurant we've discovered that serves amazingly tasty soup, noodle dishes, vegan buuz (is that an oxymoron since buuz are steamed meat dumplings?!), and a steamed bread.


One Mongolian lady is eating her steamy bowl of soup.  We were waiting for bansh soup (soup with veggies and steamed dumplings floating in the soup) and a vegan buuz. 

As we left, we had a good laugh that we had just eaten a delicious meal for $1.80, and we called it our "You Pick Two" meal in remembrance of that choice at one of our favorite eating establishments in America, Panera's.




A blimp?!

Here is something else I took a photo of from our living room window.  My dad has worked on the Goodyear Blimp material, so I thought he'd enjoy seeing this blimp which has been attached to the top of a nearby building.  We have no idea why it's there.  Maybe it's just there because it can be?