My Two Cents

Yep, its really cold. there are packs of dogs wandering about, and this morning as we walked to our bus stop, we cheered on a little puppy who dared to try to cross the street, me cheering/wincing while covering my eyes with my mittens to avoid seeing him squashed. He made it, thankfully or not.

Our apartment has a small kitchen, a living room a bedroom, and a bathroom split into two rooms. One is the size of a closet, and has just the toilet. The other has the bathtub (super deep, which is nice for hot baths) and the sink. The faucet for the sink swivels and is also the faucet for the bath. We have 2 front doors back to back, which is strange but makes us feel secure. All of the rooms have doors which is nice because we carry the space heater into whichever room we are in and shut the doors to trap as much heat as possible in with us.

Clayt is doing as good a job as can be expected with the tiny easy-bake sized oven in the kitchen. The food is pretty ok, and we are both big fans of the creamy cheese spread we've found to spread over our fake ritz crackers. There's lots of american stuff here in the city, I mean as far as brand names go -- halls cough drops, twix candy bars, and glade air spray.

The school is interesting. It is actually 2 schools in one building, and the school we work for is on the 4th floor. So after arriving to school with our bags and all our layers of clothing on, we climb four flights of stairs to start our day. The kids are great and terrible all at the same time. They are crazy and difficult to control, but so cute and lovable. They aren't afraid to run up to either of us and give us big hugs, and its only our third day! We can talk more about the school later, there is so much to tell! Importantly, we're enjoying it so far. Oh and all the 10th and 11th graders love the Pussycat Dolls. Great.

Jetlag has been a seroius problem for us (ok not that serious, not life threatening or anything) but i think we've finally got the hang of it. The first 5 days we fell asleep at like 6-7 pm and were waking up at 4 in the morning! Last night we were finally able to make ourselves stay up until 10, and that was all thanks to an awesome movie on tv in English (an american made for tv movie i think) called "Hercules." Shaun Astin was in it. Lots of terrible special effects, predictible plotline, we were hooked.

ok, enough of the boring details for now. sorry, thats my style, clayt writes the witty and thoughtprovoking things. deal with it. :) The mountains here are amazing. It makes me so happy every morning when I get to see the sun rise over the mountains and everything is pink and orange and i can see little smoke billows coming from the gers, it seems like a scene from a movie -- definitely a technicolor movie.

We have a phone in our apartment and a mongolian cell phone number, but I forgot to bring them with us to the internet cafe today. so I will post them soo, and hopefully will also post some help for how to call. And photos will come soon too. Remember when calling, we are 13 hours in the future. Don't act like you're not impressed. :)