I have long believed that you should not set up the Christmas Tree until the day after Thanksgiving. “Let Thanksgiving have its day!” I have always said. And then I moved to a foreign country that does not really celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas. It’s now mid-November and feels like the middle of winter (our first… Read More O Christmas Tree
Ariunaa exudes gentleness and peace. I think you can feel it in the pictures. But life was not always this way. When she was thirteen life was hard. A relative told her about a free place where you could go and pray and ask for help that worked. She was desperate, so she went. “Jesus,… Read More Ariunaa: Mongolian Enterprise Fund
I grew up hearing that the heat in California wasn’t as bad as the heat in Michigan because it was a “dry heat.” I was skeptical of this until I experienced California heat myself. At over 100f/38c, California’s dry heat is still uncomfortable and oppressive, but I’d take California’s dry heat over Michigan’s humid heat,… Read More Machine Monday: Humidifiers
Filter #1 This is the first air filter machine we bought. It is small and was relatively inexpensive (around $60). It was early in the season and they were the only air filters we had seen, so we bought two of them and put one in each of our bedrooms. In retrospect, they were not… Read More Machine Monday: Air Purifiers
He just wanted the bullying to stop. He just wanted to scare them a little. He didn’t know the gun was loaded. He didn’t mean to shoot anyone. Batjargal was born with a cleft palette. His parents rejected him, even as he struggled to survive. At a few years old he was adopted by a… Read More Batjargal
“It looks like hebel,” LeYanna said as she stepped out of our apartment building on the way to school. Hebel, is Hebrew. It’s from Ecclesiastes and means “smoke” or “vapor.” We don’t teach her Hebrew but she’s picked some up from watching the Bible Project videos.* It was around 8 a.m. toward the end of October. The… Read More Machine Monday: Preamble to Air Purifiers
*The earlier, published post of “the Bidet” has inexplicably disappeared post-publish and I recreated this post from an old, old draft. I’m really not sure what happened. So, I apologize if this post is less polished than normal* Machines are taking over our apartment. I put a poll on Facebook asking which machines you were… Read More Machine Monday: the Bidet
In Mongolian there’s a “mine” for something that is just mine (миний/minii) and another mine for something that belongs to us (маиай/manai). манай is similar to English “our” but used more often. Anything that is not only mine is ours by default. In Mongolian, it’s not my apartment, it’s our apartment (other people live here… Read More миний маиай & Interdependence
Mongolia is a pretty safe country. Multiple times I’ve seen people walk in and out of banks with duffle bags full of cash like it’s no big deal. For the most part, bank tellers don’t have protective glass. Any car becomes a taxi when you put your hand out (the equivalent of a thumbs up)… Read More The Time Cory Thwarted a Pick-pocketer
Sometimes things don’t work out quite how you expect them too. Because of the really bad, terrible, awful air pollution we are expecting this winter we decided to purchase a hefty air purifier for our apartment. Shout out to Mt. View Wesleyan Church who gave generously toward the $1,600 purchase price. To buy the air… Read More The Day Cory Broke the ATM
A friend from home recently asked me if the M&M’s were the same here as in the US. Guys, they are not. They are similar (and still delicious) but they are not the same. Let me tell you more about this. But, before I do, I think it’s important to note that I am, indeed,… Read More M&M’s in Mongolia
Sometime last week, we began noticing little papers taped to our door. All told, we got three of them. We recognized our building number and door number so we figured they were specifically and intentionally for us and, as most of the other doors had them as well, we weren’t concerned but were very curious.… Read More The Little Papers Taped to Our Door
