The downtown Ulaanbaatar streets have ample advertisements of a vintage Coke motif featuring Santa.  It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

1. We have a small bathroom.  I literally can rest my forehead on our clothes washer while on the toilet.  You have to move the shower curtain to be comfortable in front of the bathroom mirror.  The bathroom storage is all on shelves above the toilet – exposed bulk boxes of tampons, gallon bags of medication, nail trimmers, TP and spare towels.  It fell over twice in the middle of the night.  It is now securely zip-tied to exposed pipes.  The bathroom we had wasn’t huge – but two people could brush their teeth at the same time!

2. Clothes dryers.  We dry our clothes by draping them on a wire rack that is in our bedroom.  Dryers really help clothing shrink – sometimes that’s bad – but I don’t like my t-shirt collars to be stretched out or my boxer-briefs to be so baggy.  

3.  Seafood?  Really?  I miss seafood?  I do.  I had fish once here.  It was on a pizza.  It was really horrible.  I’m pretty sure it was a prank someone was pulling on me.  Some pizza shop here thinks that pizza means “dump crap on dough and bake.”  I’d like a piece of smoked salmon.  Or some halibut beer bits.  Even a few fresh shrimp!

4.  Courteous and decent drivers.  Drivers here are bad.  Not all are – but at least one person is.  And that one awful driver is always making traffic jams… They clog streets and intersections.  It is indescribable.  Yesterday it was almost an hour and a half to get the three miles home.  The bus we were on moved a few inches at a time.  I’m not kidding.  A few inches.  Stop.  A few inches.  Stop… Repeat.

5.  The hardware store.  I like to make stuff!  And I have no materials to work with and no tools.  Pepper tried to get me to bring some.  I should have.  We’ve started collecting materials and a few tools so there is hope.  I need to learn to knit.  Perhaps it isn’t so much the hardware store that I miss as much as the making of things.  After all, we just built my dream workshop and now it just sits there as a storage building.

6.  Friends.  We have a few here but because we work with them too we already see them regularly.  I’m talking about the friends we have that we used to see often and now feel so distant.  We miss you.

7.  Serene safety.  We know more than one person that has been randomly assaulted.  Sometimes when walking on the sidewalk past a group of young men or while riding the public bus I clench my fists partially in preparation and partially out of fear.  It sounds like it it is just a matter of time before one of us is attacked.  Sure it’s possible that it won’t ever happen.  But if we lived in Detroit or NYC we would have the same self-preservation instincts.  But after a long time in a small town I was able to just flex those instincts when I was away from home and able to return to my perceived safety.  Sure violence happened sometimes.  But it never seemed like a random attack!

8.  Burgers.  Sure there are burgers here – but often they are mutton burgers.  Or mutton and beef burgers trying to pass off as a burger.  I’m not kidding!

9.  Our double basin kitchen sink.  We have a decent enough kitchen.  But the sink isn’t much bigger than the bathroom sink.  You can’t let dishes from one meal pile up or else you can’t use the faucet to fill a cup.  

10.  Cats.  I have had at least one cat for almost 20 years straight.  I miss having animals around.

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You know what confuses me? When I look at a calendar that has Mondays in the first column instead of Sundays. I’m just so used to having Sunday there and Saturday on the other side so the weekdays are sandwiched right between two cozy weekend days.

But I just realized I shouldn’t like it. What is the first day of the week? Yes, Monday. What are Saturday and Sunday? Yes, the weekEND. They should end the week not be the week start and end.

This weekend is our last before our winter break!

I really enjoy reading about other teachers that are working in international settings. But it isn’t easy to find them so I thought I would collect some here. It is noteworthy that these people don’t tend to write much about the schools – they write about life.

First there is mine. I’m a new physical education teacher in Mongolia. Of course, there is my wife’s blog too.

Although not technically international, my good friend Mike is teaching in Togiak, Alaska. He has similar circumstances with language barriers, isolation, being a minority, and many of the other pros and cons of international teaching.

Lisa Phu is an acquaintance from Alaska. She was working in the nearby town of Wrangell (although not teaching) and then was in Africa (teaching) and now is teaching in Bhutan. She’s a great writer and fun to follow.

My friend Liz also works in Mongolia. She’s Australian and has a second grade class at the school I work at.

A former teacher at my school also kept up a blog. She had a third grade class. It looks like she hasn’t updated in quite a while though.

Dan and Jillian have done a stint in the Peace Corps and now are teaching in Oman. Dan is currently very awesome because he has a great beard.

I know there are lots more out there so if you have a blog or read one post it in the comments and I’ll update my post to include them.

One of the hidden tasks I feel is embedded in the lessons I have to teach for health and physical education is that of self-esteem. For older students it will be blatant. But in the formative teen years I would like for theses kids to develop a good sense of self.

I remember sitting in my health class in the spring of 1992 and filling out a work book about self-esteem. One of the things in there was to list 50 life goals. The booklet is still around somewhere. I get a real kick out of looking at the list that I wrote as a high school senior. Some I have completed. Other goals were disregarded soon afterward. Some have come back onto the horizon. Some were huge dreams. And many attainable.

Learn to use a chainsaw. Check.

Move to Idaho. Never mind.

Visit Alaska. Check.

Marry (check, wait – un-check) and have two kids (never mind, wait – then again…)

Visit every continent. (North America, South America, Asia, Africa, Europe… getting there!)

You can see that they may be quirky or serious. So I assigned many of my classes to list 10 life goals. I didn’t grade them other than if they listed 10 and took the project at least half seriously.

Reading through well over a hundred individual’s goals was interesting. Most focused on college, income, cars, sports, lose or gain a few kilograms or centimeters and other largely tangible and measurable goals. Do you have a Ferrari? Yes or no. Goal accomplished or not completed. Simple.

And then I read the goals of a somewhat troubled student. Their grades are pretty poor. Their behavior is pretty marginal. And their first goal was “To make my parents proud.”

Wow. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have anything like that on my list. Their whole list was more esoteric and introspective than others. This kid is aware that they have shortcomings and when given the opportunity to vocalize what they would like to see in their future the first thought is to the pride they want their parents to feel.

I’ll be honest, there are plenty of times that teaching can be very discouraging. But hearing a kid like that express their inner feelings openly like that is incredibly encouraging. I’m going to give them every opportunity I can to help them make their parents proud.

Being a Physical Education teacher with no budget after 12 years as a recreation planner with a considerable budget I have managed two different fitness rooms. One was for an entire community and had a range of commercial exercise equipment. The school’s fitness room is more limited but still well equipped. We have a range from free weights like dumb bells and bar bells to cardio equipment like spinning bikes and treadmills. The treadmills are not commercial quality but they see a lot less use than the equipment in Petersburg.

But when you don’t have a gym to use that is loaded with equipment like Universals and walls covered in mirrors you still have lots of options for exercise. Some exercise tubing is a great substitute for free weights. I know. I bought some last year and got a little use of them at home. Checking out an exercise band with a door attachment or a strap with a plastic ball on it so that it won’t slip out from between the door and wall will give a huge range of options. One great thing is that you can throw those exercise bands in a suitcase and use them when you travel. Try doing that with a couple of pairs of dumb bells!

The Khanbräu Dark and Cristall Weizen served at Brauhaus restaurant and pub in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

It is a somewhat guilty pleasure. We have a cleaner. They come twice a week. They make the beds (Jordan’s, we make our own every day), wash dishes, fold laundry, sweep and vacuum. They clean the counters, the tub, toilet and sink. They tidy up things too. And it costs a total of under $19 a week. We do have to supply the cleaning supplies though.

We have them (sometimes it is more than one cleaner) come on Tuesdays and Fridays. It is nice to come home to a house that is cleaner than when you left.

But it is $19 that could go to a bill. It will add up. In a year it will come to just a bit under $1,000. But with the amount of time that we’re away from the house it really helps that we can enjoy more of our time at home together. I am typically away from the house for about 12 hours a day. When not coaching it may drop to about 10 though.

The lifestyle here may sound luxurious if you just skim the cream from the top. We have a cleaner that comes twice a week. We have a driver that comes and gets us daily to go to the school. Our housing and utilities are paid for by the company we work for. Dining out costs almost the same as buying and preparing some western meals at home. Haircuts with a scalp massage for under $30. Hour long massages for just as much. Restaurants representing every area of Asia on every corner. And even a few decent pubs just minutes away by foot.

But consider that we live on the 6th floor of a building without an elevator. It sometimes takes an hour to get home because of traffic. Sometimes the air is so poor that we can’t open a window. Our first week in this apartment we had no hot water. And at least one night we had no water at all. Sometimes the most mundane thing takes far longer to complete than anywhere else. Like finding shortening to make a pie crust.

So allowing a luxury like not having to clean a toilet in the few hours I’m home and awake seems justifiable.

This banner is near the public bus stop near the school.  I’m pretty sure Angelina doesn’t give foot massages there though.