Good Friday in Mongolia

Whew, things are moving along here. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow.

It's the end of our second week of language classes. This week we've only had one class a day, which has been a nice little breather. Our teacher this week doesn't have much English, so that requires extra concentration. Anyway, we keep learning.

For lunch today we stepped into a small Mongolian eatery. There are tons of these, and Mongols grab quick, cheap lunches. We always over-order (in my opinion), which is easy to do since we can't read menus. This place had pictures of food on the walls, so basically we just point.

In the afternoon we walked into town. It's about 30mins walking into the 'cbd'. We were going to catch a trolley bus, but given the traffic it seemed possible to walk faster. Also it was very warm today - the forecast was for a 16 max, but we passed a sign saying it was 20! We had to buy a wireless router as the one we brought from Aus was an adsl router and wouldn't take the input cable we had (just a straight network cable). So we walked and went to this little computer district and found a router (with help). About A$25, chinese-made (when we got home we had to set it up in Chinese, but the pictures in the manual told us which buttons to press thankfully).

After buying the router we stopped into the big department store. It's called "the big store" (kind of). Anyway, it's almost like a Western department store and it's where we bought our fridge and washing machine. Today we bought a microwave and a toaster - exciting appliances that make more food possible to eat.

Over 2000000T for this coffee machine. No thanks.

We took a taxi back to our apartment, and they were still tiling our kitchen. Our hallway has been littered with amazing amounts of debris. So after an hour we were going out again, this time to a Good Friday service. It's amazing how many public holidays we get in Aus for Easter. The service was held by the international church, at a place called UBean, which is a missio-run cafe, again about 30min walk from us. It was a simple service, with 3 songs, bible reading, short sermon (translated into Mongol), and prayer. Rachel had a nice chat with a Mongolian girl who has been living in the USA and is about to move there and  get married.

When we got home, good news - they cleaned up the debris in our hallway. It's still full of dirt, but it's at least a little more manageable. And the floor tiles are done. Progress.

We're looking forward to life being more settled. Unpacking boxes into drawers and wardrobe, getting a table, not having a construction zone for a kitchen. Buying a stove. Hopefully this week will see most of these things sorted and a more regular life emerge.

Good Friday at UBean