Thursday, June 28, 2012

Oh, Mongolia!

Today I will teach you my two most useful phrases in Mongolian:
Khaamaagui, and zugeer zugeer. (Apologies for transliteration, Mongolian doesn't transliterate well).

khaamaagui means something like "It doesn't matter", while zugeer zugeer means something like "it's okay, no worries". These are two most useful phrases because things here just happen differently, slowly, inexplicably, and a good dose of ambiguity tolerance goes a long way.

I know some people think that because we haven't put up a blog post we must be dead, or busy, or something, but really we are just a little boring. A high percentage of our time is spent first in going to language classes (which are going well), and then in day to day activities. Neither of which makes for particularly fascinating reading.

Our month of no hot water should soon be over. We are still trying to organise to get a hot water system into our apartment though, because the fact of having hot water in the building is no guarantee of actually having hot water at any particular time.

Today is Election day in Mongolia. Hopefully it will all go smoothly. There was a bit of trouble after the last election, so we are praying for calm and peace this time around. It has been interesting to observe Mongolian electioneering. They even send us text messages with political slogans.

Technically it's summer, but there was some very unseasonal snow in another part of the country the other day. We have had a bit of rain, which can make getting around difficult - there isn't really a drainage system in this city.

We are hoping to have a small english-language bible group meet in our home on Friday evenings for a while. Nobody came last week, but this week we should have some takers; this is a group that Rachel was going along to, run by someone else, but they are away for summer. Actually, a lot of Mongolians go away for summer, so one never really knows who is around.

That's us, getting on well enough.

1 comment:

  1. Hey you two, just wanted you to know that we prayed for you last night in our St Anne's bible study group - as we do every week.
    Our Holiday Kids Club begins on Monday - I have a pirate outfit thanks to ebay and fast australia post... arhhh :)

    Kristan

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