Not that crazy...

The reason I don't blog more often is because I don't really think that the daily minutia of our lives here in Mongolia is that strenuous or exciting. There are certainly things that make me chuckle to myself (reassembling a live electric wire from the telephone pole to the spliced wire running from our ger for instance or saying all of the things to my students here that I would have never gotten away with in America because they don't speak English). But Ashlie has pointed out that maybe I should write them anyway because they are a part of my experience here. So a quick run down of events...

- The aforementioned wire splicing

A major windstorm snapped the spliced wire running from the telephone pole to our ger that provides us with glorious internet. Yesterday, I mentioned to my haasha father that is was broke and he said something about calling the phone company tomorrow. Then I saw the hamster in his mind wake up, jump up on the wheel and decide this would be a teachable moment for Justin. He then took me over to the other side of the house and pointed to our neighbors roof. I thought, "Oh damn, it's up there, oh well." Then I realized he intended me to scale the wall, jump on the roof and retrieve it. So I did. I felt like freakin' Aladdin jumping across flat roofed, adobe buildings, looking for the wire. The woman's house on which I was jumping came out and watched me. I was probably disturbing her, but she was so surprised to see a white man climbing on her roof, that she was speechless. Then I jumped down and my haasha father and I began cutting and tying the wires back together. At first, he was doing most of the tying, then he said, "Yana!" Depending on the tone and pitch used, yana can range from 'whoopsie-daisie' to 'holy shit that hurt.' I figured the electricity had got him. Immediately after, he decided it was time for my hands on training, and I got to tie the wires. I was doing pretty well and was almost finished when I too got a spine-straightening dose of electricity and he took it away and finished the job. Thanks to some good ol' Mongolian engineering I am now able to blog.

-Attacked by dogs

I was attacked by two dogs yesterday in the country while on a hike. They came ferociously charging and barking at me so I immediately began arming myself with stones and throwing as fast and hard as I could. A very large stone hit one of the dogs and it let out a loud yelp and both of them retreated. Justin 1 Mongolian dogs 0.

I'm going to leave on the high note of my victory over the dogs. Until next time.