how time flies when you're learning Mongolian

It is minus 24 today, so cold that my breath becomes ice crystals on my snood.  Indoors however, the heat is as ferocious as a fire ball, and I cannot whip my four tops off quick enough.  Today I put into practice my quite brilliant plan of wearing my thermal top OVER my normal top, thereby circumventing the inevitble heat exhaustion that strikes when inside a building, yet still managing to avoid the hypothermia that inevitably accompanies venturing outside.  Magic.

I have been going to language classes this week.  at 8am my collegues and I trundle out to get our school bus, a minature van, with no seat belts, that ratttles through the city, depositing us at the (minature) Brigde International College, where we split into classes of five to try and learn Mongolian. 

Our classroom is teeny, a sis our teacher.  We break for a snack of fried rice (Yesssss) or meat dumpling, with a sweet instant coffee.  I love school, I love my teacher, and I love being an unashamed swot.  I have learned the 35 letter alphabet, and am going ok with my pronunciation.  I evn managed to have a stilted conversation with the teacher which went as follows

her: Hello, how are you
me: I am fine, how are you?
her: i am fine, are you a teacher?
me: no I am a student
her: what is your name?
me: my name is catherine
her: do you speak mongolian?
me: a little bit.  I am english.  Do you speak english
her: a little bit.  well, nice talking to you, see you around, bye!
me: bye!

if I could work out how to get the cyrillic on this computer I would have written it in mongolian. Suffice it to say that afterwards she said "mas sain!" which means VERY GOOD.

Our classes finish at 12.30, and after the bus drops us at Sukbataar Square we have the afternoon off.  Today Kate and I went to the most expensive restaurant we have found so far, lunch was 10,000 tugruks, which is about £5, and waaaay over our budget.  But it was very nice, I had a burger and chips (bad caffers) and a real coffee.  Real coffee is very expensive, I am going to have to learn to love the 3in1 instant stuff wich is less than a tenth of the price.

Because of the drop in temperature, the coal smoke pollution has worsened.  I cough as soon as I get into the 'fresh air' and I can feel the soot in my mouth like the after-grit of a filling, or the sand you get in your sandwhich on the beach.

The traffic in the city is quite literally mental.  Cars weave around oblivious to lanes, trffic signls and pedestrians.  Horns beep CONSTANTLY.  If I was asked to describe the sound track to UB I would walk to the nearest car and press down on the horn for a few hours.  Crossing the road is always fraught with danger, more so when wearing a hat, scarf, snood and hood, which gives one tunnel vision and mutes ones hearing.  My life preserving tactic has been to run really fast with my eyes shut, hoping really strongly for the best....this is working fine so far.

we are supposed to be going on a countryside trip on saturday, but the weather is forecast to get even worse, dropping to -26 and snowing, so the trip may be cancelled.

next week we are invited to  social evening to meet the staff of the british embassy here, as well as the peace corps, and other NGO's.  I forgot to bring fancy shoes, so will be in a lovely dress, red lipstick, and big bovver boots.  But I am more worried about my huge spots than I am about altitude sickness, pollution poisoning, road traffic accidents and hypothermia put together.