fruit

where was my life before mandarin oranges? they are the perfect fruit. and stores here just started re-stocking them!!

celebrate your fruit today!

potty talk

generally i try to avoid the bathrooms at school. they are a sesspit of nasty and uncomfortableness that justify an all-day hold.


first, the window is open all the time, no matter what season or temperature it happens to be. in the winter, it is a consistant state of torturous freeze.


second, although the walls are littered with anti-smoking paraphanalia and no-smoking signs, teachers and students still light-up together in a herd. usually they all wait until the 10 minute passing time between classes so when you open the door it looks like the inside of a hippie's VW van after some kind of stash party.


third, there are no toilet seats.


it took me a long time to figure out the reason for this. but then i kept noticing dirty shoe sole marks on the toilet rims. my theory: mongolians are a squaty potty culture, especially when it comes to public toilets. the thought of putting your butt on something other strange butts have been on is probably the epitome of gross. so they stand on the the toilet rim and squat over the toilet. however, toilets were not meant to be squat upon - they were not designed with that in mind. so all kinds of putrid surprises get splattered and splashed all over the place for the benefit of others to experience.


i'm not a squater. so i have adopted a bathroom strategy that helps me survive in emergencies. i will not go into details, but i have learned that the worst time to go is before 11 am because the cleaning ladies avoid the bathrooms until the afternoon.


fourth, to mask the smell, they burn incense. if there is anything in existance worse than incense for masking the smell of icky bathroom ... i have no idea what it is.


fifth, the plumbing is all amok so in order to avoid clogs, one must throw away one's TP - this is actually unavoidable in mongolia no matter where your bathroom happens to be located.

sixth, there is one sink and no soap. (i have to add that there is usually an abundance of hot water and an automatic hand dryer - but one out of five actually wash their hands...)


and those are the reasons why the school bathrooms are for emergency only circumstances.


grossed out? me too.

only 8 1/2 hours of daylight left

1. it's dark at 6:30 am and 6:30 pm now. leaving only 12 hours of daylight as oppsosed to the 16 during summertime. 12 hours will become 10 by november, by the way. gehhhh.

2. october is an empty month for me if it does not contain candycorn, marshmallow pumpkins, Charlie Brown, or Young Frankenstein. but it is survivable on just two of the four.

3. i came to the office at 9:30 this morning so a student could take her exam. not surprisingly, it's after 10 and she still hasn't shown up. i needed something to do and the internet was working so...here i am.