further up and further in

Tomorrow morning we leave for the countryside, where we'll be teaching at a camp for the next couple weeks.  It's fifty miles away, and it'll take us three hours to get there by bus.  (Oh, and there'll likely be no Internet, like I mentioned before.)

Today I learned that I'll have about thirteen students in my classroom.  We begin teaching on Saturday.

In the meantime, here's the Blue Sky (on the left), one of the landmark buildings in the capital, with a Buddhist monastery in the foreground:

The money here is fun.  The currency is in tugriks.  One tugrik is rather small.  All of the bills here in the photo are worth less than $5.00 total.  I exchanged $20.00 and received about 28,000 tugriks in return (which made me feel quite rich).  Also, they apparently have no coins but only use bills.

stepping on toes

Some do's and don't's when in Mongolia:

• If you bump someone's foot, you must be sure to shake their hand and apologize.  If you don't, it means you want to fight them.
• Don't point at people with your index finger (it's a little like flipping someone off).
• Don't whistle inside a ger (yurt) or house - it's seen as a summoning of spirits.
• When handling money, use your right hand, and don't hold it between your fingers - use your whole hand.

Some interesting customs and beliefs:

• Tuesday is considered a day of bad luck - to travel, have events, do anything major.  (Examples:  An area school rescheduled its graduation date recently to avoid having it on a Tuesday.  The flea market in Ulaanbaatar is always closed on Tuesdays.)
• If you stumble over the threshold when you enter a ger (yurt), it's considered good luck.  But if you stumble when leaving, it's bad luck.
• Children don't have their hair cut until they're about three years old, and the first hair-cutting is a big ceremony and family event.
• One of Mongolia's distinctive beverages is fermented mare's milk.  I've heard a lot of colorful adjectives used to describe it.  We'll most likely try it at Naadam in a couple weeks.

like Omaha?

When the plane wheels hit the runway on Saturday, all the Mongolian passengers cheered and clapped.  I looked out the window and thought, "This looks like the Omaha airport."  Uncut prairie grass lined the runway, and beyond were treeless hills (taller and more impressive than Omaha's to be sure).

Bumpy - this is really the best word to describe the city.  It all feels like the backstreets of a bigger city, and I kept waiting to get to the city center.

This is the view from my room, which is what the city looks like all over.

But it is incredibly beautiful because in every direction you see the rugged hills close in the distance.

in the city

I'm here in the capital city, Ulan Bator.  I'll be here for a few days of training before heading out to our campsite to begin teaching.

This is from a very Soviet sort of monument place, at the top of the city:

The view from here:

The thing I like about here is pretty much every direction you look in the city, you see the mountains (hills) in the background.

things Russian (Moscow layover)

Having a layover in Moscow doesn't really count as being in Moscow, but it still feels Russian.  Even on the plane, everything was Russian - signs, announcements, attendants.  Everything seemed to be bright orange too - the attendants' uniforms and high heels, the plane seats, the sun shining on the water, the raw fish in the salad.  My flight attendant's name was Evginya and she had dark swooping bangs.

The plane was big - 10 seats across.  I was in the fortieth row, smack in the middle.  I listened to Andre Rieu on the violin and dozed.  The sun shone almost the whole night.

I've been camping out in the airport for the last few hours:

The airport has multiple TGIF's.  The waiters and waitresses are all dressed up in Uncle-Sam style uniforms of red-white-and-blue stripes.  This is the Russian depiction of American?

Lounge.  There's another across from this one entitled "Jazz business class lounge."

Winsome chocolate wrapper:

A few matryoshka dolls:

...firsts

Thursday, June 20, 7:10 p.m.:  Depart from New York to Moscow.  Layover in Moscow, arrive in Ulan Bator (the capital of Mongolia) sometime on Friday.

I'll meet my team at the airport in New York and we'll all fly over together.

Forecast for Ulan Bator:

Time in Mongolia:  13 hours later than Central.  (It's 3:21 p.m. here at the moment; it's 4:21 a.m. in Ulan Bator.)

A few things I've been told to expect:

• We'll be in a camp setting most of the time.
• The camp most likely will have electricity (yay!)
• The camp most likely will not have Internet.
• Laundry may or may not all be done by handwashing.

A few of the teaching items I've got in my suitcase:

• favorite kids' books
• construction paper
• marshmallows
• Twister

Some friends who've been to rural Mongolia before told me that it felt a little like landing on the moon.  (Cool!)

...I'm getting excited.  (understatement)

lasts...

On my last day in England I went back to Oxford to get my luggage.

I took one last walk down my favorite running path, Cuckoo Lane (where C. S. Lewis regularly walked):

The very short bridge, which I always had to duck under:

I'd never seen Oxford so springlike:

I'm glad I got to go back one last time before I flew home.  The city seemed empty and strange without all the people there that I had spent the last three months with.  It made me ready to go home.  It showed me that even though places are important, the people you are with are more important.

Being in Oxford was incredible.  I'm grateful - that I could be there, and even more that I can continue the friendships I made - even though I'm not there anymore.

Goodbye, England!

the famed white cliffs, sunrise, snow

For Easter holiday, a few of us ventured to Dover, home of the white cliffs.  This is more or less the view that greeted Julius Caesar when he wandered over to Britain in 55 B.C.  (Photo credits to my talented friend Austin.)

Developments over the last two thousand years:

My friends decided that it would be a good idea to get up and watch the sunrise from the cliffs the next morning.  We calculated we'd need to get up at 4:30 to hike out there in time.

4:30 a.m. came, quite quickly.  We pulled back the curtains in our hostel room (oh wait -- there weren't any curtains...it was a scantily furnished sort of place) and --  "Hey guys, it's snowing!"

After some articulate dialogue we decided to hike out anyway.  We layered on our clothes, Heidi-like, and stuffed food into our sacks.  We also stuffed a comforter into a backpack.  (It was that sort of place - we were sure we wouldn't get it dirtier than it already was.)

The short of it is, we were out there on the cliffs when the sun rose, but we most certainly didn't see it happen.  After we figured it was up, we huddled into a cave.  We spread the comforter over our laps and ate granola and scones and apple pies with our fingers.

Yes, it was fun.  Although the remembering of it is perhaps just as enjoyable.

Winchester Cathedral

Also in Winchester:  a cathedral

Outside:

Inside:

Vault, with water reflection:

high school

Field Trip #3:  Winchester College (a high school, and an elite one).  One of our staff went here as a boy.

Stories we heard from our tour guide (who reminded me very much of the housekeeper in Sound of Music):

Kitchen and dining hall:  Functioning since 1314.  The boys used to eat "square meals" on plates made of square wooden slabs.  Seating is picnic-table style tables and benches against the walls.  The boys sitting against the wall frequently clamber over top the tables to get in or out.

Stained glass in the chapel:  Several centuries old...or ought to be.  It was taken out to be cleaned at one point, but the cleaners sold it and replaced it with a fake.  The giveaway?  The replacement included Australia in a section portraying a world map -- but Australia didn't make it on the maps till long after the original window was crafted.  (Why weren't they careful to match the fake with the original?)

Stone bench in the chapel - embedded with clearly-visible fossils from Jurassic Park

Dorm rooms:  No central heating till recently.  In 1987 (I am quite certain that's the year she said), some boys made a snowman and moved it into their bedroom -- where it lasted three days.

The boys' term for homework:  "Toys"

The school mascot:  Literally speaking, a pigheaded servant, with a padlock on his mouth.  (There was a lot of symbolism behind everything in this peculiar painting, which unfortunately I can't remember.)

I forgot - Stonehenge

We went here the same day we went to Salisbury, on our first field trip.

Two of the most Frequently Asked Questions about Stonehenge are:

#1:  Why did people put these stones here?

#2:  How did they get them there?

Each stone weighs three to five tons.  Recently the stones were proven to have come from a spot in Wales, over 100 miles away.

Also recently, a group of folks was given ₤100,000 to move similar stones using only the technology the original Neolithic folk would have had.

On the first day, they moved one stone one mile.  They moved this stone 17 miles total.  Then it fell in a river and had to be hauled out with a crane, after which it was put in a botanical garden in Wales.  That was more or less the end of the project.

So we don't know the answer to either question.

If you want the Stonehenge effect but don't want to go to England, you can just visit the closer (and slightly modernized) version, right here in Nebraska:

I can guess at the answer to Question #2 for this version, but only speculate about Question #1.


Cheers!

mundane everydays

An interruption to the field trip series.  I came across a couple photos that reminded me of the everyday parts of life in Oxford:

Food groups:  We all did our own grocery shopping and cooking.  Most of us in the house formed small "food groups" of a few students apiece and cooked for each other.  (That way we didn't have thirty-plus people in one kitchen every night.)  I was in a food group of seven students, and we ate at 7:00 together every evening.  We each had a different night to cook; my night was on Mondays.

Here's a curry dinner that I made on one of my nights, with Susanna's help:

(Actually, just about everyone in the group helped that night.  Curry involves lots of chopping of lots of vegetables.)

Class time:  Here's the back door and yard of Wycliffe Hall, the school that we were affiliated with under Oxford University.  I parked my bike here and went in and out this door every day during the second part of the semester.

bagged cats, biscuits, and other things in boats

(HMS Victory Part II)

This is a big rope.  (It's for the ship's anchor.)  It weighs five and a half tons; the anchor weighs four and a half tons.

One of the tour guides was a former army and police officer.  He shared colorful descriptions of ship life - washing clothes, medical amputations, and so forth.  I won't relay all of them.  These are a couple tamer bits:

- cat o' nine tails - that infamous whip with bits of sharp objects tied to its ends.  It was kept in its own special bag on ships.  Apparently this is where the saying "let the cat out of the bag" comes from - not from any real live cats.

- biscuits - this French word means "twice-cooked."  Of course the biscuits were often infested with weevils.  We felt particular interest in this because we were battling a weevil infestation of our kitchen cupboards at the time.

messing around in boats

This is the HMS Victory, the oldest naval ship still in commission.  We toured it on a gray, cold, bitter day in March.

It was the flagship in the famous Battle of Trafalgar (Napoleonic Wars) of Admiral Lord Nelson:

Nelson had already lost an arm and sight in one eye before 1805, when the battle happened.  The British won, but Nelson was fatally wounded.

We heard as much about Emma Hamilton on our tour as we did about Nelson.  She was his mistress and was fashionable.  When she lived in Naples, she developed "Attitudes" (a combination of poses and costumes, supposed to reflect ancient Greek styles).

The ship still has some original cannons.  I didn't realize how hefty these things were.  They had to be tied down so they wouldn't shoot backward across the ship when they were fired.

Here's the front (bow?) of the ship.  Inside is a classy dining room.  The First Sea Lord still hosts dinners in here every month or so.

To be continued.