Oct 31, 2008

Who's new to Byonkhongor?

We are!!  We have now been in BH for just over 1 month.  Jeff has been here a little less but we will get to that.  We moved out around the 15th of September.  We drove our new vehicle and arrived in 12hrs.  The only thing that happened was our new roof rack collapsed and we had to repair it about 1 hr outside of UB (the capital).  We moved into our friends house right away.  She is a single American gal so her house is a bit small but very cozy and toasty warm!  We have had the wonderful adventures of water delivery by horse cart, brownouts with the power (same as UB), fire building at night to keep toasty warm, and Mongolians following us around town to see the blond haired blue eyed now 6 month's old new foreign baby in town.  Here is a picture of the house we are staying in.

Laura's house

 

I (Jeff) and friend Dustin went back to UB to load up all our stuff on a big truck and have it delivered out here.  About half way back we noticed some antifreeze leaking ... to make a long story short we limped back to UB and arrived after an 18hr trip.  When we got the car into the shop the head was cracked.  Thankfully it cracked between two cylinders otherwise we still might be waiting to get to UB.  We are pretty sure there was a hole in the heater core and when we changed out the fluids the stop leak that was in the coolant was "watered down" and opened up the hole.  I have now seen more of the inside of my engine then I have ever wanted to see.  Our stuff was loaded up and delivered while we were still waiting in UB for the car.  We ended up spending an extra week in town.  I was able to price some stuff out for building a house though so it was not all wasted.

 

I have been meeting with the XAB members.  They gave me my work permit and now that the summer seminar season is over they are a little less busy.  I have done one example training of a CHE lesson and am working with a guy named tsigmed.  I am also teaching some informal English lessons and trying to maintain our car.  (hole in exhaust, add a block heater)  Actually Dustin is much more skilled at that kind of stuff I end up helping him.  Although he says second time around I'm on my own.  Hopefully that head doesn't crack again!

 

We have visited 3 churches and have about 6 more to visit in town.  Things are going pretty well, Kaylee has adjusted the quickest we are still finding our place here.  The JCS team has been great about helping us out.