|
Hello, I just thought I'd tell you a bit about life here in Mongolia.
The team members wake up at 7 and go to bed at 10:30. This project is in an area where a lot of people come for relief from the heat in the city -- like a resort place but I wouldn't call it that. There is no swimming pool. Dave and I figured we would start a swim club here and make a million dollars! Ha! It is a beautiful place. Although the backyard is the beginning of a woods like in Narnia, we still have to walk down the hill to a public out house. It took a few days to get used to but I guess we are adjusting. It's weird to be walking down to them and meet a guy coming out. Well one of them doesn't have a door so sometimes we just have to turn our heads as the national guys use that one. Oh the lack of inhibitions.
We are staying in a house and have a bed in our room. The girls are in one room and the lady leaders are in another. Andrew, our guy leader sleeps in an area that may be considered a living room and all the guys sleep upstairs. I guess this would be considered a cape cod house. It actually is a little smaller than our old house in Maryland. Dave has been running ragged for the last month but today he stayed with the US team most of the day and only left to go to the lumber yard (not too far away) and to the Buddha spring for water. (I went with him and several of the girls and it was an interesting place.) It is the head of a spring that is surrounded by a metal fence with a lot of blue silk which means it is a shrine to Buddha or some other deity. A lot of people go there with plastic gas type cans or metal container to get their water. The water is cold but very clean. We take several buckets and fill up three or four trash cans. I sort of felt selfish but we needed the water. We do this every night.
We have settled down to this routine now so we have made another transition. Yesterday they began to dig a pit that will eventually be the toilet/outhouse. So far it is 4 feet deep and only has to go about 5 more feet then they will put wooden walls in the pit to hold the dirt in place and then build a two-section structure on top. The neighbors weren't too happy at first but we assured them it was for a retreat for young leukemia patients and not for us. Several of the neighbors speak English, including a 16 year old girl who used to go to church. Pray that she will be able to go to church with us on Sunday.
-Cheryl
|
