Our Choibalsan Home Sweet Home!

Our apartment here is really spacious compared to Murun.  We have three bedrooms and a large living room and good sized kitchen.  The most exciting thing is we got a new washing machine and this one is automatic! It takes quite a bit of time to do a load, but we don't have to fill the tank for washing, then drain and fill twice for rinse.  It does it all!  Yipee!  And we also have hot water on demand!  Before we had to turn the heater on about 40 minutes before taking a shower so the tank could heat up!  That's really nice too! Anyway, here are some pictures.

This is the study and the clothes drying room!  The wire rack on the 

right is our clothes dryer!  Not electric, but pretty efficient!

 Our kitchen with automatic washer on the left!  So very nice!

 The entry way.

 Our bedroom.

 Our TV/exercise room!  It's pretty empty and it's not very

comfortable watching movies (which we don't do often) sitting on the floor!

We did watch the movie Puje gave us for Christmas--a Mongolian movie call the Story of the Weeping Camel.  It's pretty slow moving, but if you are interested in what life is like here in the Gobi, you might want to watch it!  Granted, we don't know many people who live like those in the movie, but it does show a pretty traditional nomadic Mongolian camel raising family!

 Our living room.  There is a desk with our computer and several bookshelves on the other wall.  We also have a walk out balcony outside this window, which we will probably enjoy more with warmer weather.  Temps there now run about 8+ in the mornings!  A little nippy for enjoying the vista!

 Our half bath with a real shower and hot water--so hot, in fact, that if we are not careful, it will scald us!  The buildings are heated with hot water through radiators and the water is really hot.  The apartments stays a pretty even 70-72 which is nice, except a little warm for sleeping.  We sometimes crack a window at night for better sleeping.  We had a warm spell a few weeks ago and it did get really warm in the apartment.  We were opening several windows wide to keep it from being too hot inside!  The nice weather didn't last long and we are back to subzero temps and wind, which makes it seem much MUCH colder!

 This is the outside of our apartment and the road in front of our building.  We are on the second floor.  There are so many more of these apartment type buildings here than in Murun.  They were built by the Russians back in the 80s.  We have been here about five weeks now and haven't been in a ger since we got here.  We sort of miss them--they are such a unique style of living!

This is our church.  Not really our "Home Sweet Home," but we do spend a lot of time there so it almost seems like home.  It was built in 2005 and is a very nice building with a Primary room, Young Women room, a very smelly bathroom, and a nice chapel/cultural hall area.  It also has a room for the clerks and a room where the Family History Library will go. We got a good snow storm and the piles of snow are from clearing the walks!  The roads here are very icy and slick.  I'm so glad I have my Korkers (cleats).  The spikes are wearing down on them a bit, but then, hopefully winter is almost over and I won't need them anymore!  Again we have beautiful blue skies, but is very deceptive because it is anything but warm!

There is a smokestack to the east of us which is from the central heating plant.  It serves as our wind gauge and we have had precious few days when the smoke goes up into the air.  Generally, it's blown horizontally in any direction depending on the the wind for that day! Alan says the wind is generally from the north which accounts for the way cold wind chill factor!