When the worst thing happens

This was three years ago this week. The murder happened on December 6, but was only discovered on December 10, 2018. I learned about it on the morning of December 12, Mongolia time. This will always be a difficult week. I feel very bleak right now. I’m looking for the light. I will find it, but maybe not today.

This post is very raw, “as it happened” (as they say in the news business that I teach about). I’m not going to change it because it was my initial reaction.

Two Vegetarians in Mongolia

The worst thing I can imagine happened to a friend of mine this week. I started writing this the morning I found out (Wednesday, December 12, at 4:30 am). Then I had to put it aside to finish up my semester here at MIU, but now I am picking it up again. So it’s a little rough and uneven, but honest. I have the mother’s permission to write this, but I decided not to use their names, for privacy. This is my personal reaction, nothing more, so please take it in that light. Please be aware that the post discusses the death of a child and mentions suicide.

And hug your loved ones if you can. Be close to them in your heart if they are far away. Let them know you love them. Because you never know what will happen.

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I google his name, and this comes up:…

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Winter is here

Snow in the park I’m going to do my best to write a post every weekend, even if it’s a short one, because I want to keep my writing habit going. It’s already the last weekend in November, and winter is definitely here. Thanks to human-induced climate change, we are having a much warmer winter … Continue reading Winter is here →

Uncle David

I have a running list of posts I’d like to write, but I have been too busy living life here lately to reflect on it enough to write about it. Between Emerson being in 10th grade and me being the program manager at my school, we have both had a lot more work to do … Continue reading Uncle David →

A long overdue update

The park where we walk the dogs Yesterday I got a message from a longtime reader asking if we were OK, which prompted me to to see when my last post was made. I had a vague sense of “sometime during the summer.” It was nearly three months ago, when we were back in the … Continue reading A long overdue update →

Catching my breath, part 2

In my last post, I wrote about getting Emerson evaluated for ADHD. For one reason or another, it took a while to get it done and finally get the report. The reason for the delay in getting the educational psychologist’s report was because of the other major development of the school year, which can best … Continue reading Catching my breath, part 2 →

Catching my breath (part 1)

Online school is hard. This post has been a long time coming, and it’s been really hard to write. (And it’s getting split into two posts, it turns out.) Emerson’s version of it is, “I watched some TikToks and said, ‘Ohhh….’ I told my mom, and she said, ‘That’s all normal. Everyone does that.’ I … Continue reading Catching my breath (part 1) →

Quarantine

Hotel quarantine sign It’s Saturday morning in our apartment in Ulaanbaatar, and I’m sitting on our new patio chairs in what I’ve dubbed our sunroom, the enclosed balcony off of my bedroom, which also doubles as a drying room for our laundry. It gets the morning sun (and sunrise is around 4:30 am these days) … Continue reading Quarantine →

Foreign contaminants

To enter Mongolia during the late stage of the pandemic, I had to be vaccinated. And since Emerson could not yet be vaccinated, we would have to quarantine for a week in a hotel, and then Emerson would have to stay home for a week after that. We also needed negative PCR tests within 72 … Continue reading Foreign contaminants →

Back in Mongolia at last

We’re back! We’ve been back about two weeks, and I finally feel settled down enough to write about it. When charter flights to Mongolia started up again in the spring, and we started to feel like we could actually make it back into the country, we settled on May as the month to try. There … Continue reading Back in Mongolia at last →

Not quite getting back to Mongolia

It’s been months since I’ve written regularly for this blog. When I started this (a few weeks ago) I couldn’t even remember the last post I’d written, so I just re-read it. September seems like ages ago. Some things have changed, and some have stayed the same, so here’s an update. The punchline: We’re still … Continue reading Not quite getting back to Mongolia →