Snow, Yurt, and a Minor Disaster
It seems that every year the snow gets earlier and earlier here. Of course, this year we don't mind as we're going to leave to where there's no snow soon, so we get to enjoy a bit of it before we head out.
The boys in particular always love the first snow of the year. I think they forget how much they hate it by April, and they're just like "Snowball fight!" every year. The novelty may wear off by December or so, but you have to at least get your money's worth at the beginning of the winter.
We built the year's first snowman, but since we only had about four inches of snow and it wasn't wet enough to make a decent size ball, this is all we could get.
Matthew, having recently watched "Frosty the Snowman," felt that the snowman looked lonely and wanted to give him a hug.
While Steven got to work making as many angels as he could fit into the flat part of the playground.
This week has been better than a lot of recent weeks, because despite still being on the hunt for a new culture and language helper, I got a lot of language practice in when some friends invited me to help them build their yurt.
It was a bit different from a T yurt, as they had ordered it in a set from Mongolia. The middle piece in particular was weird to me; apparently you have to have windows especially fabricated to fit or if it's warm, some plastic sheeting. It does seem like a good way to let some more light into what can be a dark place in the winter, but I'm not sure how practical it is to haul windows around every time you have to move it.
The first step is getting the wall lattice pieces set up and tied together and tied to the door. This yurt is an "8-wall" yurt, meaning it's much bigger than usual (more commonly they are 5 or 6 wall pieces).
Then we had to set up the unusual high roof piece by balancing it on supports and then tying it temporarily until we can get the cross-pieces in to support.
The last step is getting the felt pieces on. Unfortunately the set did not come with enough felt to cover the whole wall, so we halted construction eventually to go buy some more felt. I also think they were going to buy another layer of felt for the parts that already had some, because the felt that was sent was quite thin and not up to insulating the yurt from the winter cold.
The construction team takes a break for a photo shoot with the yurt in mid-build:
I was supposed to come back for the last day of building to finish (which I don't think actually happened, as the felt had to be ordered from somewhere), but the next day I got a call that our friends' garage where they were storing their furniture and household goods had sprung a leak. You see, they're out of the country at present, so I had their key and had been checking on their stuff every now and again.
Sure enough, I rushed over to see what was going on and opened the door to a sauna. It seems that when the hot water to the garages was turned on, there was a leaky radiator in the garage, which of course started spraying water all over the place. Some frantic rearranging (and of course turning off of the water) later and it looked like this:
Mattresses were soaked, the couch was moist but hopefully salvageable, and some of the household stuff was ruined. I did my best to get as much saved as possible, but it was still a bummer to have to call our friends back in the Western Hemisphere and tell them about the accident.
Above: you can see the radiator pipes on the right there, which unfortunately sprayed water for a day or so into a pile of stuff including books, kitchenware, bedding, etc.
Below: the weld that repaired the leak.
Sadly, some of the boxes of books were pretty much toast. :-(
And that's about it. Tune in next week for more pictures of ... well, something. Hopefully.
Thanks for thinking of us. It's hard to believe that our departure is coming so soon. We have some important meetings between now and then, so hopefully we'll stay very busy getting ready for them and also to leave. We'll be seeing some of you very soon!
