Mongolia Day 4-8

Well I must say it's a blur!
Since I wrote last we were able to have a meal with some dear friends. They lived in Sukhbaatar with us for a year and they live in a different remote location now. They happened to be coming to UB, so we delayed a day so that we could see them and spend and evening together. It was wonderful. They have another new baby, #5. Whew! We had chicken at a Korean fast food place and then we walked back to the apartment for and let the kids play while we chatted until 10pm. It was wonderful.

The day after we took a taxi up here to SB. We all rode in the back seat of a toyota corrolla for 5 hours. It is a beautiful trip in the summer. We had PJB sandwiches. I was surprised to find a fresh salad with cucumbers and tomatoes and hard boiled eggs! Score! My new diet has been surprisingly easy to follow.

We arrive and there is no electricity at the house. We find a screw drivers and Peter starts taking the plyboard off the windows. A friend made us a pizza and a salad and we have a nice dinner.

Days 4-7
LOTS AND LOTS of decision making. We have gone through everything in the whole house. We put it in the trash, give away, sell or take to the USA piles. There is even a pile of things that we have named "useful garbage!" Since we have to burn our trash, we don't burn things that others could scavange and use. It feels crazy to have this catagory in my mind, but it is hard to burn up things that could be used in by someone that is needy enough to scavange. :) Things like hot water pitchers that don't heat, but that can still be used as a pitcher. Clothes that are too messed up to give away...

We had a big argument, no I mean dissussion, ha ha, about how to go about this. Peter wanted to invite people over and just open the cupboards and closets for them to find what they wanted. I couldn't imagine saying, "just go through the whole house!" So since I was the louder and more emotional and unbending one, we did it my way! We sorted through items room by room and then agreed to put everything that we were giving away upstairs. USA stuff directly into suitcases, trash directly burned and "useful garbage" in the garage to be taken to the dump.

We accomplished this in two days. Then I went upstairs.... whoa, what a lot of stuff! But honestly not as much as I thought we had. I began laying out a garage sale type of thing. Soon I realized that this was not going to go well. Then we decided to bag up things that we knew our friends needed. We have a whole room full of bags labeled with each person's name. It was so fun. It was like being Santa to decide what to give each person and family.

We also ran into all the new Peace Corp people. They train the whole new group up here every summer. So we stopped and invited them over. They chose gobs of stuff to take with them to help them get through their harrowing next two years. :)

Then today I organized the remainder of the stuff into bins. Adult clothes, kids clothes, kitchen, organizational supplies, medicine, holiday stuff, baby stuff, DVD/CDs, towels sheets, baby stuff...

The baby stuff was the hardest to go through for me. I chose a few special outfits to save and then just binned a baby girl/boy box.

Tonight we had Terri and her kids over for dinner. She was able to take 3 bins of stuff and it was great to see Weston's kindergarten curriculum and some nice clothes go to her family.

We also are trying to sell some things. The email went out to foreigners in Mongolia today and I got lots of replies. I sold the bed, bedding, stove, freezer, table, water filter, small appliances, maternity clothes, tent, baby stuff, ... YA. we made about $600 today! :) Will you pray for a buyer for our big items, treadmill, car, the wood stove and dryer? Thanks. We need to sell the big things to make it worth it to hire a truck and bring the rest of these small things down to UB.

Tomorrow I'll post pictures in the community. We have very worn couches, chairs, desks, water barrels, washer, small furniture that I'm selling for super cheap so that Mongolians will enjoy the item and the price. :) It will be good to get it gone though.

All I have left is the garage. I found gobs of stuff in there, almost buried in the dirt! Not really but it's major dirty and I need to wipe it down and get rid of it too.

This week we'll start inviting friends over. We'll give them the bags of things we chose for them as gifts, have a meal and let them go through stuff upstairs as well. I hope this part is done by the beginning of next week. I'm tired of thinking about all this STUFF.

How come we need so much STUFF?! I wish we didn't need so much stuff and that things didn't define us so much, but you know it does. That is why my bags are full of baby clothes for a baby I don't have, children's books the kids love to hear and I love to read, my bedding I splurged for in 2009 and don't want to leave behind, pictures, I'm even bringing my kitchen aid because it's worth it! :)

Well I better get out of cyber land and get back out to my cabin and be real "Tundra Mom" in the time I have left.

Night all. Have a great day!