Wireless Router Fixed. Mongolian Winter is Cold

We got our wireless router up and going again after our AC/DC adapter got fried only having yielded 10 hours of service three months ago.

I finally was able to go a big electronics store in UB that was essentially a 5-story flea market with some new and some used products. It was on a main drag by foot and called "Computer Land" - just like that, no translation - so it was pretty easy to find. It was right behind a huge Canon store where they sell copiers, printers and cameras and the like.

I went into to one place and they didn't have what I was looking for but pointed me to the second floor to stall 204. All in Mongolian, I was able to describe the power pack I needed and from under a counter in front of me, the guy pulled out exactly that. It was much bigger and heavier than ours, but the specs were the same for the volts and amps, and it even had the precise same tip to our wireless router. For 6,000 tugrugs (<>$5) and three months of waiting, we're back up and running! If all goes well, we'll be able to Skype with our families on Christmas.

And I know it's cold across the States right now, but it was -10 here the other day with a stiff wind and my counterpart was walking all around town with me collecting surveys from banks. (It was -33 two weeks ago). He rhetorically asked me if Mongolia was colder than America. I told him it's not this cold where I'm from in the States, or at least this is as cold as it ever gets. He said somewhat proudly that it's still warm here and it won't really be cold until January when it hits -45 or so.

Regardless of how cold it is outside, I hope it's warm where you are or you have someone fun to snuggle up to.

Seasons Greetings.

The night the lights went out in...Mongolia.

It’s been an interesting week what with all the moving into our apartment that we didn’t move out of and so forth. But, thanks to the Parents Shaffer, we are wired up now. Well, not now exactly – we were wired up for about 10 hours. Then, something went horribly wrong.

Even still, there’s a pretty bright silver lining.

If you’ve been keeping up, you’ll know that we share an ADSL internet modem with our NGO neighbor by running a network cable out their window and in through our window, into our apartment. When they’re not around, they are kind enough to swap out their cable from the modem so we can use it. Also, we had a brand new 280 gig external hard drive crash with almost all our music, pictures, movies and TV shows.

Leslie’s folks sent us a care package to help solve these problems and more, but since it had been six weeks since they sent it, and we’d received other packages with much earlier departure dates, we were pretty sure it had been plundered - arrgh.

Last Friday, after a pretty short, but trying week, we got the package we’d been especially waiting for. – We convinced ourselves with half-empty glasses that certainly, since it had come so late, things would be missing. Also it had been cut open, re-taped and had a bunch of Chinese writing on it. But, much to our surprise, our faith in humanity had been restored. In it, not only was there peanut butter, warm socks, assorted dried fruit, hair ties, and a PILLOW, but there were two couple hundred gig external hard drives (flash, no moving parts), and the crown jewel of the package – a wireless router. Ta-da!

My body was buzzing, I was so excited. Really. We jumped around, high-fived, screamed like little children and then got to work putting it all use. We made a date with the director of the NGO and he let us set up the wireless network. Twenty minutes later and viola! Poof! Abracadabra! Shoot-bang! We both had internet at the same time. We mused about starting an internet café and all hassle this new device would circumvent. All was right with the world and we were wired to it.

Meanwhile, our dead hard drive sat lonely in the computer bag like a genie in a bottle ready to be coaxed back to life. But instead of rubbing it, we put it in the freezer compartment of our mini-fridge. As the theory goes, there were some moving parts in our hard drive that either got gunked-up with dirt or had been jostled around enough that they were quite connecting right to make the magic happen. When you freeze it, those minuscule, microscopic parts shrink enough to do its thing. Sure enough, it worked! We now have over a hundred gigs of mind-numbing entertainment back at our fingertips.

Soon, we were watching old episodes of “The Office” from our hard drive and ravenously downloading free NPR podcasts with the newfound glory of our wireless router – and we could do it from anywhere in the apartment! We checked our email, sent mocking messages to our friends on Facebook, and taunted our mere mortal site mates. We had conquered the power of the interwebs, moo-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Then, around midnight that night, the world went dark. Our NPR podcasts stopped downloading. No more taunting on Facebook. There was no signal from the modem. What happened? What happened?! Leslie jumped up and checked the locked door of our neighbors, who were of course not there working at midnight. Oh, bother. Rats! Dodbabit!

No problem, we told ourselves. It’s late. We’ll figure it out tomorrow. Then tomorrow came and went. And then Sunday came and went. Still nothing doing. Then, early Monday morning when our neighbors returned to work, Leslie ran over there to reconnect the router. Surely a cable was unplugged or the power had come loose from the wall, as can happen. Maybe the modem just stopped, as can happen. Whatever it is, it will be an easy fix. Soon enough, we’ll be able to find out what stupid thing Sara Palin said now or whether oil was selling ridiculously high or ludicrously low these days. We’ll absorb all of Terry Gross’ “Fresh Air” and almost know the news and pop culture answers on “Wait…wait… don’t tell me”. It would be just a matter of minutes be we’ll be able to read all the interesting happens with Shane Victorino and the rest of our NL Champ Phillies as they prepare for the World Series. Yes, easy fix. No problem. Reconnect a cable, that’s the ticket.

That was not the ticket. Soon, she discovered no life in the dead white box; the giver of inter-continental joy; the bastion of normalcy; the way we get our news. Then she plugged the network cable directly into the modem – forget the router, let’s go straight to the source. It logged on just fine, but nothing was downloading. After a while, we learned that the internet was down in the whole town, so there was hope yet. We’ll just wait it out. Yet another tease.

But what’s the deal with that wireless router? Was the whole thing fried? Did Carl Cassel explode it with his awesomeness?

It’s interesting how out of diversity comes opportunity. When we left Leslie’s parents in May, we brought all parts of our computer but its power supply. There was no turning back to get it after we got to Buffalo, so we went across the parking lot from our hotel to a Best Buy and claimed ourselves a universal charger with myriad tips for all your PC laptop needs. Back in Mongolia, a light bulb went off in my head. I got it! I rifled through the computer bag for the supplementary charger tips. I eyeballed what looked like the right size and connected it to the charger. I then picked up the dead carcass our reneging Netgear and with one sweeping and dramatic movement of my hands, I breathed electronic life back into it.

It turns out that the old universal power strip on the floor of the NGO that only had two of the five plugs in working order fried our AC/DC adapter but left our precious router unharmed, for now. We’ve sent a friend on a hunt in Ulaanbaatar for the appropriate adapter. If we can’t find it, we’ll have to wire something up.

Here’s to hoping…

Please stay tuned. We are experiencing technical difficulties

It has been a few weeks since we posted because of some technical difficulties. The main difficulty is our lack of internet and the fact that our apartment was sold underneath us. Oh, and though we were permitted to stay there, the old landlord wanted everything he owned out of it, including the fridge, the dressers, book shelves and even - and I'm not joking - the linoleum flooring. He took everything. So, it's been a process trying to procure us some new stuff. We'll post more when we can. We made a video of our sad circumstances. All and all, it turned out for the best, though, because much of our new stuff, including the flooring, is much better.

Briefly:
Go Phillies!
Go Obama!

A shout out to my Uncle Dan in Florida, just for saying hello's sake. Miss you.

And a big thank you to my uncle Steve in Portland who just sent us some books, peanut butter, candy and lots of newsy, fun things.


~Nathan

"Monglish" Crew

We have internet in our apartment! Right now, we have an Ethernet cable running outside from our neighbor's in through the window, but we have a wireless router on the way. That will free us up to use it all over the apartment and allow us to use it at the same time as our neighbor. Right now, we share an ADSL modem.

Since moving into our new place, it’s been a real adjustment period being without all the safety nets of training. Our co-workers are very nice and look out for us, and we’ve been introduced to a lot of people, but the five of us volunteers in town have stuck together pretty tight, mostly due to language barrier. Thankfully, we all get along really well – so far.

Our one new friend we especially hang with a lot started as a piano performance major in college and ended up getting a degree in German and humanities. Nathan started as a vocal performance major and ended up getting a degree in international studies and also knows German. Though our new buddy is about 7 years younger than us, he’s well rounded and mature for being so young. His supervisor also speaks English well and is a lady who gets things done, so we’ve enjoyed our sycophantic proximity to her too.

Somewhat surprisingly, though most people don’t know a lot of English around here, many people know at least some. A lot of times, we’re able to put some Mongolian words and English words together to get our point across in what we call “Monglish.” That’s good because, though we can tell about our basic needs and wants and can stumble through about a half hour of conversation about ourselves and families, we’re not yet equipped with a lot of language past pleasantries yet.

Plus, Mongolian in the classroom is much slower and more deliberate, as you might imagine. If a defining characteristic of English is that we use our jaws and lips to speak with long, open vowels, it can be said of Mongolians that they generally talk inside their mouths, with a bucket full of consonants. Many vowel sounds exists at the beginnings of words, then quickly close down inside the mouth where the tongue does most of the work. Though words are written with vowels, unless there are two back-to-back, they’re generally just dropped when spoken. It kind of sounds like Polish looks.

So, when we travel in packs, we’re able to stumble, mumble and Monglish our way around as one unit. Right now, we are a lot like college freshman huddled together for our first semester – on our own for the first time, but constantly together.

Coming up soon:
Pics of our new place
wish list of items we could use if you wanna send us something
more things

Special Shout Out:
Congratulations to Stephen and Lisa on their marriage last weekend. Welcome to the family, Lisa and Ethan. We wish we could have been there to celebrate with you. We thought about you constantly.

Bayankhongor, Here We Are!

We're mostly moved in and have some great stories to pass along as soon as we get an internet connection established. Nathan has internet at work, but it's dial-up and pay by the minute. Our next door neighbor in our building is a local NGO and they have agreed to let us use the internet, but they run regular business hours, so it's not real convenient. Next on our agenda is to run a network cable from their place to ours or procure a wireless router. If we do that, it's free access to the web.

Otherwise, all is well. We're enjoying our co-workers our jobs and the other volunteers. And we bought a washing machine yesterday!

We'll send out our address by email to as many people as we can.

To contact us by phone, Leslie sent out our phone numbers last week or so to our parents and some friends. It doesn't cost us anything to receive a call. We're 12 hours ahead.

To call through skype, we heard it was $.02/min and we heard $.20/min. Either way it's got to be cheaper than the phone, but sometimes it doesn't quite connect correctly. Keep trying.

Peace (Corps) from beautiful Bayankhongor.