Glad I’m not a four-year-old cow

If you want a laugh, check this out. That’s the weather forecast for Choibalsan. Folks emailed me to ask if the temperature really did drop to – 45 F. Last week, tiim shuu (yes indeed). It only gets to -45 at night, though. I prefer -45 and calm to -20 and windy… which happens every morning during my 20 minute walk to school. You can’t avoid frozen eyelashes these days.

Mongolians believe winter has 81 days. They split the season into “nine nines” — amusingly subtitled cycles of cold.

I borrowed these from Jon Haley’s VSO blog:

First nine – Fermented milk freezes.

Second nine  – Vodka freezes.

Third nine  – The tail of a young cow becomes frozen.

Fourth nine  – The horns of a four year-old cow freeze.

Fifth nine  – Boiled rice no longer freezes.

Sixth nine  – The snow and ice starts to clear and the roads blacken.

Seventh nine  – The hilltops and mountains began to blacken.

Eighth nine  – The ground unfreezes and becomes damp.

Ninth nine  -Spring arrives! (Though it can still freeze, snow, and be generally unsettled)

In a few days, we’ll enter the fourth nine, the most bitter of them all. Those poor four-year-old cows. Wish them — and us — luck!