Spit Envy

When I first moved to UB, I fell in love with a lot of it - the big city feel, surrounded by beautiful mountains, the sunny days, the people and the new culture. It's called a "honeymoon phase". 

However, there was one thing I did not like at all. 

Everyone spits. 

All the time. 

Little kids to little old ladies will hack one up and spit it out and I found it to be revolting. 

Oh, a difference a year makes.

Today I happened to experience something that I've only heard about - a mud storm. It happens when you have a rain storm coming from one direction and a sand storm coming from another and they collide around you. I mentioned this phenomena in a recent blog I did about experiencing Spring in UB but never thought I'd see it. 

I took this picture while the sandstorm was moving in. My camera wasn't able to catch  all the details unfortunately as there were several small sand storms going on too - like little tornadoes.

I took this one not even one minute later!

The bulk of the sandstorm passed but plenty of sand was still swarming about while it started to rain. It reminded me of being covered in sand at the beach and then having the shower pour wet sand on you. Not the most pleasant. 

It passed too but for the next 30 minutes I was blinking sand out of my eyes, blowing sand out of my nose, wiping off sand that had gotten stuck in my lipstick (warning: if you are ever wearing lip gloss/lipstick/chapstick and you see a sandstorm coming, WIPE IT OFF ASAP!!!) and trying to spit out the sand that had gotten in my mouth.

Like I said before I think spitting is revolting but when you encounter what seems to be HUNDREDS of tiny grains of sand between your teeth, spitting is not so bad. I don't have much practice at spitting other than spitting out toothpaste over the sink so that's exactly what I did today: stopped walking, went over to a patch of grass, ungracefully bent over and slowly spit. Mongolians, however, are experts! They don't even have to slow down and the accuracy of their aim is impeccable. My attempt at this in public gave a few old men a chuckle, "look at the foreigner trying to spit" as they shake their heads. I deserve it and my attitude has changed: not only have I stopped judging these talented people, I've started to envy their ability to expectorate.