What’s Ulaanbaatar weather like in the winter? Well, it’s only November and the word freezing is as adequate an adjective to describe it as ‘grand’ is to the Grand Canyon or ‘great’ is to the Great Wall.
I’m attempting to write today’s blog post but I have been facing an unusual problem for the last hour: my fingers won’t stop shaking. I’m originally from Michigan so I’m used to the frozen tundra of hail, sleet, frost, and snow. Before moving to Mongolia, I mentally prepared myself for the wretched Ulaanbaatar weather that has advanced past my doorstep into my ice box of a bedroom.
I told myself that I have to be tough and stick out the winter as a challenge in perseverance. Similar to running a marathon, the key to enduring a Mongolian winter will be to prepare for the worst and expect it to be worse than that.
Sermonizing from the pulpit of an insulated apartment about what is needed to survive the elements is all well and good until you get outside and nature punches you squarely in the face, nose, and ears.
“Welcome home,” the howling winds proclaimed as I stepped out of my apartment. Lungs frozen, muscles tight, I could barely put up a fight needed to take another step forward. And this is only the appetizer before the appetizer. The months of December and January make the late weeks of November feel like spring in the Midwest.
So for all my friends still living in Scottsdale, Arizona, I ask you to please guess the current temperate right now in Ulaanbaatar. For my friends in Europe who ask if the measurement is in Fahrenheit or Celsius, I reply by saying it doesn’t matter.
