i love firsts.

I love firsts.

There is something so remarkable about experiencing something for the first time. It is almost as if revolutionary information strikes you like a lightening bolt during first familiarities. You can never experience something for the first time twice. I think that is fantastic and altogether exhilarating within itself. Think about the first time you touched something hot and burned yourself. Or the first car you owned. What about the first time you lived on your own. Or your first road trip to an unknown land. Your first sunset on the beach. Or sunrise on a mountain top.

No matter the occurrence, there is a peculiar enlightenment that is a direct result of each incidence. You may not understand exactly how those feelings play out in life until later (like how I realized that hell is probably similar to working in a restaurant, waiting tables for a corporate chain); nonetheless, firsts are fresh. They are new. They are irreversible. And they become the building blocks for experiences in the future.

Today I saw my first snowfall.

It was one of those moments where you can’t help but laugh at the timing between conversation and nature’s own course. I was in my kitchen baking bread when my friend Uugii walked in. She had finished her classes for the day and I had yet to leave my flat. She shook in my doorway from bitter chill that accompanied her on her walk over.

“It’s so cold outside!” she exclaimed. “Do you have scarf? You will need.”

Unable to fathom the dramatic drop in temperature from the day before, I leaned over and touched the slightly torn screen on my window to test the wind chill factor beating against the other side of the wooden frame. As soon as my hand made contact and the words, “Is it really that cold?” left my lips; snow began to fall from the sky.

I ran around my house, room to room, window to window, for at least 5 minutes, jumping up and down and yelling, “Snow! Snow! Snow! It’s here! It’s here! It’s here!” During this frivolous time, my friend Uugii (who has grown up seeing snowfall each year and was rather surprised by my reaction) was laughing hysterically and announcing to those outside my window that her friend was crazy.

Later, as we were skipping to the market and singing the new 4-lined song in Mongolian that I wrote about the weather (those that know me well, know that I tend to put regular sentences into melodic stands of nonsense), I could feel any credibility I have created in this town, escaping my body with each word. =) Not that I have much left after getting onstage and dancing with a famous Mongolian pop star a few weeks ago. (My students have yet to let me live that one down). Still, with each new snowflake that found its way to my face and proceeded to melt on my eyelashes and nose, I realized that my first snowfall could not have happened in a better place. It is one more first that I can add to the long list that I have begun to compile since arriving in Mongolia. I know it will only continue to grow, much like my excitement at the thought of more snow, and I am forever grateful for that.

I hope you guys are as warm and cozy in the States as I am under my new camel wool blanket. I encourage you to try something new. Find a first for the day and embrace it with every atom in your body.

With every snowflake that falls, I love and miss you guys more.

Kimba*



uugii and me.













home. and the new tooth hospital (as it is directly translated)




view from the balacony.

YUM! i love it.