Ugh.....

Pride comes before a fall. It's really odd, isn't it? It seems to apply to every type of pride. Any time you think "wow, I'm good", a warning flag should go up.
Yesterday I made a quick dash to the shop near the school to pick up some bread. I left without putting on my coat, as is my custom. When I got back Itgil (front desk worker) and Naasa (translator for church) gave me weird looks, as is their custom. It's a bit of an ongoing battle: whether or not one should put on a coat for a short dash into sub-zero temperatures.
"You're going to get sick" Naasa said.
"No, I'll be fine" I said.
"Mongolian wind is dangerous, you don't know" she said.
"I do know, this isn't my first winter" I said.
"No, you don't know" she said.
I tried my trump card. "Look", I said. "Since I got here Itgil has gotten sick four times. She's stayed home from work twice. I haven't even gotten a cold yet. Itgil bundles up until she looks like a fat arab, I go out in a t-shirt".
"You don't know" she repeated.

By that night I had a sore throat and a throbbing sinus headache. I ate enough raw ginger and garlic to scare away any sane human, and drank so much water that I wasn't able to stay in bed for more than an hour at a time, but in the morning I felt even worse.
I was lying in bed, half awake and miserable at about 10:00, when suddenly the guard / maintenance guy walked into my apartment without knocking. Apparently the door had been left unlocked.
Paying no heed to me, he casually walked over to my phone and started making calls. He continued making calls for about 20 minutes as I lay there, dizzy and mostly naked. He then casually thanked me and left. I immediately got up and locked the door.
That's one thing that bugs me about the Mongolian culture. They have different ideas about privacy and personal space. When I went to go buy jeans a few days ago, the guy running the shop casually waltzed into the changing area. I found this odd, but didn't particularly mind. He then invited a woman into said changing area, who stayed there as I tried on three pairs of jeans. My mind evaluated the situation and decided that if she didn't care, I didn't care.

The same goes for the massage place, but we won't go there.

So now I'm sitting on the computer, feeling bored out of my mind as I am reduced to an organic pain collector. I hope I feel better by this evening, because there's supposed to be a nice New Year celebration in Sukhbaatar Square.

That and I bought $20 worth of fireworks, which would probably cost me twice that much in the US.

Side note: I am still of the (medically sound) opinion that brief exposure to cold air doesn't make you sick. I think I caught this from Itgil over the weekend when 30 of us were crammed into a ger. Still, I'll try not to tempt fate by bragging about my record.