New Year's fireworks

In case you've wondered whether Mongolians celebrate New Year's Eve with fireworks, they do. Nothing too fancy, but last night I did get to see a few nice fireworks from my window around midnight. What I wasn't expecting, however, were the indoor fireworks earlier in the day in my apartment. Due to the decrepit condition of the apartment buildings here (recall my earlier plumbing disaster!), the circuit breakers can't handle a certain amount of power that Americans are accustomed to. The problem is, you don't know what the limit is until you cross it.

Yesterday afternoon, I discovered the limit in my apartment. Apparently, I cannot plug in a space heater at the same time my oven is on. All the electrical outlets in my apartment are wired to one breaker. The lights are on another, so thankfully they were unaffected. With cornbread baking in the oven, I walked out of the kitchen and into the living room and noticed black smoke coming out of the wall outlet in the far corner. Then I could see a tiny fire through the socket holes. I then commenced freaking out. I immediately called our staff, one of whom is our electrician, and asked him to hurry to my apartment. While I was on the phone, a second pop and fire occurred in the outlet, and more black smoke. The little fires were short-lived and contained, and the walls are solid concrete so I knew the likelihood of a major fire was low. But still - add this to the list of things I've never, ever dealt with in my life, and it resulted in a mild amount of panic.

As always, God took care of me. Our electrician Munkho was over in a flash, and he had the whole thing fixed within an hour. That is, except for this poor burned up outlet:

Munkho explained what happened, and how in the future I can only use the oven or the space heater, but not both at the same time. Which is fine, because the space heater isn't absolutely necessary, and as it turns out, the oven sort of serves the same purpose!

Thanks to Munkho, I enjoyed the rest of my day, and watched movies all night until 1am. It was kind of cool reaching 2008 before most of the world. Happy New Year!