In UB (a sidetrip)

by Mark

So it's been awhile since we last posted. That's largely due to the fact that we were in the capital city Ulaanbaatar for 2 weeks. Our main reason for going there was for a Peace Corps led training called IST (6 days long), the second reason for going to UB was to celebrate Thanksgiving with PC volunteers and staff...but the 3rd reason for going is the one I'm going to write about in this post.

We wanted to re-visit Zuunmod...our training site, the place where our Host-families live, our Language trainers live, and where we spent our first 2.5 months of our Mongolian lives. It was a quick trip - only about 3 hours spent with "family" and friends...but it was good to see everyone, to catch up on what had happened since we all went our separate ways across the face of Mongolia. Here's a few pics:

This is a group of PCV's with our three language trainers (my teacher, Oogii, is in the center; Kara's teacher, Enkhee, is on the left)

This was the greeting spread in my host families house. From left to right you have Milk Tea in the thermos, vodka in the center, and juice in the glass decanter. My host-grandma even pulled out shotglasses for the vodka (she really dislikes the stuff) because of the occasion - culture demands it. We each took just a small amount and then laughed at the fact that none of us wanted to drink it...

And here we are again - happy family, minus mom (she had to work unfortunately).

We'll be posting again soon with more information on happenings over Thanksgiving and during our IST seminars. Oh and we should be uploading more pictures to Facebook in the near future. Until then...