4 Crazy Days

Hiya!
Good to hear from you all! Jesse and I have had a wonderful time at our host families and training. I will tell you about mine and then let jesse tell you about his.

Sierra:
I live in a town of about 10,000 (including the ger suburbs) but I live in the apartment district. TONS of kids everywhere. My apartment is nice and i like my room, I have a bed and desk. My host family is great, really patient and laugh at me a lot. I have three host sisters and they are wonderful. The eldest reminds me of Abby so that is nice. and the youngest is perhaps the cutest thing i have ever seen. They help me every day with homework and pronounciation. we walk around town holding hands and they are always in my room hanging out. we play a lot of cardds, i taught them egyptian rat screw and they taught me a mongolian game. they are very impressed with my shuffling abilities. they also taught me how to play this game with bones. my host parents are nice and very accomindating. they don't make me eat things i don't like (mostly) and i eat a little meat. the first night there i cooked beef noodle soup from scratch (from the careful instructions of my host mom) and that was pretty cool. the only seasoning is salt or sugar however and my family is pretty keen on mayonnaise in eveerything. language is going slow. everyone in my class is super smart and pick it up right away but i am very slow and still working on it. haven't given up hope yet.

we have limited computer time so i will let jesse get his two cents in...

Jesse: My host family experience sounds fairly similar to Sierra's. I am living in a 4 room brick house in a more countrsidesk location (our fence backs up to a large empty hillside). I have 3 younger siblings that belong to my host family and a multitude of other kids of various ages wondering in and out of our home. they seem to be firm believers in the "it takes a village to raise a child" philosophy here. I live about a mile from the school so I don't seem to have much free time, especially lately with all of the cultural and health related training we have been recieving on top of the four hours of language. when I am at home though I usually have been talking to my host mom (primarily by pointing our phrases in our phrase book or going through the dictionary) I am however begining to learn enough words to make myself understood at least a bit. My host siblings have warmed up to me very quickly, especially the four year old. they are afraid to come into my room as of yet, but I will soon break them of that fear. I haven't had the chance to learn to cook yet, but I did do laundry by hand the other night and also learned the ankle bones game that sierra was referring to. there are so many stories and thoughts I want to share but don't think I have the necessary hand strength to type all of those things. simply stated though I am having a fantastic time with my family, the remind me a lot of my own family when we were all a bit younger, and am loving every moment of my time so far here in Mongolia.

P.S. for those trying to find us on a map. We are both located within 60 km of Darkhan. Sierra is to the southwest and jesse is about 20km to the southeast. both area are little soum (small communities surrounding larger imeg(city) centers) and may not be on any maps except Mongolian maps. If I figure out how to type cyrillic on these computers I will spell the names for those who are interested, but right now I don't have all of the necessary characters.