At long last a weekend together

SO, first of all, good on all of you for posting to our site. it is really great to read everything. blogging is fun.

So this weekend I (sierra) traveled from my host site to Jesse's house. It is like night and day. Jesse's site reminds me a lot of Addy. Pretty rustic. It was GREAT to see him. We played with his brothers, watched some dvds on my computer (I have a birthday coming up if anyone wants to send some Dvds), and made pizza for his family. at least we called it pizza, it was was more like a bruchetta (spl?)with local ingredients. It was fun to make and i think they liked it too. then we got schooled playing cards with his brother and mom, i think the brother was trying to cheat because we never figured out the scoring system. : ) today (sunday) we are in Darkhan eating tofu and emailing on fast(er) computers.

Mongolian language is going along well. We can now read at a 2nd grade level, can succesfully introduce our family members, and say that they all like fruit. Immersion really is pretty amazing.

The summer seems to be flying by, can't believe it is already the end of the 3rd week. We have a mid training inservice in 10 days, followed by a half week off to celebrate manly sports, and then sort of a whirlwind set of travels and classes before swearing in Aug 20th. We are having a really great time though and are still very pleased with our decision to be here. Much happier after a weekend together.

Jesse got good news today, his MCAT scores are in the 98th percentile (scored a 37) so he is pretty awesome and we are excited.

Technical training is going along. We do cross cultural, sector specific and community development on top of our language. The youth development secotor is really interesting because we are the first ones here. It will be a year of discovery and research before starting a big project i think. For most our our in country counterparts it will be there first time working with americans, and my first time with mongolians. Language will be really important. Also testing the boundaries between what people say they want, what they actually want, and what we are able to do will be an exciting challenge. looking forward to it and ready for the challenge.

Jesse's training sounds super interesting. He is learning a lot about the challenges in the health care system here. It seems like a large number of problems stem from a lack of specialized education and a general want for the specialized diagnostic tools and facilities that we are all so accustomed to in the US. (There are only 3 specialized diagnostic centers in the country). It looks like a lot of his focus will be on reproductive health and nutrition, primarily from the educational side. Although there are some rumors of matching him into a more laboratory setting which would be great. He realized he has a lot to learn but most of the necessary resources are readily available to things should be fine.

One last thing that i thought you would all enjoy. We have ger competencies that we have to learn durring the summer. One is chopping wood, buildng a fire and cooking. I made " boats" with my host mom which are kinda like potstickers. They have a specail way to fold them and it took me a long time to get it. We made about 50 and my host mom said i did 5 good. Ha! We went to the country to chop wood and i milked a goat. It was kinda wierd. But I can do it two handed like a pro. And I was the best wood chopper of our group. I think because I am so short and close to the wood. We also rode horses and ate yogurt, cheese, and hot milk. It was fun.

ok that is all from us for now. will write more in ten days or so.

take care.