What's to know?

Hiya, actually got some free internet time and thought i would make use of it.

The winter sickness is upon our household. Jesse has had a sinus infection that won't stop and i oddly have an ear infection. so, many calls to the peace corps medical officer. Oh, and i think we both have black lung. How cool is that? I am always trying to get illnesses that are old fashioned like black lung, consumption, grip, what have you. But for all my joking....black lung it is. The air is really cold here, you don't need to be reminded of that, so all the fire smoke and coal smoke that people burn just sits on top of the town. It looks worse that LA, really awful. Well it makes our little lungs irritated and so we have coughs and runny noses and the like. Just like Black Lung no way to be rid of it till spring. this is me self diagnoising here but i think i am on to something.

what else...byamba is recovering from her operation but her belly is still bare-ish. I am a little sad about it because she will look like chemo kitty when all our mongolian friends and co-workers come over, and since they dont like cats to begin with...she won't be winning any hearts.

The puppies are still really cute. their eyes are open and their feet point down instead of out to the sides so they can kinda walk now rather than scoot.

Work is pretty good. I have been working on some new presentations that are coming along. the next step is to present them to my work and some kids for feed back and training. At TAN i am writing surveys that are making me remember back to the Evans school and I think i did ok so that was kinda nice. jesse and i did another kindergarden parent training yesterday. Our translater was 45 min. late and we planned a pretty interactive session that ended up being like pulling teeth so we will have to rework something there. kinda a lousy way to end the day. Jesse is randomly busy. he is putting together posters for World Vision. The AIDS poster they want to be themed: happy families don't have aids. For a variety of reasons that is not the best message to promote so he is working on tweaking it. he is doing an anti-smoking presentation on monday with one of his co-workers.

We are stocking up on food for tsagaan sar. it looks like we can get away with pretty much anything because we are foreigners. so i am making carmel corn, mongolians like sugar (like me) and they get a kick out of popcorn so I think that will be good, pizza hosher (this could be hit or miss, the tomato sauce might throw them), deviled eggs (again hit or miss but pretty tame all around), and scones. something like that at least. i think they will be tired of boats and will get a kick out of our stuff. at least that is my hope. There is also a tradition, i just found out of having a big dinner of tsagaan sar eve. so we invited our site mate (minus her spouse who is in the states doing the foreign service interview this month) to our house.

Other than that we are just trying to keep up on our new years resolutions...keep the house clean, lose weight, study mongolian....the usual. Keep up the emails and the posts. take care.