America Bound

Are you Falling well? Are your animals fat? Are you cold?

Ok so we are super excited now. We have put all our projects to rest for the next month-ish, have gone to our four going away parties, cleaned our ger, put items-not-to-be-frozen at our friends, endured the freezing bus ride with a crazy crying mongolian man and dead sheep thawing all over the seat, and are now in UB waiting the departure of our plane. T minus 24 hours.

We have a 14 hour layover in Seoul and i brought a couple of books, my crotcheting hooks and yarn, the computer with movies, and cards. I think i will make it but it is hard to be sure. I will probably need a magazine or two to come out the other end sane.

The move went well and our new hashaa family has been really nice. Everything looks the same on the inside of the ger but when you open the door it is a totally different yard. Took some getting used to, its pretty trippy. Plus the sounds you hear are all in different spots now. We are closer to the market and things, further from my office and the shower hosue, and closer to jesse's work. I took a ton of pictures and *gasp* we FINALLY got the second pict CD burned so it has a little bit of everything from the last year including the move. We will get on the distributing of it all once we reach the states.

Jesse did get another interview offer, this time to Maryland so that makes 6. 6 seems like a reasonable number and we are looking forward to everyone coming to where we live (wherever that may be). Matthew, lady, and others are welcome! : ) Jesse and i both showered but are afraid the sheep smell might be harder than that to shake so i am guessing people are going to want to leave us alone until we shower some more and wash some clothes and THEN all are welcome.

Look out america the Loars are on the move.

It is what it is

Hi ya'll

So Jesse and I have been keeping busy planning our trip to the states (what to eat, where to shop, what movies to see, did i mention what to eat?) and getting our current projects wrapped up or passed along. Jesse now has 5 interviews (UWashington, Georgetown, U Michigan, U Colorado, and Northwestern). Very exciting stuff, and perhaps a few more will come in before we go...

J has been working with the local AA chapter here and is giving a presentation today to the Technical college about safe and responsible drinking. Yesterday we had a training at a local hospital for new parents. It was a mix of new/young moms and neighborhood health volunteers...good capacity building opportunity. We had a good turn out and ended up on TV. Monday I am doing a training of trainers for my work on the mentoring program so they can do it while i am gone and have been working hard on getting the resource room put together. I think one more day and it's good. Jesse has started a new "wheat fund project" (a grant of $2000 given by the embassy from extra money generated by the selling of america's extra wheat or some such). He did a needs assessment with the community and they identified the open container market as a place they want to clean up. So they are proposing that regular trash pick up and garbage containers go in. The application process is pretty lengthy so he will be working on it in the states i suppose. But it should be good and a nice little legacy if it all works out.


Our world was turned a little upside down last week when we were unexpecdidly told we will have to move. Our hashaa (yard) is being sold and we needed to find a new place to live before we left for the states. We found out on Thursday and they wanted to move us that Sunday but it was too soon. Peace Corps happened to be here doing the fall checks on placements so were able to scope out some possible places. It ended up that most options (there were only a few since we still wanted to live in a ger) did not meet some standard. But we did find a new yard to pitch our ger, jesse's director's yard. Don't know much about the family. They just built a new house and there is the mom, dad, daughter and grandma living there. We move on Friday. We shall see how it goes. I think they will drop our ger, then pack the furniture (with all our stuff stashed in it because there aren't boxes or anything to pack into) and then move the furniture set it back up and then put the ger back up around it. I will take pictures to be sure.

Other than all that things are going well. A little stressful but that is ok. Hope to see many of you soon.

Cheers.