We had a lovely four day weekend this past weekend, since Monday was Woman's Day. Friday there were things to do, but Saturday I lazed around the apartment and enjoyed the solitude, as Nadine and Steven took a short trip to UB for a German speaking Olympiad. I cleaned a little, baked some bread, read... And the bread was amazingly exciting since somehow it came out tasting like Mom's did when I was a kid... made me super happy. :) Mid-afternoon, I had my first speaking session with a guy named Tsengel. He is a few years older and has earned his degrees in business, now working in one of the coal and copper mines in the south. One of the teachers, Nina, is a friend of his and got the little job for me. He is preparing for the TOEFL because he wants to study business and English in America or Europe. Then he wants to return to Mongolia and build up businesses with the good practices he hopes to learn in the West. He loves to travel, and has been to every aimag in Mongolia except the 2 most Western ones. That is actually rare for a Mongolian, since the transportation system is not well developed, so the cost can be pretty high and of course traveling is very difficult in winter... Our classes are not only good for his English, but informative for me as far as Mongolia goes.
After meeting with him, I picked up Christine at the bus station. Christine is an American from Ann Arbor, MI, which has just arrived to teach (indefinite time) in UB. It was lovely to meet her and we had a lovely evening just talking about transition to Mongolian life and Mongolian teaching. Nadine and Steven returned home later that night, so we had a full apartment.
Sunday, we had a nice lazy morning, then Christine and I went to Old Darkhan, and shopped at the Black Market. Then we went to the Turkish School, where our friend Boorak had invited us to a Turkish Food Festival. The food was of course, delicious, and was a fundraiser so it was a good cause. We all took some food home with us for later enjoyment. The 3 Swiss ;) got there a little later. While there, we met and talked with several other foreigners (an American Peace-Corps, a British VSO, Turkish teachers...) so it was an altogether wonderfully interesting experience. After eating Christine and I scurried off to get her to the bus station. Then I napped a bit, and toted some coke and vodka over to the apartment of Stephanie and Ryan, a Peace Corps couple from Oregon. There I passed a long and wonderful evening with about 8 other American Peace Corps. It was a wonderful decompression from the intense focus of living in another culture. One of the guys made a "That's what she said..." joke and it made me so happy! I realized it had been 2 months since I'd heard/made one of those jokes! :-P We made make-shift burritos, played games, and talked until 4:30 in the morning! It was really lovely, and all of them were so nice! Apparently, Mongolia has the lowest retention rate of Peace Corps volunteers. For every "class" or whatever they call it, I believe they said 30% leave. I'm not surprised. It's very hard to live here.
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