Sukhbaatar

Well, I've been here a week and so far so good. It doesn't really feel like a week, it feels like forever but no time at all. My host family is OK. They watch a lot of TV, which is kind of boring for me, since I can't understand any of it. But when my Dad is home he quizzes me some on Mongolian, a lot of the time he speaks really quickly and I can't understand what he's saying. He is gone a lot, from what I've gathered my parents are alcohol distributers. The second or third day I was here I came home for dinner and right after dinner they had me help load up the truck with vodka, and then made me get in the truck with them and my dad was like "Ruski, Ruski" so I thought they were taking me to Russia (the border is only about 12 miles away). So I asked if I needed my passport, and he said no. I was a little worried at the prospect of going to Russia without a passport, but I just went with it. It turned out that we didn't actually go to Russia, just the border town. I saw Russia though. :) We went to this place where there was a room FULL of beer and vodka, and there were these women there doing some sort of accounting stuff and talking on their cell phones almost the whole time. So I just sat there and watched while they loaded up the rest of the truck with beer. Then we came home, and my dad left for a few days. I think he goes to UB to make deliveries or something, I'm really not sure what goes on. My mom left yesterday to go to Russia for three days, I have no idea what she is doing there, probably something to do with their business.
My little sister, Undarmaa is kind of my keeper, she is almost always the one who cooks for me, and she is the one who is always home. She is a good cook, so far the food has been good. We eat a lot of beef, potatoes and onions. Either in soup, with rice, or with homemade noodles (flour and water mixed together and rolled out and cut into little noodles). The food is very bland, but it's not too bad. We also have french toast for lunch a lot. We don't put anything on it though, we just eat it like toast. It's actually really delicious! Yesterday my dad did bring home some cheese from out in the country. It is not good. There's a version that is kind of soft and flavorless, and another version that is hard and really really sour. But other than that I have eaten everything they serve me. Luckily they haven't tried to give me any innards or anything scary like that. I am a little scared of the food preparation/storage methods though. They keep the meat in big hunks still attached to the bone in the freezer or fridge with no wrapping or anything. Not even a plate, just bloody meat directly on the shelf in the fridge. And they use the same cutting board for raw meat and then bread directly afterward. It's really scary. I have yet to see them wash the cutting board. Sometimes they wash the knife, but usually they just wipe it off with a dirty rag. So far I haven't gotten sick though, which is actually pretty amazing I think.
Today for lunch my sister made an omlet with sausage in it, which was really good, but she served my little brother in the same bowl she had been beating the raw eggs in. It amazes me that they don't get sick.
I did get to take my first hot shower yesterday, which was AMAZING!!! The third day I was here I kind of asked my mom if I could take a shower in the morning, but she said no, and got some hot water and poured it over my head so I could wash my hair. Then a few days later I washed my hair myself with the freezing cold glaciar water that comes out of the tap. The first shower I took was on Friday, and I was planning on trying to get Undarmaa to show me how to work the water heater thing, but she left right when I got home, and no one else was there, so I just broke down and took a glaciar water shower. It was pretty intense, my scalp was completely numb after I was done getting all the conditioner out of my hair, but I felt 100 times better after getting a shower, even though it was frigid. My hot shower yesterday was like heaven. It took like 15 minutes to fill up the water heater, and I had to stand there and hold the hose to the hose from the faucet, because it doesn't screw together or anything convinient like that. And then Undarmaa plugged it in, which was a little scary, there were some sparks. Wiring here is not exactly "up to code." But after an hour I had hot water! Yay! And it didn't stay plugged in while I was taking a shower, so I didn't get electrocuted.
Life here is pretty good. We stay really busy, we have language class from 9 until 1 (which is REALLY intense and exhausting) and then we get an hour and a half for lunch, and then back to school for either technical training or culture training. We usually get done by 5 or 6 and then we have to do our homework and memorize what we learned in language class that day. Last weekend was pretty awesome though. Friday night Cady (another CED trainee) and I bought a bottle of Mongolian wine and drank it while we studied. It was actually really good. It said it was a dessert wine, and I think it was fortified because it tasted a little like brandy. On saturday it was rainy and cold, I went over to Cady's again and we played Shaigai (a game they play with sheep ankle bones) with her little sister and Jim's little sister (Jim is another CED trainee who's family lives in the same Hashaa as Cady, I think their families are related) Shaigai was really fun, it took a minute to get over the fact that we were playing with bones that still had some blood and other stuff on them, but oh well. The rest of the afternoon/evening I just kind of laid around and read my book (I felt the need to indulge myself with some English reading). Yesterday a bunch of us walked out to Bagh 5 (there are PCV trainees in town in Sukhbaatar, and then there are some placed out in Bagh 5 which is part of Sukhbaatar, but it is kind of out in the country). It was about a 45 minute walk, and we thought that we were meeting up with some of the Bagh 5 people to play soccer. Segii was supposed to set that up, but it didn't quite get communicated. So once we found Segii's house we played in her yard for awhile. It was really fun, we kicked the soccer ball around, and played whiffle ball and played some volleyball (really just hitting the ball back and forth between a few people). After awhile a storm came in and the temp droppped like 30 degrees and it rained for awhile, so we went inside and played Uno with Segii's daughter. The storm was really amazing. The sky seems a lot closer here, you can see forever. We watched the storm come in and we could see the rain. It passed through in about 45 minutes though, and we walked home. We saw the most amazing rainbow on the walk back. It was the first full rainbow I've ever seen, we could see both ends of it touch down, and the colors were so vibrant! It stayed for our whole walk home.
Hopefully next weekend we are going to go on a hike and climb one of the mountains that are close to the town. I'm pretty excited about that, we will be able to see for miles and miles.