Senbeno! (Hello!)

ok, so i just fell asleep at the internet cafe waiting for my computer to load this page so i can post a blog entry for you! We are going after school tomorrow to possibly get internet set up at home. Not faster, but then we will be able to call you guys using the net and it will be lots cheaper. We looked for more international calling cards today, and they were 8 minutes for $3, with no way to add more time. So, we said no thanks.

Quick note: here are our email addresses in case you need to contact us:
jsm.linguist@gmail.com
benign_indifference@yahoo.com

also, if you want to send us anything, you have to send it to the school, as we don't have an actual address for mail at our apartment. it would probably never reach us. to add to the list of nice things to get from home:
hair ties, kids storybooks, coloring books, US wall maps, markers, spices -- we can't find spices anywhere! (oregano, basil, cinnamon, onion powder, crushed pepper, etc.), colored paper, english grammar books, hmmm... thats all i can thiks of this time.

Lots has been happening here, and there is lots to tell you. This past saturday was a parent-teacher conference day at our school. Clayt and I both have never done this before. It was interesting to meet the parents of some of our students. They were receptive to the things we said, which is good. I was especially worried about meeting the parents of my 10th grade students, as there are 22 of them and I've only been here 2 weeks and don't know any of their names yet! But ut went well in general. The father of a girl in my second grade class said, "when the old teacher left (the one i replaced, she is on maternity leave) my daughter cried a lot, as she loved her teacher. But then she met you and now she is happy again and says she likes you even better." what a nice compliment!

and i'd like to take a moment to give elementary teachers a LOT of credit. Clayt and I are both exhausted some days because our students are energetic, very talkative, apparently hard of hearing, and tough to keep on task and off of each other. :) elementary school teachersw must all be saints.

Yes, at the end of this week we are going on a 3 day trip with the Turkish folks at our school. The city we will visit is called Darhan, but when they say it it sounds like Darkhan. Its north of here and there is another Turkish school in that city which we will visit. Seems like it will be fun, if for nothing other than the fact that we would love to see whats over these mountains that surround the city. When we flew in to Mogolia, it was pitch black so we haven't seen anything outside of the city yet.

We opened a bank account here, and on friday we went back to the bank to get the bankcard. We really feel like locals now. well, sort of. Anyways, the bank card has my photo on the back, and on the front under the card number is just my first name and middle initial! Its really strange, and i wonder if they just don't have any other customers named Jessica and figured that was enough? I don't know.

Yesterday after our parent meetings, we went to a fundraiser sort of thing, for scholarships for poor students who can't afford tuition at the turkish schools. It was kind of like a bake sale. It was all traditional turkish foods, so of course we loaded up on all of our favorites and even tried a few new things. After that we went to the student dorm building (more on that below) and played ping-pong with one of the dorm directors, Mehmet. He is the one who took us shopping our first weekend here when our luggage hadn't arrived yet. He's really good, so it was fun to play with him. Apparently he won a gold medal for ping pong in russia when he was 19. Its fun to say we played ping-pong with a gold medalist! He beat both of us easliy, and he said he wasn't playing well that day! :)

Clayt and I have been assigned dorm study hall duty, as most of the teachers are assigned one night. We have wednesday night, and we sit in their study hall room and help them with homework if they have any questions. There are almost 30 boys living at the dorm house, which is not too far from our apartment. It used to be a hotel, and during the day while the boys are in school, they use the main hall room for sort of a daycare for the children of the turkish teachers.

Thursday night Ali, the school director, alled us at home and invited us to his house to visit and meet his wife and son. So of course we said yes! His wife is really friendly and speaks english very well. Their son, Ahmet, is 2 years old and so cute. Ali's wife made us plates of Turkish desserts and tea, and we talked about cooking and she wants to teach me how to cook a few things. Maybe i will give it a try, as its never to late to start something new, right? :) It was nice to see their apartment, which is nice, but actually similar to ours. Same thin carpeting on the floor, same style, with funky wallpaper and everything, just like ours. I was suprised, as I thought the director of the school would have such a posh setup. He also said that in his district, like a neighborhood, most of the turkish people in the city live. He said they had wanted to find us an apartment in their neighborhood, but weren't able. Apparently the contract for our apartment is up in June, and he said they will move us then to their neighborhood hopefully. This is a suprise to us, but also kind of exciting. This means we will get to experience 2 apartments here, and 2 neighborhoods, etc. Seems like it will be a good thing.

Last night we went out with 2 of the other teachers (it was supposed to be 3, but we lost someone in the process of meeting up) and one of the teacher's husband, who is mongolian. We went to a pub first, and ejoyed sitting at really short tables drinking Cass beer (korea's finest) sitting under a really big fishtank built into the wall. There was one bathroom in the whole place (one i mean unisex, one toilet) and there was no toilet seat and no toilet paper and water (i hope) all over the floor. So we got to meet locals while waiting to use the restroom. People either tried to speak english to us or tried to cut us in line. Cutting is a big problem here, and they do it to every and anyone, without shame. After 3 or 4 beers there, we went to a nightclub called "Hollywood" and danced (me and the other 2 teachers, clayt and the other husband sat and talked of course) to 50 Cent and house techno music. A russian guy and mongolian lady (together married or something, not sure) started dancing with us, and for the next 20 minutes he kept trying to speak to me in russian, even though I kept saying nyet, american! nyet, american! then his woman would try to explain to me in mongolian. finally, we just had a dance-off (we all had pretty sweet moves), shook hands, and parted ways. It was a fun night.

In ulaanbaatar there are a lot of homeless children. we have heard about how they live in the sewer, and there are uncovered manholes everywhere, but hadn't seen any until yesterday. we were walking to the busstop to meet our friends and there in one of the manholes was a little boy sticking his head and hand out, asking for money or food, i don't know. Its a really strange, sad and scary thing to see. I just want to take them home and feed and bathe them. Clayt and I have started to look into volunteer opportunities here, and I just recentlty got an email back from one of the homeless children centers. So, hopefully i can call them this week and get involved somehow.

ok, last bit of info for today. Things here are generally cheap! Just wanted to give you an idea about that. Here are some prices:

Internet cafe - 1 hour for less than $.50
bus to anywhere in town - about $.20 for the nice bus, per person
taxi -- about $.25 per mile (and every car here is a taxi, its true!)
dinner at a nice restaurant with very big portions and drinking american sodas -- $10
breathing in horribly polluted air everytime you step outside -- priceless. :)

more soon! people here are very excited about New Years, as they don't celebrate Chirstmas. But, they celebrate New Years with lots of chirstmas decorations and Christmas trees. If you are rich here you can buy a fake christmas tree of any size and literally any color. The brighter the better. We've seen full sized neon orange christmas trees, as well as lime green, purple, electric blue, hot pink...but not too many evergreen. Weird.