Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

so here we are, at our weekly fun friday night activity -- sitting at the internet cafe trying to take care of business on really slow computers. Tomorrow we leave for Darhan, they are going to pick us up at 8:30 a.m., and it will be a three hour ride. We are both really excited to see whats out beyond the city, but we have heard bad things about the road we will be travelling. That is, it is a road in poor condition. The old director of our school last year was travelling on that road and was in a car accident and then passed away in the hospital. Don't worry, we will be on a bus with a local driving (which is helpful) and if there are seatbelts you can be sure that clayt and i both will be wearing them!

This next week we are teaching english at the school tuesday through thursday, to help the kids who are a little behind. So, hopefully while we are at the school we will be able to post a few pictures on this site for you, as there will be less people at the school clogging up the connection.

Before we left the states, we got a calling card (thanks Kim and Dave!!!) but after we got here we found we can't use it. I thought we could post the info here and you guys could use it to call us, as I know it must not be cheap. It is a 600 minute calling card, and its been used only once. the infor is below:
Call: 1-888-879-6330, Pin: 310-904-1197. Press 1 for English, and then press 2 to call outside of the US.

This was our last week of classes for this term. On tuesday our school had their christmas concert. It was an interesting affair. Pretty disorganized and chaotic (apparently noone thought a dress rehearsal might be a good idea) but everyone had a good time. Clayt was dressed up as santa, and the kids loved it. People wanted their picture taken with him, and the little ones either ran away from him, hugged him, or punched him in the stomach (my good first grade boys). He had a felt suit which he roasted in, and a homemade beard/mustache combo, and a hat with hair attached (it looked like white cotton ball dreds, like he was a rastafari santa) and we stuffed his top to give him a plumper stomach, but had to try hard to get it to not look like man-boobs. It was great. The kids for the most part knew right away that it was clayton, despite his protests. The highlight of the show, in my opinion, was when clayt had to go up on stage to give out awards to kids. As he went to step up onto the stage, he pretended to trip and fell into a forward roll. Everyone loved it! The students the next day were saying, Clayton teacher, you are santa clause! and they would tell me, Clayton teacher did this! and then they would demonstrate a trip and fall. It was cute.

Monday afternoon we went shopping to find a pair of boots for me, as my feet have been freezing here, even with thermal socks and whatnot. So I wanted to find a pair of the nice fuzzy lined boots that all the girls here wear. We were in a store looking at boots when an old man dressed in the traditional garb -- the felt dress coat thing and the colorful wrap around the waist and a big furry hat -- came up to clayton and started talking to clayt in mongolian. He asked, "Ruski?" we said, Nyet. And he talked some more and clayt said America, Washington DC and the guy said some stuff and laughed a lot. Then he shook clayt's hand, and then gave him a big hug, and then left. He turned and waved goodbye before he walked out the door.

The food here is interesting. I mean, there are plenty of foods familiar from home, but there are so many strange things we see each time we go to a grocery store. The meat department is what always gets us. There is no freezer aisle. There may be one standup freezer at the most. And that is in the more modern grocery stores. Those that are more like indoor markets have just tables set up with raw, unwrapped meat in piles. They have a table for lamb, beef, chicken and fish. The strangest thing we see in most of the grocery stores are the pigs and lambs heads wrapped in saranwrap. They still have their eyes, ears, teeth, everything! There are also lots and lots of cow tounges for sale. We have been searching for some tuna fish, but so far have only found cans with pictures of cute little lambs on them. Lamb in a can? we haven't felt that hungry yet. :) Then just 2 days ago we came home from school and walked into our apartment building to find a huge pile of meat (ok, animal carcasses, no skin, lots of bone) sitting outside of the elevator. It was piled probably as high as my chest, and on the top of the pile was something wrapped tightly in tarp and rope, and was distinctly shaped like a pig. feet and snout and all. The thing we notcied while we stood uncomfortably close to the meat mountain in our narrow hallway waiting for the elevator was that it wasn't frozen meat, wasn't wrapped, and was just sitting on the dirty nasty floor in the common area where everyone walks and spits. We are almost vegetarians at this point. Almost, but now quite. We don't cook much meat at home, as when we go to shop for meat we usually end up getting too grossed out to buy anything. Actually, I convinced clayt to buy 3 chicken legs last week. It was our first meat purchase. They were semi-frozen, not wrapped, but at least in a closed freezer thing. They are still in our freezer at home. Don't know if we will try them or not.

Gotta go now, but there's more to tell! It will have to wait for after our weekend Christmas trip. Hope you all have a great holiday and we'll be thinking of you.