Orientation and PST

Well officially in Mongolia and loving it! I am now in my host community of Erdene, living with my host family. So much has happened so sorry for being all over the place! The flight here was surprisingly very good, by the time we arrived in UB we had been up for like a day or something, but were greeted by the very pumped up M19's so it was impossible to be tired. We then stayed in Zuunmod for a week or so for orientation and I got to really get to know the other 68 volunteers that with me make up the M20 group -20th group that has come to Mongolia. The majority of us are going to be Teaching English as a Foreign Language -TEFL teachers. The days of orientation gave us a lot of information, and a lot of general overviews about things we will need to know. Now we are at our sites where we will be for the rest of the summer until we swear in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. I had language training this morning for four hours, which we generally have everyday, then usually we have some session in the afternoon, either on culture, or something specific to teaching. I feel like I have learned so much already about Mongolia since arriving like 11 days ago, but with that said I feel like such a baby here as well! It is difficult not being able to communicate with the majority of the people around you. My host family is wonderful and takes care of anything I could ever need, but it's like this giant game of charrades, how I try to communicate with them. My host sister is 22 and knows a bit of english, and she really helps me out with things. Yesterday she showed me how to wash my hair, body, and clothes in my washing basin. I will probably do that about once a week, or maybe twice a week, considering you have to walk a ways away to get water. I have really enjoyed the food, though it is very different from what I ate in the states. In the U.S. I did not eat any meat, and little dairy. Here I eat a little meat, and then eat dairy too. There is also a lot of bread, rice, noodles, things like that. I have helped out making meals, though compared to my host mom and sister I am a horrible cook! Basically I just slow the process down! Right now the most frustrating thing for me is the lanuage. I pretty much know the cyrillic alphabet now, but now it is time to start making sense of words, and just picking up as much as I can. I am hoping to continue to learn a few new words a day that I know how to use. My goal is to by the end of the summer feel competent in my Mongolian.... I have a lot of work to do!!!

Night Before...

So I fly out to L.A. tomorrow morning at 7am, which means we will leave Hudson at like 4:30.... We will have an orientation in L.A. all afternoon, then it's off to Seoul the next morning. From Seoul we will fly to Ulaanbaatar, so I will arrive in Mongolia on the 14th if I remember correctly. Should be interesting!!