Jun 13 2007
iffy on posting for the next 9 weeks or so
Internet and phone is super sketchy where I’m at now, so many of these future posts will be backdated to the day I actually wrote them. I am up in my host family’s area now, and they’re really nice people. That reassures me beyond belief, so I am fine so far with the being put to bed for naps, sleeps, etc., plus the 3-5 meals/snacks a day, plus the sometimes oily food, plus the incredible amounts of dairy products I am now eating.
Mongolian lessons have started in earnest now – I have 4 hours of Mongolian a day, plus 2-3 hours of either cross-cultural or technical (health) training a day. To give an idea of the pace, I learned the Cyrillic alphabet in a day (thanks in no small part to my host family 6-year-old who made me read an absurd amount for two hours that day in addition to class from my dictionary of all things) and we’ve moved on to conjugating past tense verbs and other random things. We learn probably at least 10-15 new words a day. The conjugation is kind of like Japanese, only moreso – there can be endings in (roughly) -aac, -ooc, -eec, and -00c rather than just aru/eru. Those last two are approximate, too, as they’re backwards-ee’s and theta’s.
I so far have (at home) learned to do my own laundry, cook a basic Mongolian meal, do dishes, and play a game with sheep’s anklebones. The food is tasty so far, and the amount of manure-avoidance necessary to get to school is quite the adventure. I believe tomorrow my host family is going to teach me a Mongolian card game and/or something that sounded like “karaoke” – but the word for “tomorrow” is the same word for “later”, so all I know is that both of those items are in the future for me.
Sleep time now – I’ll try to keep people posted, but currently I am safe and (relatively) intact. Hope to hear from you all soon – I’m totally envious at mail call of those who get cards or letters 
