We're in Mongolia!

How surreal! I feel like we're away on vacation and we'll soon be getting back to Rochester in a few days. But, that's not the plan. We are making our new home right here in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. I have many things to blog about, but I'll just stick to a short update right now. I have pictures in my camera aching to be put on the blog, too, but alas, I must also sleep.

There's a ton of things to do to get settled. This whole week has been "adjustment" week. We've been to many different markets. Remember, we only brought six large suitcases and three small ones with us. Hence, we had a few things to purchase to make our apartment a home...and to stock our bare "Mother Hubbard" cupboards! There is a wide range of stores and the staff wanted to expose us to our options: "flea market" style where there's a different vendor in each booth selling their different items; mini markets sort of like a Kwik Trip or the "Just Rite Grocery" in Rochester; bakeries where homemade breads plus packaged items (think cereal) are sold; and then a few modern grocery stores that are many stories high and have groceries as well as household items, clothes, etc. This is certainly a different culture with much to get adjusted to, but we've been pleasantly surprised by many things...one being that we have so much more veggies available at a certain "flea market" than we had originally thought. I've actually purchased lettuce and tomatoes this past week and I didn't think I'd get that until at least June or July!

We've adjusted to the time change quite well. We have taken a supplement from the health food store called pycnogenol during the day, and melatonin at bedtime. I don't know for sure if it was what helped, but we seem to have adjusted faster than one of our teammates...but it could be many factors!

This week certainly hasn't been "routine", but as I understand it, the Mongolian day rarely starts before 10:00 outside your apartment. So, meetings, work, shopping all happens after 10. That's going to be nice because I can have a q.t., do a load of laundry, clean up the kitchen, get some stuff started for lunch or supper, and then go out the door. Our classes are something like 10:30-12:30 for language learning (all 3 of us learning Mongolian), and we will also have another class to learn how to teach with our organization. Then, when we start "practice teaching", that will be in the evenings from something like 6-9 pm, because we're teaching teachers who are teaching their own classes during the daytime hours. Our life schedule will be very different than what we're used to. We'll have to switch to be late night people!