Hello all, I am coming up on the end of my third week here in Ulaanbaatar, and we are entering into the weekend and festivities of the national holiday Naadam which occurs this Friday through Monday. Our plans are to travel out to the country to stay with the thousands of horse racers and their families before they, being 10-13 year old boys, do a 30 mile race. Nyamsuren has invited about 30 of our students to join us, so we will be a crowd of 40 people staying in gers (Mongolian nomadic tents) out in the country and watching the boys and their horses race across the open plains of this vast and intriguing country. 

Dennis and I are working hard in our classrooms, usually coming home tired and content with another day of laughter, confusion, and progression. My students are beginning to gain an understanding of my personality and teaching methods, which are changing and developing everyday. And although we are working like dogs (one of the many idioms we have taught), we are finding ways to discover new, exciting, scary, regressive and thankfully progressive things in this city. After meeting a group of students from Pittsburgh, we have been able to invite each other to events in the city. So far, we have participated in a rousing game of trivia at a local bar, experienced the first ever gay art exhibit in Mongolia, attended the opening of a rescued, ancient, wooden, Russian building, turned into a musuem, once inhabited by the famous Buddhist painter Nicholas Roerich. This exhibit was amazing, viewing pieces from students aging from 18-23 who competed for a prize by creating Roerich-inspired art. Here are a few of my favorite pieces:

This exhibit was exciting and fun.

Tomorrow, we are heading to the UB palace (a concert venue) to see Altan Urag, a Mongolian folk band. Here is a youtube video of a famous song of theirs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBNqY5pBU-4

I hope you all are well and I will update soon.

Kisses,

Lucy