Happy Thanksgiving!

WARNING: In the true Peace Corps spirit, this post will feature lots of "food porn."

We are just coming off of a 5-day Thanksgiving celebration and it was glorious! It started Wednesday morning with a birthday brunch for Justin at Brian's house. Chef Brian put his years of restaurant experience to use and cooked up Swedish meatballs, onion hamburgers with a Bernaise sauce and pesto-flavored grilled onions, and a vegetable tortellini soup. We rounded things out with a pan of fresh brownies -- which we had to completely finish off since we needed the pan later to make dinner. Along with a champagne toast, we also gifted Justin his own dombra (sort of a Kazakh guitar). He promises to learn a song before his next birthday.

That Wednesday night we were true to our word and we (*ahem* Ashlee) put together a magnificent feast: yams, greenbean casserole, chicken soup, biscuits, corn pudding, mashed potatoes, pecan squares, apple crisp, pumpkin pie, and freshly mulled cider. She was pretty much baking/cooking for two days. She swears she enjoyed it. It was a really great night -- lots of food, drink, and laughter all around, including what Ashlee has described as the funniest moment she has ever experienced in Mongolia: something to do with a goldfish and the game Apples to Apples.

On actual Thanksgiving day, after a breakfast of leftover apple crisp and pumpkin pie, we boarded a plane and headed to UB. Our official reason for going was to receive our annual flu shot, but since the shot only took about 15 minutes, we had the rest of the 5-day trip to ourselves to just hang out. On Saturday we gathered together with the majority of PCVs and office staff members to celebrate the holiday. It was an awesome feast -- there was so much food, including the best macaroni and cheese in the world! Sadly, Harry Potter was NOT playing in UB, but hopefully we can catch it next month.

We just got back to Olgii this morning -- right in the nick of time, too. A wicked dust storm has been raging all day. I'm sure that if it came a little earlier (or our plane left a little later) we would have gotten turned around. As it was, the last 15 minutes of our flight was a little dodgy. But yeah, we're back at site and ready to tackle December. We have already busted out our Christmas decorations, music, and holiday movies.

We've also already given each other our Christmas gifts: we're headed to Thailand in January! Woo hoo! We will actually be in Thailand for two weeks, but with some extra days in UB on either side of the trip, we will be away from Olgii for almost four weeks. Not too shabby, eh? We don't have an exact itinerary yet, but we are both envisioning lots of time on the beach and definitely lots of pad thai. Our good friends (another married couple here in Mongolia) will also be in Thailand around the same time, so we're planning to meet up with them.

Again, happy Thanksgiving! Here's some pictures.

Thanksgiving brunch at Brian's.

Note the Kazakh-ness of his table display with his selection of teas, bread, and veggies.

The old man blowing out his candles. Don't ask me why I'm making such a weird face. Maybe it's because I really wanted to eat the brownies. Or maybe it's because I just realized that I, too, will be entering my "late 20s" soon.

The Thanksgiving spread! Hmm, five people but three bottles of wine and one bottle of vodka...

Justin and his dombra.

This was right after the "funniest moment in Mongolia" that I mentioned earlier.

Monopoly Deal! It might not look like it, but we REALLY love playing this game.

Apple crisp for breakfast!

The Peace Corps feast in UB.

One of the highlights of the PC feast was the fact that the banquet hall had all these comfy easy chairs. There were hands-down the most comfortable chairs I have ever sat on in this country.

Decorating our little tree. Christmas, here we come!

School Break

We're done! It feels good. After the last few touch-ups dry, we can remove the improvised barrier of shoddy furniture and let the kids have at it. I'm a little worried about this -- we have already noticed a number of pen marks and a few scratchings done at the hands of students. I'd like to think that they were just trying to help us in their own way. Time will tell I suppose.

In other news, I've been on a school break for almost two weeks now. That's two weeks of sleeping in, avoiding the increasingly bad weather outside, and lounging around the house watching my new favorite show, The Wire. That's not to say that I have been entirely lazy: I did finish up and officially submit my grad school application. I'm only applying to one program (cross your fingers!) and I'm not expecting to hear anything until the spring. If I never mention it again it's because I didn't get in, so don't ask! Ha.

So yeah, November is pretty much a done deal for us. We just got word last week that Peace Corps needs us to make a quick trip back to UB for some flu shots next week. This effectively threw a wrench into our plans of traveling to Hovd this weekend to celebrate the West's Thanksgiving, but it actually may have changed things for the better. Now the plan is to fly into UB on Thursday (Thanksgiving!) and return to Olgii the following Tuesday. This means that in addition to catching up with our PCV friends from around the country, we will get the chance to re-supply, eat at our favorite restaurants (Hazara!), and we will be able to attend the Turkey Day feast that Peace Corps puts on with the help of the embassy. To make the deal even sweeter, there is a possibility that the new Harry Potter movie will be playing in UB! We're trying not to get our hopes up -- too much.

The five of us Olgii PCVs will also be having our Thanksgiving dinner this coming Wednesday. Because of the generosity of our families and their loving care packages, we have the means to make chicken & dumplings, yams, greenbean casserole, pumpkin pie, corn pudding, pecan squares, and apple crisp among other things! It will be a glorious day of food. Wendesday will also give us the chance to celebrate Justin's birthday. Unfortunately because of our last minute trip to UB and the fact that Adi and Brian were already going there for training, Justin will be all on his lonesome for his actual birthday (the 29th). We'll find a way to make it up to him -- perhaps by leaving him a key to our apartment with access to hot showers and all the Thanksgiving leftovers.

That's all for now. 8 more months!

PS - Our sitemate bonding is still going strong. We have been meeting regularly for dinner twice a week (one home-cooked and the other at the Turkish restaurant), Thursday is Monopoly night, and we just had our second Olgii brunch this past weekend. It was a huge success. We made eggs benedict complete with hollandaise sauce, bacon, and potatoes O'Brien. We even mixed up some bellinis for late morning cocktails.


The guy on the right is a couch-surfer from Poland who was staying with Brian.

PPS - Adi, our soumer (soum is the Mongolian word for village), made a trip into town the other day. She brought a friend with her.

It's the Great Pumpkin!

I had a small belated Halloween celebration with my 8th grade classes today. I passed out a bunch of Halloween candy (smarties, twizzlers, dum-dums, and starburst) that the Hawleys were nice enough to send (thanks!) and we watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. The kids seemed to really enjoy it. They did think the part with Snoopy acting as the "WWII flying ace" was a little weird -- especially when he was crawling through occupied France, but I think that's a bit weird, too.

I also taught them the little rhyme that goes along with "trick-or-treat." They found the idea of making someone smell your feet hilarious and they were pretty embarrassed when we translated what it means to "pull down your underwear." Oh, Kazakhs.

I was definitely a lot more comfortable showing the Charlie Brown movie than the Simpsons episode Justin and I showed to our English club last week. We both totally forgot that the Simpsons could be a little (or a lot) inappropriate for school. It was one of the Halloween specials (Treehouse of Horror XVI) and there was an extraordinary amount of violence -- it kept getting worse and worse. We could both only imagine what the kids told their parents they learned that day in English class.

Anyways, everything else is going well. Our teacher's workshop is still going strong. A few of the teachers expressed a desire to practice their English outside of the classroom, so we introduced the idea of a "happy hour" in which anyone interested can meet at one of the local restaurants for a drink and casual conversation. Today is the first such meeting. A couple hours ago I got a text message saying "Hello Teacher! What time is happy time today?" Ah, it cracked me up. Wish me luck at "happy time!"

Here's a few pictures from today:

I guess it's difficult to see, but I asked the kids to hold up their "American candies." Thanks again, Hawleys! Oh yeah, these French maid outfits are not costumes -- they are the standard Mongolian uniforms for girls. Don't ask me where they came from...

This is my counterpart, Anar, wearing the mask that Ashlee brought back from UB. She got a real kick out of using it to scare the kids. Since this is my last Halloween in Mongolia, I told her she could keep the mask -- which made her really happy.