Dial Up?!

Hello Hello Hello!
Ok. Much to say. Little time to say it.
First, internet connection is dial-up. That being said, I am writing to you all via copy and paste in a word document as Blogger loads. I may or may not get to password protecting this thing quite yet. And on that note, don’t expect pictures anytime soon. I will be traveling to a bigger city a little later, so I will try load that blog with pictures for you all.
Reason for said awful internet connection is that I am training in a town of 1,200. It is SMALL. There are 12 of us Americans training here… we make up 1% of the population. Ridiculous. We for sure stick out like sore thumbs here.
We are each living with a host family and attending language and TEFL training courses everyday. My host family is great. I have a mom, dad, and two little sisters. I live in a house right next to the school. My family owns 10 horses and 12 cattle. Which means we eat/drink A TON of dairy. Not so good if you are lactose intolerant. I just finally was able to communicate that milk makes me sick.
Speaking of communicating, Mongolian is HARD. The sounds are way different and the entire sentence construction is different from English. But I understand more and more everyday, which is pretty exciting.
Here are some quick bullet points for you all:
-I gave my monoglian dad a sox hat. He wears it every day.
-I have eaten goats head, sheep intestine, and more starches and carbs than I can handle.
-I have learned to play “anklebones” – A monoglian game involving the anklebones of a goat
-Stephen- I saw the giant statue of Chingiss! In fact he is not too far from my town!
-Mrs. Grabowski- I met Erica Peyton… such a small world!
- I have learned to bathe in a tumpun
- I herded cattle the other day
- I have played at least 3 hours of volleyball everyday
- Dogs here are MEAN. You cannot pet them. In fact, you throw rocks at them.

Oh and here’s a list of great care package ideas…

-Fruit leather/ dried fruit.
-Instant coffee!! I have much less than I thought I did!
-Lactaid
-Letters
-Pictures
-Chocolate (peanut M&M’s… oh my gosh)
- nuts
- peanut butter
- granola bars
- basically just any food stuffs at all.
- school supplies (markers / pens/ etc...)
- anything American my host family might like
- bobby pins!
- burned copies of movies or tv shows!
- books or a copy of a newspaper
- anything at all!
(PS - Britt... one of my firends here has a speaker thingy that plugs into your ipod and doesn't use battery. It's really small and cool lookin. She said she got it from Best Buy.... If you happen to see one of those...)

Hope everything is going well in the States! yay Blackhawks and Go Sox for the domination of the Cubs! All is right with the world!