Sworn In, Hanging in UB

So, we typed up a couple blog posts and saved them to our flash drive to bring to the Peace Corps office, but we saved them in Word 2007 and the computers here only have 2003. Instead of going back home, let me catch you up to date and we'll post those other ones tomorrow.

We've been in the capital since Sunday, a couple of days now, but before that, we were in Darkhan for a week finishing up our training and meeting our new supervisors. It's been busy and crazy here in UB, but it feels a little bit like we're on vacation because we don't fly out to our site until tomorrow, Thursday. We've been enjoying the more westernized circumstances here including nice restaurants and a variety of choices.

Today is our 3rd anniversary. We are planning to see a movie with some friends because the movie theater is just around the corner from the Peace Corps office. No clue what's there, but word has it, they're pretty new and the theater is nice. We'll give a full report.

We are officially Peace Corps Volunteers now after a cool swearing in ceremony attended by the US ambassador and some Mongolian dignitaries. In our welcoming ceremony in June, Mongolian children sang, played and danced for us, so for the closing ceremony, we were charged with doing the same. Each group of trainees had to have a dancer and singer/Mongolian instrument player, which was the highlight of evening.

Leslie and I sang a well known Mongolian love duet. Our two language teachers put us up to it and wrote down the lyrics. My host father taught me my part, and Leslie's mom taught her her's. We'd only sung it a capella until we got to Darkhan last week and planned on doing it without accompaniment, but we ended up singing to a karaoke backing that we thought was a little hokey. Hokey or not, the Mongolians couldn't have loved it more. When we got off the stage, we were given the star treatment with hugs, kisses and calls for us to take the show on the road. We were most surprised to find out that we'd made people cry, even Americans. The whole thing was incredibly surreal and unexpected, considering the high level of dancing and musicianship displayed during the event. I hope we can find a video of it from someone, because neither one of us remembers much about it due to nerves. In fact, the only thing I really remember was my legs shaking uncontrollably. Nonetheless, we were happy we didn't forget any words or miss an entrance.

A large party followed at our hotel with dancing drinking and overall joviality. It was the perfect way to end training.