First Contact

June 2010

The day I arrived at Bagakhangai and meet my family was awkward to say the least. The trainers preformed a skit detailing what would potentially occur during the first meeting with your Mongolian host family. The skit consisted of the American walking in, being placed at a table with lots of food, instructed to eat the food, and once finished eating, instructions for sleeping were given by the host family. And that is exactly what happened the first night I arrived to my host family’s ger.

I also gave them some gifts I bought in the States before I left. A box and beach sandals and a bag of sand (btw, the sand bag broke a bit in my suitcase and I’m still finding sand in the bottom every now and again) is what I brought them. They throughly enjoyed the gifts, even though they probably didn’t know exactly what they were and I couldn’t find a literal translation in the English-Mongolian dictionary. Well, so far they’ve been a great host family. They own a food delgur (food store) and they typically feed me food solely from their store (I suppose they don’t like to shop at other delgurs or something). They typically feed me the same thing in different forms: pasta or rice with potatoes, some veggies, and a nice hot bowl of cuu te (milk tea). I am slowly adjusting to the new diet. I haven’t had too much of anything strange to me, like goat intestines or cow stomach; some of the other trainees have told me horror stories. All is well on my front.