First thing they say's "take off your shoes"

And they'll say they want your story, but they'll get confused
By all those words you use

I am writing to you from my new host sister Khulan's laptop. It's early on a Sunday afternoon and I'm still in my pj's effectively, with no plans of changing until before the ballet tonight (Giselle at the national opera theater, SIT likes us to be fancy like this). Yesterday I moved into my second homestay for the semester, a three-week one with a family in Ulaanbaatar. I'm still living on Peace Avenue, as it were. Good old Pax Av. . . but we have a car (A land cruiser with a canvas picture of trees on the spare tire that says something like, "We have to take care of our environment!" - Really.) and I believe I will be seeing more of the city because of it. Last night went shopping up the street that the US Embassy is on, except a lot further west. I like the clothes, except they are all too small and from other places so there's no real reason to get them here (China. America - saw United Colors of Benneton, Mossimo, of course Abercrombie in various boutiques around town). Also in that shopping area I saw a lot of Mongolian hipsters in skinny jeans, colorful sneakers and inventive hairstyles. I am tempted to get some velcro shoes here so I don't have to lace up my shoes all the time ever. Will keep you posted on that. I sure know how to keep you guys on your toes about my Mongolian adventures.

So this is a drastically different living situation than in the ger in Galuut Soum. My mother speaks English extremely well, as does my sister. Pops is less fluent but I can still communicate with him better in English than Mongolian probably. There's a lot less ambiguity in the day-to-day, and I'm very comfortable in my room and getting food out of the fridge and stuff, but kind of just sitting around and smiling cluelessly in the ger is something I miss a bit. Me knowing the rules makes me responsible to follow them . . . and yes, there are rules. I think that I am much less of an interesting novelty in this family as well - they have a 22 year old daughter who recently graduated from the University of Hawaii and is now working in Utah, so America is familiar to them somewhat.

Oh but it is quite cute because both of my parents are chemists (educated in Irkutsk) and we bonded over that a little bit. My dad showed me pictures from a business trip to Erdenet to look at the copper mines or something, and I properly identified a distillation apparatus and an atomic absorption spectrometer. Ha! Also last night Dr. mom had 2 friends over, both of which were also chem students with them 25 years ago. The woman is now a traditional musician of some sort and was very sweet. So I got to thinking about how maybe 25 years from now I will still be friends with my chem major crowd, and that made me prematurely nostalgic for the prelim parties, mathematica bashing and poster-stealing and things like this. SHOUTOUT TO BAKER LAB.

My parents are at the sauna all day and my sister is at a birthday party so there wasn't anybody to go to Giselle with me. I called my friend that I met at the American Center for Mongolian Studies and she's meeting me there, so that will be nice. Tomorrow we're visiting the Zorig Foundation together - last Monday met Oyun and Bayar, siblings of the late democratic leader Zorig who are v involved with it. Last week's lectures ("Politics, Economics and Social Change") were pretty incredible. Learned lots about history and current issues in a very stimulating way (having the secretary of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party come talk to us, for example. He brought a TV crew (perhaps it was unrelated in retrospect) for the English language channel with him, so we were all on TV and four of us were interviewed afterwards) and let's face it, I do love learning. I'm going to see if I can get some English-language material on the new election law and past political campaigns.

Had dinner with a friend from Cornell (Sam from the men's polo team who is currently doing acting and modeling in Japan, except now he's just traveling Asia until May probably and happened to be in UB, a lovely coincidence) on Friday at Mongolian's first vegetarian restaurant which opened 3 weeks ago. The people there were extremely eccentric - they were Mongolian vegetarians, for starters, but also kept dropping by our table with meditation tips and explanations of what vegan means in case we weren't sure. Sam said it made him think of the cult-owned coffeeshop on the commons in Ithaca. I haven't been, but I can imagine the parallels quite easily. I had fake chicken (toficken? faux-ltry?) and there was pumpkin soup and it was pretty packed with tourists by the time we left. Anyways that was a funny place, there are some ex-diehard veggies in our group (poor Lily hadn't had meat for like 18 years before she came here) who will frequent the restaurant I am sure.

Last item of (relative) note - went for a run for the first time in over a month on Friday as well. Nobody runs here, much less in shorts (it was gorgeous out. It is probably also gorgeous out today, but I am too lazy), but I stayed mostly away from stares by going out of town along the river that the Lion Bridge goes over. Except this turned out to be slightly sketchy in terms of no people and barbed wire and weird construction sites and stray dogs crawling under fences so I think I will rework my route or definitely have company next time I go out.

Bayaartai!