tsagaan sar

today was the first day of the mongolian lunar new year. here it's called "tsagaan sar" which means "white moon". it's a three day holiday when people visit family and honor their elders. i had the privilege of going to my friend's grandma's today. we ate mongolian potato salad, mongolian meat dumplings, and some roasted sheep meat. tsagaan sar is usually a time when people are forced to eat dumpling after dumpling after dumpling. thankfully today there were many people visiting at the same time, so i was able to get away with only one dumpling. it was tasty, but i'm still thankful it was only one. :)

here's the roasted sheep rump sitting on the table.



this is called "ul boov" and it's a stack of bread like things called "boov". it has sugar cubes, nuts, mongolian butter stuff, and cheese curds on it. families put this on their table for the 3 days of tsagaan sar, and the number of layers shows how respected the family is. (at least that's how my mongolian teacher explained it to me, but it's very possible that i'm missing part of the explanation) it's always an odd number of layers. i thought that no one eats any of the sugar or nuts until after the 3 days of the holiday, but today some of the kids were allowed to eat things. i have a feeling the exception was just because they are so cute. :)

conference time

i asked you to be thinking of me and my fellow teachers during our conference. thanks so much for lifting us up. it was a great time of singing together, hearing 2 guests teach us from the Word, and spending time with other teachers. i didn't hear of anyone getting food poisoning, so thanks for thinking about us in that way.


this is my fabulous teammate aleta with me at the hotel where we have our conference.


the hotel is the tall white hotel directly behind the smaller white hotel with the green roof. the conference hotel is about 2 steps away from the chiang mai night bazaar and 2 blocks from the most delicious banana roti in town. :)


the hotel has an open air terrace on the fourth floor where we had dinner every evening. i loved watching the sunset over the mountains as i finished my dessert.


on my last day in thailand i went to starbucks and discovered this - a coffee jelly frappucino. it's a very, very good thing that i didn't know about it earlier in my time there or else i would have probably wanted one every day!

first few days in chiang mai

we took a rather luxurious bus from bangkok to chiang mai. chiang mai is about 9 hours north of bangkok, so we had plenty of time to enjoy the scenery from our perch on the top level of the bus.


there's a peaceful little cafe called the bird's next near the guesthouse where we stayed. they had fresh yogurt, homemade muesli, and fresh fruit for breakfast. yummy! i just had to take a picture because it's so beautiful.


in many parts of asia "squatty potties" are the norm, so i guess some people have been confused with western style toilets. haha

scenes of bangkok

the grand palace in bangkok. my sisters said this looks like it could be in disneyworld. i think they have a good point. :)



i have some amazing news about my ankle. i only have a partially torn ligament, and it doesn't need surgery. :) instead i just did a week of physical therapy at an incredible hospital in bangkok. these are the pants i had to wear every day during the therapy sessions.


i love all the bright colors of bangkok traffic.

bangkok, january 09

i apologize for such a long delay since my last post. i kind of left you hanging and you may be wondering if i made it back from thailand. :) well i'm happy to say that i made it back and had a fabulous time. i took a couple hundred pictures, but i'll just share a few of them with you here.

here is my boyfriend, jim, and me in seoul, korea. he lives in chicago, so we don't get to see each other during the semester. but...he was able to take a few weeks off work to meet me in thailand, and we were really happy to see each other. we both had a long layover in seoul, so we went into the city for the day.


this is my favorite teashop in seoul. i have always gone there when i've been in seoul, and it was a real treat to go there with jimmy. :)