Another fun week.  It was Tsagaan Sar this week so not much work in the office.  We started our celebration on Tuesday after noon when Miigaa and Bolormaa made us chicken bansh(dumplings) for lunch. 

 Then on Tuesday evening we went to Altan's home for our first tsagaan sar meal.  Altan is the lady we teach English to.  Besides buuzs, she served us beef bansh and a delicious vegetable soup.  This is Altan, her two sons, daughter-in-law, and grandson.  We had a lovely evening with her family.

 Then on Wednesday we dressed in the Mongolian jackets that Miigaa gave us for Christmas and went with
 all the other senior couples to a couple of homes for tsagaan sar.  They were the same ones we went to last year with the couples.  First was Batsengel and her Mom's.  This year they served this desert that looked like a cake but had the consistency of fudge.  It kind of tasted like the sour milk with raisins and sugar in it.  I only had a taste.

 There we were given these four sheep ankle bones.  They are used in games.  Each side is a different animal.  The flat side at the top is the horse, the its opposite side, the second one, is the camel.  The sides of the bone are the sheep and the goat.  On Thursday we watched people on tv playing a large table-top board game where they roll these bones like dice to see how many spaces they got to move.

 The second home we went to was the home of President Odgerel's grandmother and aunt. The grandmother is 89 years old.  She was one of the people who went on a hunger strike many years ago to give Mongolia religious freedom.  As she greeted us she gave us a kiss on each cheek which is a traditional tsagaan sar greeting from the elderly people of the home.

Last year I put a picture of one of the bread towers on the blog, but this one is taller and we learned a little more about it.  They are always an odd number of layers, this one has nine.  They alternate from happiness to sorrow, showing that we enter the world happy and leave happy and have times of sorrow and happiness in between. 

 On Thursday we went to Bolorsaikhan's grandparents.  He is a renown painter here in Mongolia.  The first painting is of his childhood area.  The one here is of a camp of Chinggis Khaan and his warriors.  The medal on her grandfathers jacket was given to him by the government as an honor of being the only one who has painted the World Wars.

 This was us with them in the entry hall of their apartment which they have lived in for 32 years.  All together we ate many buuzs and several bansh this tsagaan sar!

Then on Saturday morning we held a reverse MTC for these five sister missionaries that had completed their missions and were being released to go home.  They were a fun group and a joy to have come to do the career workshop.