Last week the students were off for vacation and the academic Olympics. While most of the teachers at my school participated in the Olympics, Brian and I took it as a chance to get away for a bit. Ulaanbaatar is a hard city to love with its horrible traffic, pollution, and overall ugly facade, but it has its bright spots with friends, restaurants, and super fast internet. We got to see several friends including our “little sisters” Zula and Tsendee

and former ACMS co-workers. We ate all sorts of glorious food including Indian, Hot Pot, pizza, Japanese and many cups of expensive but delicious coffee. We did a little bit of shopping (okay just me) and came home with 25 new books and 3 new games for school among other things. We also got much needed haircuts, visited the swanky new Peace Corps office, and visited the Zanabazar Fine Arts Museum. They have a relatively new display of 1300 year old wooden people and animals discovered in 2009 in Tov aimag which was absolutely fascinating. For those who speak Mongolian your can read about the discovery here.

A lot of our time, though, was just spent walking around, oogling at all the changes. The barrier around the Chinggis Statue at the parliament building was down so Brian was able to get his picture taken with him.

New buildings are popping up left and right and pleasantly enough, so are small parks and rest areas. Ulaanbaatar still has a long way to go to be a livable city, but it always pleasantly surprises me.

An ever changing view

Pollution makes for beautiful sunsets