New Year Festivities

The following are a selection of photos from my New Year celebrations in Mongolia.

These first few are from my work's New Years Party (New Years here is like our Christmas; they even use Christmas carols and pop songs-especially those performed by Wham and Mariah Carey, and there is even a Mongolian santa-see photo below) to celebrate the New Year. This was a very special event for all, with prizes to be won. I am usually very unlucky when it comes to raffles but this time round I was fortunate enough to win something. And this something was a printer (!?!).

These next lot of photos are from New Years Eve on Suhbaatar Square in central Ulaanbaatar. There was a promise of the longest fireworks display in Mongolian history, and they did not disappoint. I went a bit crazy with photos, so this is just a very small percentage of those I actually took! The second photo is that of the President of Mongolia making his New Years speech. They didn't time it very well as the speech went past midnight.

Celebrating Christmas

Our Christmas celebrations in Mongolia began last Wednesday (21st Dec) with an AYAD intake 32 Christmas dinner and Kris Kingle. Ben cooked up a delicious spaghetti bolognese, my first since arriving in Mongolia, and we exchanged our KK gifts. Jessie made some amazing Christmas crackers/bon bons for the table, in which she enclosed caramello koalas and Mongolian camel key rings for us all!

The following evening we had our big AYAD Christmas dinner, including volunteers from intake 30, 31 and 32 (us). Our in-country management team made a lovely speech about how much they enjoy working with us. For us, we're so lucky to have a pair of such dedicated and caring people looking after us!

The night was filled with great food (spinach and feta salad, lentil salad, salmon steak and panna cotta) and great company. We played a few games too, including limbo, celebrity heads and decorating someone as a Christmas tree (I was a part of the winning time of the latter. For this we won a bottle of Mongolia's famous Chenghis vodka). We even got a visit from Santa himself. I received a couple of large parcels (thank you to my family and Luke) that I saved to open up on Christmas Day.

On Christmas Eve we all went to the Mongolian National ballet performance of the Nutcracker. It was the first time I had been to any professional ballet performance, so I thought it was good, although I did get lost in the storyline, particularly in the second Act. Afterwards we had everyone at Grandma's Flat (our apartment) for some delicious mulled wine.

On Christmas Day my housemates and I shared the morning together opening our gifts and eating a yummy big breakfast. Presents included an amazing Christmas banner (pictured below) from my niece Alle that she made herself, and some special homemade infused vodka (also pictured below) from my housemate Jess.

In the afternoon we shared a big Christmas dinner with around 30-40 other volunteers and expats living in Mongolia. Each of us brought along a dish to share: from rum balls to Chinese pork; from roast beef with jus to bok choy salad; from Tasmanian cheese to homemade Christmas fruitcake (both from the same volunteer who recently returned to UB from a brief visit home). Yum!

One of my favourite parts of the evening was when we sat around and sang Christmas carols together.

French-Mongolian Cheese Farm

Many of you are aware of my love for cheese. My siblings continues to make fun of me for choosing to visit the Cheese Factory (Cheese World) in Allansford as one of our weekend family activities when we were growing up. So when the opportunity to visit a French-Mongolian cheese farm about one hour and a half drive from UB here in Mongolia, I couldn't resist!

Before the bus trip (approximately -20 to -25 degrees)

The Mongolian country-side (view from the bus window)

The business specialises in making many types of French cheese. It was started by a French man who has been living in UB for a few years with his Mongolian wife. He and his family and friends made us a delicious lunch of cheese, cheese and more cheese in the form of fondu and melted cheese on baked potatoes.

I ended up taking home a small wheel of brie and a large portion of this one on the bottom-right. I'm hoping to get some of their goats cheese and cream that they didn't have the factory but can buy in UB (cream like we know it is particularly difficult to find in Mongolia).

The landscape by which the factory is surrounded is absolutely beautiful. The recent snowfall and the blue skies for the day made it even more amazing.