We flew out of Murun on December 29 and spent until January 5 in UB. We stayed in the Shropes apartment as they had gone home and their replacement wasn't in Mongolia yet. It was great timing for us! We always enjoy our stays in UB because of the opportunity to spend time with the other senior couples. They are great people. Now we have the Richardsons, the Hunts, the Farmers, the Stewarts, the Gardners and the Woods serving in UB. We had dinner with several of them while we were there and had a chance to get to know the Stewarts and the Gardners since they have arrived since we left for Murun. Great missionaries--all of the them!
Behind the Sky store was this amazing ice sculpture display. It reminded me of the Yuki Matsorii in Japan! It was beautiful. They said it was incredible at night with the lights on it, but we were never over there at night so didn't get any night pictures.
While in UB LaNice worked on the Murun history, which took a lot of time. We also spent time with Sister Farmer getting trained on the new Family Tree program for family history, and also spent some time in the English office looking at teaching ideas.
On New Years Eve we met with some of the other couples and played games at the Byanzurkh Building until about 11:30, when we all donned our warmest winter clothes and headed to Sukhbaatar Square to watch the fireworks. The Farmers were sick so didn't go, the Woods joined us a bit later and the Gardners I heard just decided to go to bed. Apparently, Sister Gardner has a bad knee and didn't think she should walk down to the square. Anyway, in this picture are the Richardsons, the Hunts, the Stewarts and LaNice.
The festivities at Sukhbaatar Square were amazing. I was surprised there were not more people there, but it was about -30 so that may have put a damper on some. But Mongolians are used to that kind of weather so probably not!
This was a New Years Eve we will never forget. How many people have a chance to spend New Years Eve in Mongolia. Not many! But WE DID!
We are on the end, then the Hunts, the Woods, the Richardsons and the Clarks.
What a fun bunch of people to spend New Years Eve with!
The fireworks display was amazing. It was like the finale at the Stadium of Fire, but it went on for 15 minutes! And they were organized according to color and the type of display. It was spectacular!
Overall, we had a great time and, all things considered, we didn't even suffer too much from the cold! It was a pretty eventful New Years Eve celebration for a bunch of old geezers! The poster reads "New Year Good Congratulations" or some such thing! Truly, a New Years Eve to remember!
In the next few days we went shopping for grocery items that we had not been able to get while in Murun and so expected we wouldn't be able to get them in Choibalsan either. We bought granola, brown sugar, jello, curry, yeast, cake mixes, beans, taco shells, cupcake papers, and canned vegetables, other than peas, which we could easily get in any store!
Then one day Puje came and got us and took us and the Richardsons to the Cashmere Outlet store! What an amazing store! And the Cashmere was beautiful! And expensive! We shopped the sales rack and found a couple of sweaters for LaNice. She's getting a little tired of her clothes and we aren't even half way through yet! Anyway, there was some really beautiful items there--deels, blankets, scarves, sweaters, socks, leggins, etc. Here's what she ended up with.
We had a great visit, but then it was time to head to Choibalsan and we are ready to go. The air in UB is so polluted that we had to wear N95 masks several days and the missionaries who live there wear them on a pretty regular basis. Most of them have annoying hacks that they just can't get rid of! Some mornings it was so bad we could hardly see the Chinggis Khaan hotel across the street! So we were't too sad to leave that.
We were sad to leave Puje behind though! Just doesn't seem the same without her. But she is busy working on her visa to go to America. We hope that happens for her.
We flew out with President and Sister Clark and the Stewarts as they were going to Choibalasan for branch conference. The first plane we got on had a problem so after loading us on and waiting for about 30 minutes, they unloaded us to wait for another plane. LaNice entertained bored children in the terminal with ipad games. That really is a kid magnet. Finally the second plane was ready and we had an uneventful trip to Choibalsan.
Batbold was waiting for us at the airport when we arrived in Choibalsan. He had driven all of our stuff over so we could set up another apartment. What a job that guy has! I'm thinking he's not too happy about this idea of transferring senior couples. It takes him almost a week to get our stuff from one place to the next, and the middle of the winter is not a very pleasant time to do that. They roads were bad again on the way to Choibalsan, but they had sent our suitcases and other things by ground transport, so it wasn't quite so bad as the trip to and from Murun. There's more snow here than in either Murun or UB and the airport road was pretty drifted in. There are no mountains here and we are told the wind blows a lot. Guess we'll find out about that. Anyway, there were several cars stuck on the airport road so we just took off in the field to go around them. Fortunately, we didn't get stuck and were able to make it to our apartment just in time to drop off our travel luggage and return to the church for a baptism. That was a very nice way to be welcomed to Choibalsan.
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