Christmas 2006

Like I said before, I'm in UB from Christmas through New Year's. There were a lot of people in for IST and a Christmas party at Star Apartments, but now I'm on my own until Nasaa gets here tomorrow. I'm going to a friends apartment to celebrate New Year's Eve Eve. Then, Nasaa and I will go to Sukhbatar Square to see fireworks and drink champagne. I'll have more on that later. Christmas in UB this year was fun. We didn't have any seminars or anything so I just came in two days before and hung out. My friend Rob's parents and girlfriend came in from the states on the 26th. They (his parents) are very understanding. Anyway, he had a hotel suite for an extra couple days and I got to stay there. The UB Guesthouse can be a bit much when it's full of volunteers. Rob's parents even took a group of us out to dinner at this nice Indian place called Hazara. I love visiting parents. I also love the new duty free shop they opened right down the road from the Peace Corps office. They really knew what they were doing.

Vita and I had a good meeting with Ken, our country director, and Miriam, our new programming and training officer, about the business guidebook we're putting together. They're really enthusiastic about it and want to roll it out at PDM. I think that's good, because some volunteers will be doing income generating projects. They told us to show it to a Peace Corps guy in D.C. who is in charge of all business operations. I'll post more about that next week when we're ready to send it off.

I'm all set to go to Vietnam with my friends on the 20th too. We bought the tickets and are waiting for our visas to go through. We'll be going to Saigon and Cambodia and hopefully get a few dives in on an island off the coast. After that, I'll be doing some new catalog work and getting ready to go (almost) home to my brother's wedding in Canada. I think next year will go by fast. Stay tuned.