In response to inquiring minds:
I do really like it here. We've been keeping pretty busy so there has been very little down time. It feels a lot more homey that I thought it would this quickly. The other people on my team and I are supposed to start taking Mongolian lessons which will be nice and make everything easier. But even then it's not terrible hard to get around in UB. We pretty much walk everywhere. It's a fairly small city and nearly everything we need is within walking distance. We've used taxis and the buses a few times but those are harder to navigate without knowing Mongolian. Especially the taxis, b/c those are mostly just regular people who pick you up on their way to earn an extra buck and if you can't speak Mongolian you will get ripped off. So far we've only lost electricity once and not for very long.
It is different, but so far the biggest difference is the language. The Mongolian women are very independent and very fashionable. Apparently they get it from Russia. I've been able to find pretty much all of the toiletries I was worried about finding. If we were in the country it would be a totally different story. There it seems to be mostly ger living, some towns, but few conveniences. And, a LOT of mutton. Greasy, fatty mutton. It's kind of nasty. Fortunately mutton is NOT a staple (at least for us) in UB. We've been going for a lot of business, lunch meetings recently so we've had very nice cuisine. But, even not eating at the most expensive places in town you can get nearly everything you could want. There's even a Mexican/Indian place here that I want to try - more for novelty than quality. I've heard it's not the best. We even ate at a North Korean restaurant the other night. It was freaking delicious. Mongolia is apparently one of the few countries where NK has an embassy as well. Once you get past the details like the cost of traveling and language barriers, it must be easy to travel as a Mongolian. They seem to have good relations with EVERYONE.
Anyways, I'm at the airport and running out of battery so I supposed I should wrap up.
NA: No Acronym
