The past couple days have been the Mongolian national holiday of Tsagaan Sar (white month).  The closest American equivalent might be Thanksgiving, but Tsagaan Sar emphasizes honoring elders - the children do all of the serving - and visiting family and friends.  Instead of the holiday being for one day or night, it's over multiple days and people spend the first two visiting family and then the next two visiting friends.  There are a lot of customs that I'll try to cover in a future post but for now, here's a picture of one of the gatherings we went to today with our friends' Seke & Eggie's family.

The big blue bowl in the foreground is the airag (fermented horse milk) and just beyond it is the whole backside of a sheep that you carve pieces off with the Crocodile Dundee-esque knife.

More pictures are on their way...