trip to hahoorn

so i realize its wednesday and no one has talked about our weekend in hahoorn yet (spelling might be a bit off -- thats my best attempt)

we stayed at another ger camp. quick summary -- countryside = amazingly beautiful; van ride getting to the countryside = long and uncomfortable. about 2 miles out of UB, the road just stops. from that point on, you're driving across very bumpy, natural terrain. they're currently making roads around the countryside -- so the terrible thing is that you can see an actual road as you're driving along, but they won't allow you on it. so the ride basically felt like a roller coaster -- with a few stops when the tire went flat, or we got stuck in wet sand, or there were sandstorms. it was good for some laughs on the way there -- the way home was just painful. surprisingly enough, no one got car sick -- we must have stomachs of steel.

we get to the ger camp and there's just sand dunes everywhere in the middle of a grassy plain -- which is apparently an ecological phenomenon. we went hiking around on them and jumped down a few sand dunes (or pushed each other down them). then we went to a nearby lake to look around. then there was a torrential downpour. michael broke the door to our ger. we played cards with zula and solongo (two women from the mongolian international studies dept). also met some creepy russians. all in all it was an interesting night.

we wake up and go to the nearby monastery -- i thought it was fascinating, though apparently everyone else is slightly monasteried-out at this point. i guess they're experiencing a bit of tibetan buddhist overkill, but the place was pretty amazing. they charged $5 to take pictures, but i shadily took a bunch of pictures anyway when people weren't looking.

we left the monastery and went back to the ger camp to eat before we braved the neverending journey through a sandstorm back to UB. we didnt get back til pretty late, so everyone pretty much just crashed when we got back to the apartment.

regardless -- going to the countryside is completely worth the pain and suffering you have to endure to get there.