hey all -- dawn, my sister-in-law had the baby while i was gone this weekend. baby boy, Blake Patrick. just sucks i couldn't be there for it. everything sounds like its going good though :)
so since wednesday we've been pretty busy. thursday night we went to a foreigner pub called Dave's place -- run by some british guys. melissa is doing research on mining companies, and we were told that that bar would be a good place for her to make some contacts because they all go there. every thursday at dave's though is a quiz bowl -- so we entered the trivia game. it can be on anything -- from british pop culture, to rugby, to movies. sadly, my rugby and british culture knowledge is limited so we didnt win (the only question i knew was that hugh grant's famous affair with the prostitute named divine brown.... thank you vh1). we came in 5th out of 8 -- i guess not a bad first showing.
friday night, we went to another club called oasis. we had previously met the woman who's going to be teaching mongolian to students at pitt next spring, her name is Ninj. we invited her to come out with us gave her the option of picking the place, so we ended up at oasis. its run by french people (which means the mongolian police don't like them very much apparently.....) and its got to be 100+ degrees in there. we stayed there for a good three hours or so until it was so hot we couldn't take it anymore. met a few of ninj's friends and other random people, including a guy from canada who has been travelling around asia -- it was a pretty crazy night.
funny sidebar -- mongolians don't sweat as much as americans do though i guess, so the four of us, Emily, Allie, Melissa, and I, were literally drenched by the middle of the night (it was a bit gross). ninj and her friends kept pulling out napkins and wiping the sweat off of us..... so disgusting. we walked home so we could dry off before the night.
saturday we woke up REALLY early to head out to erdenet. it was rainy and cold but there was a paved road to the Amerbarcalon monastery for 90% of the time..... that other 10% was quite an adventure though. we got stuck in the mud at least 4 times -- so after pushing the van a lot and fording a river on foot (yes that was an
the monastery was within walking distance of the campsite so we went right over. it was impressive, even after being at quite a few monasteries. this one was a bit more interesting though because they've broken away from mainstream tibetan buddhism because of a falling out with the dalai lama. he didn't approve of their main deity that they worship. we tried to get more info out of the monk showing us around -- but he wouldnt break and tell us more. munkhteej, who was interpreting for us, said that we need more training as a buddhist before we could be trusted with such "confidential" info. Amerbarcalon was so impressive -- maybe because there were less tourists around, or maybe because we saw it at dusk, but it had a more authentically mystic aura around it.
so the next morning we went to the mining site closer to erdenet city. it was impressive how big the mining site was -- although basically is was environmental carnage. i mean, i don't necessarily consider myself a tree-hugging "go green" all about the environment kind of person... but he outright told us that the company dumps all their detergent and quartz dust waste into the nearby lake. he also explained to us how the site used to be a huge mountain that they decimated into a huge valley. i dunno, obviously environmental ethics aren't that important to miners....
the actual mine itself was creepy. seriously -- i have never seen so many different ways to be injured or killed in that condensed of an area. huge machines, narrow staircases, boiling metallic liquids are just some of the noteworthy ones... i also felt like i was breathing in cancer as i was walking through the site. but oh well, made me pretty glad i hadn't decided to transfer to the engineering school when i was thinking about it my sophomore year.
we had lunch in a korean restaurant which was AMAZING. i thought i had lost any hope of liking korean food after my last experience but this completely renewed a love for it. then we started on a long journey back to UB and didn't get back til late at night. another awesome weekend in the countryside
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