I made it! No lost luggage, no missed flights, no late planes, in fact, everything seemed to go pretty smoothly over my 29 hours of travel. And staying up for so long made me exhausted by the time I arrived in UB at 11:30pm (local time)-- perfect for getting onto Mongolian time.
Arriving in Beijing was fairly impressive. The Chinese built a new international terminal for the Olympics and it's ultra-modern, super-clean facilities made quite the impression. The best part involved playing cards during the seven hour layover, however. As we switched from ERS to Gin Rummy to Crazy 8's, several Chinese construction workers looked on, trying to figure out the rules and cheering when Brian would win a slap in ERS.
We spent the day in UB today, mostly walking around the city. UB is a gritty city (we even saw a dust storm engulf the capital and then disappear in a matter of an hour). But it also has an international flair. Many people speak/understand English, and even more signs advertise exclusively in English. We met up with my friend from Penn who is working in UB this summer, and he talked about a large, vibrant ex patriot community-- people from many different countries.
Today, we visited a Buddhist temple with a humongous, gilded statue. Surrounding the statue were several golden cylinders. Each, apparently, contains a scroll with a prayer written on it. By spinning all the cylinders, I said several hundred prayers today.
Following our spiritual experience, we took a cab ride (in which we got into a small fender bender) to the Mongolian Natural History museum. Old, dusty animals filled the display cases, but I think my feet were hurting too bad for me to really enjoy the museum itself.
Tomorrow, we're heading off to Hustai National Park to see the wild, Priznowski (sp?) horses. We'll be spending the night there, and one of the Mongolian scientists at the National University here arranged for us to get a special tour of the park. It should be very interesting.
Alright, I don't want to rack up too high of a bill on this 80 cents/hour internet! Hopefully, I'll be able to blog one more time before heading off to the internet-less land of rural Mongolia.
2 comments:
sounds like u r having fun so far...chinese ppl clapping for brian lol. so 4 the buddhist temple did u have to take off ur shoes and all? hope u got picks of the sand storm that sounds cool!
ERS! Awesome game; it'd make sense that Brian's mean self is good at it. I hope you're both having a great time; eat some yak butter for me!
Love, Michael
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