April has been busy...

April has been busy, so sorry for not keeping up on the posts! I'll try to be better, especially after getting all the Gobi stuff up... Think it's almost done.

Anyways, As far as reading, I have finished the second in the Dark Tower Series, "The Drawing of the Three", and also a MAGNIFICENT Salmon Rushdie book, which was perfect to read here, "The Enchantress of Florence". Ended up this "Enchantress" Was part Mongol. Yeah so it is a book that marvelously weaves together myth and culture and tales of West and East... Just incredible.

Now I'm reading "The Stand" by Steven King, and "A Lucky Irish Lad" by Kevin O'Hara (the latter is a wonderful birthday present from my awesome sister.)

Also, for those of you who don't have facebook, I have acquired a Mongolian name, complements of a student. It is  ганцэцэг, pronounced "gahn-tseh-tsek". It means "steel" or "strong" flower. :)

Last and most importantly, I have accepted admission at Vermont Law School for the coming fall!! I've even got a roomate and an apartment already! Really looking forward to getting back to school.

That's all for now! Off to shoe shopping in the market for Jaisri's wedding. Oh yes, I have a del!

"Gobi-ng Insane" A Tale of the Gobi, Part 2

Well, it appears I've misplaced my memory stick... :((( But I was thinking of some things I hadn't written about that are pertinent to that last post.

Tsengel joined us kind of last minute. He works normally in a mine in the south, and the deal is they work for a couple of months, basicly wayyy over time, then they have a couple/several weeks off. So he was back in Darkhan the weekend we were leaving. Friday morning, he called me to see if we could have a lesson. I told him we were heading out for our trip in a couple of hours, so it was impossible. Later, as I was writing a few last emails and talking to Jose before leaving, he texted me: "If it's alright with you and your friends, I'd like to join you on your tour. I'm ready to leave." I checked with the others, and told him it was fine, but at that point we were leaving in 1 hour, and he'd of course have to pay... He was like, oh yeah that's fine... So he joined us!

This ended up being really nice. It meant Marik wasn't the only Mongolian who spoke English that we had with us (our driver spoke only a little German). That way, he could help interpret directions... among other things.

So the complication which made everything... a little crazy and more stressful and less rewarding than we had anticipated... was this:

As I may have mentioned, Marik is one of Steven and my neighbors, and him and Steven became friends through a boxing class. We hired him because he said he could take us on the trip for less money than the tour company, and he really wanted to show us his country. We thought that if we could trust him, this would be a really cool experience to be given a tour by a friend. We kind of forgot to think of whether he actually knew about the places. We also made the explicit choice to trust him, knowing he'd never organized a trip of this type for so many people. He had done it for one or two other foreigners, but these guys had lots of money, whereas our budget was super tight. Our choice to trust him obviously had its risks, and we felt we were prepared for that risk. He was very enthusiastic about assuring us that he could stay in budget and that he'd even pick up the extra if it got above the price, because the experience would be beneficial for him as a potential future job. We tried to itemize things out with him, but he was almost equally enthusiastic about not wanting to do that. This should have been a red flag, but we decided to go for it...

One more thing: from the first moment I met Marik, it was obvious to me that he was one of the most deeply convicted male chauvinists I've ever encountered. When he cooked and one of us girls offered to help, he tutored us in a manner that made it clear he considered our abilities and comprehension inferior. He said, "Womens must learn!" When he brought his daughter around at first, he obviously left her to be cared for by us girls when we were around. If his daughter was getting into something, or if we had finished eating and the table needed to be cleaned, he would immediately, commandingly call, "Ida! Nadine!" And expect us to address the problem. Nadine and I made a point of remedying the idea that we were around to care for his child, and in other areas, we made an effort to tolerate him, partly because he was Steven's friend.

So. The first night, when we stayed in Mandalgov, he came to Steven and told him that we'd have to pay extra because of the hotel where we slept that night. This of course immediately set us worrying after his previous promises of staying in budget. We expected such set backs as longer days or full hotels, such as we had encountered that day, so we expected him to think of that as well. That night, Nadine and I tried to talk to him and tell him there was no way we were paying extra because he had promised, blah blah blah... He was obviously distressed and was obsessed with avoiding talking to us about it. Within the next couple of day, he also expected us to pay for our meals, which we had expressly said was included in our price, among other things. Finally Nadine and Steven spoke to him, and Nadine asked him to show us the receipts for the day's expenses after each day. We were concerned he was literally going to just hoard all our money and not spend it on the trip. He refused to show Nadine the receipts, saying it was impossible. After she left, completely frustrated and infuriated, he told Steven he wouldn't talk to the women about money because "Women are irrational..." among other things. In the end, he and Steven did discuss each cost at the end of the day; meticulously wrote everything down, for Steven. In this way, we did keep track of all the money that was spent. 

"Gobi-ng Insane" A Tale of the Gobi, Part 3

A Ger in a small town in the middle of the Gobi. We passed through here on our drive south from Mandalgovi on the 3rd day out of Darkhan.

We stopped to ask for directions, and the boy who lived in the ger obligingly posed. At first, the concept of your driver and guide stopping to ask for directions is quite nerve wracking. However, this is apparently quite normal in Mongolia, since the roads are so... vague.

Day 4, finally arrived in Dalanzadgad, the capitol of the Gobi. ;) Our van wasn't the only one who needed a shower...

The Tree of the Gobi--this is apparently the oldest. Notice the specks of light? That's actually sand. Visibility was bad, as you can see behind.

I think this is part of the Altai Mountain range, just south of Dalanzadgad. We drove there for a little hike.

Love this picture.

Again asking for directions. As a result, a perfect picture of Mongolia.

Arrived in the mountains and hiked along a rough track covered by snow, into the hills.

The fellow tourists...

The would-be "guide"...

An outhouse. Yes.

Magnifique!!

Coming out of those mountains, the view to the South and West, I think.

Sunrise on the Gobi. Up early and headed North and West.

Can you imagine why we stopped?! haha and always glad for such an opportunity.

The rest of the family... the bare, dry scarring around the camel's hump is the family brand, claiming the camel as theirs. The sheep have blue horns for the same reason. The mountains beyond them are where we had gone hiking the day before.

Run home! The sun is up!

I <3 Camels.

A forest of the Gobi.

Shit happens to everyone. How many animals pooped here? (I'm sorry, I couldn't resist, there is just poop everywhere...)

Just beyond a small town built around a mine... "There's gold in these rocks!" So we stopped.

A desert of such amazing contrasts!

It's a baby camel!!

Brought a Cuban Don Pepin cigar, and smoked a bit of it on a lunch break, in the Gobi. It was delicious and epic!

 A ger where we stopped... to ask for directions... and then discovered a big leak in the oil. So we were set here for a while. I played with an ADORABLE puppy for a while, then me and the other girls took a stroll up the hill to the ovoo...

The view from the ovoo. The vastness is just amazing.

There are bones everywhere. Also piles of dead animals. I don't have any pictures of them...

Inside the ger while waiting for our car to be fixed.

One of our cheerful hosts and Brigitte and Nadine.

The details of the gers are exquisite.

A log cabin, for dad. :)

A cliff where... apparently some Mongolians shot some Chinese over it, years ago, then some Chinese shot some Mongolians over it... so now the Mongolians remember it cause they died here... yeah. This is where we took our group picture. :-P

Mongolian horses!!

Ancient Mongol graves... LOL who knows, maybe one is the Great G. Khan himself.

Some famous Mongolian waterfalls... I can't remember what they're called... But it was very impressive.

So much more to tell, and the internet is cooperating for once! But I should get this posted before a catastrophic mystery kills this lovely internet connection.

"Gobi-ng Insane" A Tale of the Gobi, Part 1

We set off for our vacation in this bus. Me, Steven, Nadine, and Brigitte, one of my Mongolian TOEFL students, Tsengel, our Mongolia-Khazak guide, Marik, and our Mongolian driver, Enkh.

Our traveling crew L-R back row: Marik, Steven, Nadine; L-R front row: Tsengel, me, Brigitte, and Enkhee.

We spent much of the trip in situations like this... "Getting stuck in ruts" was the theme of car travel... Helping others out, waiting for others to get out, getting help getting out, or waiting to get help getting out! To the left is Enkhee, our Mongolian driver, and the right is Marik, our Mongol-Khazak guide. Notice the yellow sash on the man on the right, pushing the car. He is in Mongolian dress and yellow is the traditional color for the sash. We got stuck at least 4 times in 12 hours of being on the road.

Driving south from Ulaanbaatar, this was the view once the typical steppe landscape gave way (see one of my earlier blogs for that view).

Mandalgovi, the Middle Gobi capitol... yeah, crazy! We stayed here for one night after around 12 hours of driving... sorry, bouncing and jostling over rough tracks absolutely gutted by the thawing and freezing abuse of spring. This is the hotel where we stayed, and our bus as we prepare to set out for the day:

As we made our way further south, the snow began to graudally disappear, and the vast emptiness of the desert began to swallow us up!

Haha... can you see the road? Sort of... those tracks... but where do they lead?! There is no sun in the sky! Somehow, the Mongolian instincts of our 3 Mongolian companions got us where we were going... By the way, each morning we were greeted by the van's single mix CD whose playlist began with  "Cherry, Cherry Lady", "Mary's Boy Child" (yeah, the Christmas song), and some other Abba songs... I will remember later. 

Herds of camels were sighted beginning as soon as we left Darkhan, and then, a few hours south of Mandalgov, we basicly drove through one! So we stopped for a photo shoot! These are not "wild" camels, because Mongolians say there are almost no wild camels. They are all owned by someone, set free to roam wild in the winter, and put to work under domestic supervision in the summer.

It was windy! (Nadine above, and to the right our dirty van, Marik, and Tsengel.)

Me!

The Gobi! Note, it's not sand, but gravel.

Me and camels... we're tight.