This week...

Hello everyone,

Last friday we went to the Grand Khan and then to a club called Face. It was a very Western-type club. We spent most of the night with Catherine who taught us many Irish drinking songs. After we got sufficiently drunk, we began to speak in French and Catherine and Jess were singing the Irish drinking songs half in English and half in French. Mathilda was very impressed that Jess' French improved greatly when she was drunk! They played Alejandro.

On Saturday, we went to Hustai National Park. On the bus ride that ended up taking 3.5 hours, we found out that there were only 6 horses at Hustai that were suitable for riding. There were over 40 of us. Along the way, we stopped by the side of the road for a lunch (though most did not eat the disgusting sandwiches), we played frisbee instead. The landscape was beautiful. When we finally arrived at Hustai (at 3:30... although we met up at 10), we watched a video which outlined all the amazing wildlife that lives in Hustai (including Lynxes!). We got back in the bus to drive to a point closer to the wild horses, the highlight of the national park. They are the rarest species of horse; there are only 260 in the world. The bus stopped at the bottom of an enormous mountain. We ended up having to climb the mountain. It was insanely steep and there were millions of crazy bugs. After we got to the top and Jess had run off with some people to chase the horses, it began to pour. It was the weirdest rain ever; it felt like it was slapping you. Jess got attacked by a thorn bush and nearly had an asthma attack. We then left for good after being there about an hour. By the time we got back we were starving (the only thing they fed us were these disgusting strawberry and blueberry pies) and ate at the Grand Khan. It was good but expensive. We were very sad because it was Catherine's last night. We stayed there for a while with Catherine, Scott and Mae.

The next morning we met the PA group at the square to head over to the Naadam festival. Everybody in the city was out and celebrating (Naadam is the Mongolian Independence day). We saw the opening ceremony at the stadium. It was really cool. The highlights were the horsemen doing tricks (shooting at bulseyes), at least 20 parachuters and thousands of balloons released in the shape of the Mongolian flag. After the opening ceremonies, we took a bus out to the countryside to watch the 5-8 year old age group of horse racers. There was music and traditional calligraphy, archery, kites and the best hot dogs ever! This was really fun until it started to pour (it has been a week and the rain hasn't stopped yet). That night we went to the Grand Khan to watch the football final which started at 2:30 a.m. and ended at 5:00. We did not make it through.

The next day we went to the 2:00 wrestling at the stadium with Mae, Ellie, Kelvin and Scott. Some guy tried to mug Scott, but Mae stopped him while screaming "oh no you don't!". It was hilarious. The weather was insane that day, pouring one second and blazing hot the next. We had an early night that night cause we were exhausted and needed to do laundry.

Tuesday we went shopping for our trip. We bought cool, intense hats that make us look like we should be on a safari or on an archaeological dig. That night we met up with Matt, Sunny, Paige, Evelyn and Kjell for a not-so-traditional Mongolian barbecue at BD's Mongolian Barbecue; it is a chain from the US.

Wednesday, there were no surgeries so we went home early. We took this opportunity to go get visa extensions. We went out to the immigrations office (really far away) with Amy (medicine one) who helped us, we would not have visas without her. We managed to get our passports back that day, when normally they keep them for a few days and you have to go back. Also that day, we found out that Amy is going into her second year of med school at Cambridge... no big deal. We then went out to dinner with Amy, Laurence, Scott, Will and this American Marine named Kevin. Kevin is amazing. He is the nicest guy we have ever met. He bought us all dinner (despite our protests) and paid for everyone the whole night; this is apparently the case with him every night. We met them later at the Sky Lounge, which is at the 17th (top) floor of this fancy building where the ground floor is all designer stores (Louis Vuitton, etc.) It overlooks the entire city,which from that view, is hard to believe is UB. Kevin bought us expensive wine all night and showed us the first chapter of a book he is writing. We had an amazing time. We also found out that both Laurence and Kevin are Masons. We all went to a club called Strings, where they had a live band that sang great music all night. We danced a lot.

Thursday we had to be at work early (difficult after our late night) and met Laurence for breakfast at Cafe Amsterdam and went to the hospital. We saw two cool surgeries that day; a sympathectomy (removal of a nerve on the heart) and a cholecystectomy (removal of gall bladder due to gall stones). Most of the day was spent with Laurence and Cameron. Laurence, who is a 5th year med student (med school is 6 years in the UK), explained us signs and symptoms of all kinds of medical problems. That night we had dinner at home with "mommy" and Ingu. We have trouble remembering our host mom's name so amongst ourselves we refer to her as "mommy".

This morning, our doctor was doing phlebectomies all day and since we have seen so many of those, we decided to watch cataracts surgeries instead. We gave our doctor the medical tool donation. He was ecstatic. He gave us tomato juice and choco pies. We were happy that he was so pleased. This afternoon we exchanged more money and got the last few things for our trip. We did some laundry and packing and then went to The Bull, an Asian hot pot restaurant, for Amy and Patrick's goodbye dinner. We also had to say bye to Kjell and Mae. On our way to dinner we got caught in a wind storm of dust. Now we are at an internet cafe since our internet has been down forever at home. Tonight we are going to the Grand Khan and then to Kevin's (the Marine) apartment for a party. Also Scott may be deported since he screwed up his visa so he probably can't come on our trip.

Sorry for the lack of funny stories, we didn't have internet and it took us a week to get to an internet cafe so we forgot most of what happened. We will write down stuff while we are in the Gobi so we don't forget.

Bye bye for now, will write when we get back (after next Saturday).