Final week in Mongolia :(

Hello everyone,

On Friday morning, we were exhausted from the night before and decided to take the day off from work and go to the orphanage instead. We met up with Laurence, Will, Olivia and Scott for breakfast and then headed over to the orphanage. It was fun as usual. The kids are so cute. Jess was very proud of Mathilda, who was engaged with the children and even playing hide and seek with them. There were two US marines (not Kevin, he went home to Hawaii) who were playing with the kids too. One was playing guitar and the other gave his giant marine boots to one of the little kids, who put them on and was walking around in them. Mathilda and Olivia attempted to put up a curtain, but failed and left the job to the boys. Jess' favorite kid was depressed and she also failed in trying to cheer him up. Will, Scott and Thom had been trying to fix a table for over an hour, without success, when a little kid came along and fixed it in a second. Later that day we went for coffee/tea with Amy and Crystal. That night we had a quick dinner with Amy, Laurence, Scott and Will and then walked them to the train station. They went to the north of Mongolia for a week.

Saturday morning, we went to the Dream Hotel spa. Although the name makes it sound a little trashy, it was actually really nice. We got an hour massage, 40 minute body scrub and sauna all for 20000 tugriks; roughly 14 Canadian dollars. It was amazing, especially the 3 layers of skin that were removed, including the layer of dust left over from the Gobi. Then we went to the Projects Abroad weekend activity which was a basketball game. Obviously, we sat at the side and talked. We met some new volunteers; Zee from the Netherlands and Joan from the US. We went with them, Olivia and Lena to Cafe Amsterdam for lunch and then met up with more volunteers at MB's for a beer. We then went to an Indian restaurant, Hazara, for dinner. It was really good. After that, we went to Lena's apartment with Olivia, Jessica (from Windsor, ON) and Matt (from Manchester) to watch a DVD that we had bought for 2 dollars (The Last Station) because her host family had gone to the countryside. On our way to Lena's apartment, Jessica got hit by a drunk biker in the middle of an emotional speech. She was okay and thought it was really funny. When we got there, we accidentally got locked in the living room. There is this girl who rents out a room in their apartment and she came home. When Lena heard the door opening, she freaked out that she had people in the house and told everyone to hide. Everyone, realizing that we were 6 people, one of us being a 6 foot 2 guy, were not going to be able to hide. We look over and Lena is hiding. We explained to her that they would still find 5 foreigners in their bedroom/living room and that, considering it was her house and she was allowed to be there, it was ridiculous for her to hide. The girl who lives there hates Lena because one time, Lena called home and asked to speak to "the girl who lives in the room", when it was actually her on the phone. The girl called Lena's host mother and told her that Lena had lots of people over for a party and had locked themselves in her room. Lena got an angry text message from her host mother saying that she was coming home. We all left right away. Everything worked out with her host mother, but it was super funny while it lasted.

Sunday morning, we met Olivia, Lena and Hannah for lunch at Narya Cafe. It was really good. We met Zee at the State Department Store and we all went to the Winter Palace of Bogd Khan; a museum/monastery. We went for an early dinner at our host grandmother's house. The cute kid was there and we had a really good time. We saw pictures of Ali's prom when she went on an exchange in Alabama. After, we went for another dinner at Marco Polo, a pizza place, for Jessica's goodbye dinner. It was really sad. In the Lonely Planet Mongolia the description for Marco Polo says that "you shouldn't let the kiddies wander because Ulaanbaatar's most notorious strip club is right upstairs."

Today, Monday morning, we went to work. We saw a few surgeries, the best one was a reconstruction on a kid with a cleft palate. Jess got to bathe a sick baby in the PICU, she enjoyed it a lot. We helped with taking temperatures and adjusting monitors. Mathilda had a special moment with the cleft lip/palate baby (not the one from surgery, the one in the PICU). The baby has some neurological problems that make it difficult for her to track her eyes. We met Lena, Olivia and Zee at Cafe Amsterdam after work. We all went to Projects Abroad together to try to claim some money for our visa extensions and also to help Olivia complain about her host family. Basically, she sleeps on the floor of the living room where the 2 year old demon-child pees, poops and chunders (UK word for vomit). They use the same rag to clean it every time and just use water. The kid has a personal vendetta against Olivia; she pulls her hair, steals her phone, broke her charger, etc. Olivia has a phobia of raisins (we make fun of her a lot), and the kid spat a chewed up raisin in her drink (that was the final straw). The family lied to PA and told them that the room they sleep in with a bed would be Olivia's room. Olivia is the nicest person in the world and would never complain about anything, so she didn't say anything about her situation. Everybody in PA is guaranteed a bed and their own room at the very least. Also, she has no money left and has been living off 5000 tugrik for the past week (3 dollars). So we went with her to try to get some money out of PA as compensation. After a few hours, they gave her 20000 tugrik and told her that she should call when she4 gets home (Wednesday) and get some more money back. After PA, we went with her to buy her food for the 9 hours she will be spending in the airport in Seoul. She was extremely reluctant to accept our food (which only came to 2600 tugriks), but was eventually grateful. She plans to hide it very well from the demon child. Tonight, after we had dinner, we made pancakes with our host family with real Canadian maple syrup. They loved them. It was a really difficult task to find baking powder in Ulaanbaatar though, we had to go to a special store that only sells European goods; we bought Backpulver from Germany.

Looks like we will be able to manage one more post after this before we leave. See you all soon!