Hiking and other randomness

Hi all. Ben here again with another thrilling installment of Mongoliosity. Nearly a week has passed since my last update. No, I have not forgotten Mongoliosity; far from it. Rather, I have been so flambazzlin' busy that I haven't been afforded one opportunity since then to sit down and write another post. "Why," you ask? Meetings. Truckloads of them. Giant, steaming piles of meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting. In all of my years as a participating member of human society, the cumulative number of meetings I attended prior to Mongolia pales in comparison to the number of meetings I've attended since arriving here. We have met with EVERYBODY in town who has even the slightest relevance to the mining sector: World Bank, UNDP, Open Society Forum, Responsible Mining Initiative, Ivanhoe, LLX, MONAME...the list goes on. I feel as though I have been buried under a landslide of important information. And I love it, don't get me wrong! It just leaves me with very little time for blogging. Or anything else at all.

Fortunately, however, the meetings do stop for the weekends. (The work doesn't, though, as I'll describe in my next post). Saturday morning, Sarah, Burt, Mark and I hopped aboard the #7 bus and took it out past Zaisan to the penitentiary. This sounds morbid, yes, but the penitentiary is simply the final destination on the bus' southern route; we hiked around it and were soon up in hills. Words can scarcely describe the beauty of an otherwise unremarkable pastoral scene after having spent three weeks mired in the smog and dirt that coat UB. The air was so clean, we wished we could somehow capture some and save it for a particularly hazy day in the city. Further up the northern slope was generously vegetated with fir and birch trees, a variety of wild grasses, and a thick moss that carpeted a number of large rock slides. The area was also dotted with a variety of wildflowers, animal skulls, and, further down in the valley, styrofoam. Lots of styrofoam. Bizarre. While we rested atop a craggy ridge, the rain began to pour unexpectedly. Since I have no real rain gear to speak of, I used my umbrella to shield myself. Mark and Sarah mocked me, but Burt affirmed my choice--and all the more emphatically when everyone else discovered that they were soaked and I was not. As we returned through the valley, we passed by the Bogd Khan Ger Camp Resort, which was fully equipped with ritzy gers, statuary depicting fierce Mongolian warriors and their faithful beasts of burden, and a real-life two-humped Bactrian camel. Which I took lots of pictures of. Because it was freakin' cool. Also on the way back to the dorms, we stopped by a park at the base of the Zaisan hill, which featured an impressive 40 foot buddha with an exterior gilded in gold leaf. (Or so we think). Incongruously, at the north end of the buddha park, a couple of Mongolian ladies ran a stand selling American Hot Dogs coated in thicks layers of breading, french fry chunks, and grease. I passed on my chance to eat one, incidentally. Additional incongruity: east of the buddha park was a monument featuring a Soviet-era tank, and further that direction, a massive driving range.

Upon arriving back home, I made two glorious discoveries: (1) Laura and Kylie had returned and would be here for a week (!!), and (2) WE HAVE HOT WATER! Reveling in this second discovery, I took my first hot shower in over three weeks Saturday afternoon. Heavenly.

A last note: a new TAF summer associate showed up on Wednesday. Thank goodness, she's a West Coaster. She is cool and has been very gracious in entertaining us this past week--regardless of whether she's being subjected Thursday trivia at Dave's Place (fun) or Friday's round of the board game Settlers (mind-numbingly painful, dragged on hours longer than it should've).

I have run out of time for this post, so my recounting of yesterday's parliamentary election will have to wait until later. No worries--the experience deserves a post dedicated solely to itself. I'll get on that as soon as I can.