Saturday, August 30, 2008

MONGOLIA

Big sky country. The sky here is HUGE and even though we're in the city if you look past the buildings you can see the hills and then a whole lotta NOTHING. It's all scrubby grassland...on the way into the city we drove past yurts and old buildings with paint chipping off, some with signs like "MONGOLIA BEST IRISH PUB" and "Happy Optical!" It's crazy. Apparently there is such a high turnover rate in terms of development that there are no street addresses...stores that are here one season are gone the next. Also, everything is in cyrillic (sp?) because of the years Mongolia was run by the Soviets. It's too bad they don't speak Russian, because that would expand my vocabulary to include "Please," "thank you," and "this is a slide."

Everyone here chews gum. In a really loud and obnoxious snapping way. They are also better dressed than me... a lot of women strut around in cute strappy shoes and leather jackets with big Gucci sunglasses. And here I was thinking I would be the flamboyant Westerner...har har!

The food situation is okay....Beef beef beef beef. With beef sauce. And a side of beef juice. I would looooove a fruit salad... the water here is not safe to drink (but Mongolians are immune) so that means nothing washed in water is safe..which is everything. This concerned me when I took my first shower today. Someone else had an interesting question: You know those water purifying-sticks that you wave in a cup of water and they purify it? Well, allegedly these sticks emit some sort of UV ray that kills every sort of living thing in the water. So Epiphany wanted to know, if you were sitting in a bathtub and waved the stick in it, would you die?

Think about it.

Okay, I am going to go get breakfast. More soon!

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Seoul, Man

















Friday, August 22, 2008

Sinusitis

I am writing this pre-departure, in my bed, at school. I have been temporarily foiled by what my urgent care physician calls ¨Sinusitis.¨ In my two hours at this wondrous facility, I also learned that recently a family of Vietnamese immigrants nearly died from eating wild mushrooms, the depreciation of the dollar is irrevocable, my doctor´s brother lives in Japan and grows bonsai trees. Remarkably, I must have looked receptive to conversation, so I had a coughing attack and was finally prescribed my antibiotics.

In the course of the summer my neighbors seem to have obtained geese.

Oh, Tacoma!

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Packing for Asia!

So today I am packing for Asia and it feels like playing Memory with 5 decks of cards. I have packed everything imaginable, from duct tape to goggles. JUST IN CASE. 

There's a lot of thunder and lightning outside. dun dun dunnnn...

Here's a joke: How many Northern Californians does it take to screw in a light bulb? Hella.