Thu 03/07/08 09:28

Just as things were going good I ended up getting sick. When we were leaving Beijing I kind of had a sore throat and a little bit of a cough, nothing too bad. As the train ride kept going the sore throat mostly went away and then my nose started running, and by the time we got to Mongolia I thought I had a fever and full out stuffed nose. I decided to go for a walk after taking a shower through the city. When I got back every joint ached and I had the cold shivers. So I headed to bed at about 3pm. It’s now 10 and I’m feeling better but still am feeling bad enough to consider not going the the tour tomorrow.

Mongolia: What can I say? It’s a dreary place. I don’t really mean to be negative, but there is a sense the people have a poor sense of priorities. For example, they have a large screen that has advertisements and music videos playing in the town square, this is pretty cosmopolitan, but the in the same place, there aren’t any sidewalks, just mud where a sidewalk will eventually be. The people here pretty much keep to themselves, so I haven’t had any chance to talk to any of them… it could be also that I’m not feeling well too.

This is an area outside UB. This is not what I was discussing about it being dreary, but it kind of does look dreary though. Those tents are called gers, and if I go with the tour tomorrow I’ll be staying in one for two days.

There is a monastery right next to our hotel room. If you look you can see some monks walking along. Later I was just sitting at the window, and watching the city when I saw some monks that looked really young carrying plates of what looked like food. The last monk had fallen behind and started to run to catch up to the others when he took a huge dive. I’ve never seen anything as funny. The food went flying and he stood there for at least three minutes wondering what to do. I wonder if he got in trouble.