The Start...

So far things at site are interesting and going all right, it’s very different here.  Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia is huge, very Russian in style.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the city, they use coal for power, so it was pretty polluted.  The Mongolia language is crazy, very similar to Russian, I can’t understand a thing, I walked around the city for a day and I was a total tourist, I had to go letter by letter to check street names from my map, completely different alphabet.  The city is pretty safe, and becoming more modern.  Loads of construction occurring, and a few really nice designs have been constructed in the last year.

I’ve had two days at site.  Camp is alright, they have a pizzeria, a café, a bar, basketball courts, tennis courts, volleyball courts and two gyms.  My room is right in the heart of the camp, right beside the basketball courts.  I have my own room with shared shower/bathroom facilities, very college residence in style.  The room is fine except for the rock hard bed, I may bring back a comforter, not sure.  I’m in an all girl building, men are not allowed and they have guards at all entrances, so I feel really safe here.  The people at site are very friendly and laid back. Actually I was shocked on how laid back the people are here.  I’m still getting my barrens down, I got lost yesterday trying to find the cafeteria, ended up at a completely different side of camp, but eventually found my way back. Camp is huge, 10km by 8km.  I’ve been told on our Sundays off they have buses come in and we can visit some of the local villages in the area, sounds interesting so I’ll probably do that on my first Sunday off.

The weather here is all over the place, yesterday alone, we had 30+ Celsius (hot), a lightning storm with hard rain, a dust storm with 16m/sec winds, etc…  I’m lucky I brought all different types of clothes.

We are currently having a water shortage, so absolutely no hot water, my shower last night was very cold, I literally showered each limb one by one.  It will be like this for atleast the next 4 weeks, so I better get used to it. In my room they gave me two cases of water, it’s very easy to get dehydrated.

Anyways, that’s it for now,

Sabrina from the middle of nowhere J