Well, hello again, everyone! It feels like forever since I last updated. That's ridiculous. It was only like a week ago. Okay, a week and a half. Sorry about the delay :( Still, what a week! I feel justified in feeling like it has been a long week because it traversed several countries. Well, two to be exact. Yes, this week I was a sophisticated world traveler and added one more country to my growing "been to" list (the count is 13 now, in case you wanted to know). The country, you ask? Mongolia!
Yes, Mongolia. Land of sheep and meat, desert and tradition, rolling r's and Asians. To help give you some context for what this trip was like, I will first give you an overview of some new impressions and ambiguous terms so that you will not be confused, I will not be redundant, and I will not repeat myself in explaining certain points that might confound you. Then I will go over a chronological explanation of the week. Never fear, if you feel like you are missing something in my initial explanations, they will be expounded upon in the rest of this missive. Just look at it as a whole picture!
The geography: If you have never been to Mongolia, looked it up in an encyclopedia (what's that?), or seen Babies, chances are that you don't know what it looks like. I will now enlighten you. It's a bit like Idaho, except twenty times bigger. Or perhaps, you might want to imagine a Settlers of Catan board, except instead of different resource tiles, every single tile is sheep. Okay, maybe there's one random tile that's ore(but really coal) and a few in the top right corner that are wood. But otherwise, it's all sheep, except in this modified version of Settlers of Catan there are also cow, goat, camel, horse, and yak tiles. In the very center of the board is a settlement that has been upgraded like four times, so it's huge. There are roads going directly east and west , then branching out a little bit, except the branched-out roads should be smaller and actually dirt, instead of the main road that is paved. Are you following? Then scattered around the whole board are random settlements (actually called settlements in Mongolia, except the Mongolian word is sum), some of which should be like a fourth of a settlement, and others which should be one and a half. So, that's pretty much Mongolia. A whole bunch of monochromatic hills, mountains, fields, valleys, which sort of look like the drive between Ogden and Boise.
See? Kinda like Idaho.
The animals: The population of Mongolia is about 3,000,000 (no, the people aren't animals, I was getting to that!). To give you perspective, there are at least 47,000,000 heads of domesticated animals. That's about 16 animals to each person living in the country. In between the stretches of vast land, there are herds of animals (and occasionally the lone cow that makes you think, Where do you belong?!) and then a random ger, but more often than not there's no ger and there are just some sheep hanging out. The road going out of Ulaanbaatar is pretty much just a strip of asphalt with a line in the middle sometimes, so the animals will just walk across wherever they want. It's great. I love it. I even saw some yaks! That was new. I've never seen one of those before. We forgot to get a picture though :( But you believe me, right?
The communities: So, about a third of these 3 million people live in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. We didn't see much of it on the way out on our tour, but upon further exploration, it was like, wow. How did this get here in the middle of nowhere? But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. The rest of the population either lives in the various settlements around the country or they are real nomads. No, most of them can't airbend and they were surprisingly unmusical, but despite those failings the nomads were still super cool. They live in these tent things called "gers", which are round, with kind of a lattice as a wall, then they have these spines coming up to the middle, and a window in the top, then supports and a stove in the middle. I suggest looking up a picture. Anyway, they are easy to pack up and leave within a few hours, so families will get a couple of gers, their herd of animals, and move around with the seasons and grazing areas. It's kind of seriously cool. The settlements are from 500 to 3,000 people, and groups of houses and building with fences around them. They're kind of mindboggling because we would drive for hours and hours through this sparse wasteland, over bumpy dirt roads until we were carsick, and then we would get to a place and there would be Snickers bars in the stores! How did they get there?! I think Mongolians have stolen some alien technology.
Here's an authentic ger
And here are some touristy ones.
The food: Can you say DELICIOUS. Also, MEATY. And perhaps, COLESLAW. And then, NO TOAST. OR EGGS. Seriously, we had some seriously good authentic Mongolian food. For one, they don't do the whole share-a-bunch-of-plates family style dining like in China, so it was sort of weird to have your own plate again. Also, most meals have two or three courses. They usually start with bread and jam, the former of which couldn't possibly be heated in any way. Why would they do that? It's the best thing in the world to have dry, cold, crumbly bread with questionable butter and probably-imported jam before you have the rest of your meal. Oh, I lied. They actually usually start with tea or coffee. We managed to get them to bring out a thermos of just plain hot water, which is actually quite satisfying. And it's so FREAKING COLD there that you have to have something warm to drink or your insides might possibly freeze. So, then they might have a soup course, which is kind of a hit-and-miss on deliciousity. It could possibly be a potato salad course, though, which is usually pretty good. Then, of course, they must have a meat dish. As mentioned, they have A LOT of animals in the country, so people mostly eat meat. Mutton is pretty good, and they have a lot of beef too. Pigs are actually pretty expensive to eat, and nobody has chickens. Like, legit Mongolians who eat scrambled eggs say that it feels like they're eating something alive! There were hardly any eggs on the trip, and the ones that we ate were lacking. The meat dish usually involves flour, and is accompanied by a delicious salad, whether it be green coleslaw, purple coleslaw, shredded carrots, or capitol salad, it was usually AMAZING. Funny thing is, we were staying in tourist camps where they try to cater to western diets (which I don't understand-- when people go to Mongolia, they want to try something new, not eat an imitation of their own food!) and often it seemed like we were eating food that could be found at a Fourth of July barbecue. Minus the jello.
Oh! Other thing is, you know how when you try to think of Mongolian food, your first thought (okay, MY first thought) is, "Mongolian Grill"? THE CAKE IS A LIE. The Mongolian grill that we know and love is actually completely American. And you know what the sad thing is? Americans came to Mongolia and looked for what they think Mongolian Grill should be, so they had to establish a "Mongolian" Grill place in Ulaanbaatar. People are eating the Mongolian version of an American food that claims to be Mongolian. How depressing is that? I'm sorry to say that that was where we went out to dinner on our last evening. It was about like the Mongolian Grill in Sammamish. But, we had lots of authentic Mongolian food on our trip, so I don't really feel bad.
The grudge: So, you know how Canadians are really happy when they are called Americans? Turns out, the Mongolians do not feel that way about the Chinese! /gets a maple leaf thrown at her head/ Okay, okay, Canadians don't want to be Americans either. But Mongolia isn't even China's hat- it's like the estranged cousin that only ever contacts you to sneer at you. It is literally illegal to even put Chinese characters on public buildings, and forbidden to teach Chinese in their primary schools. Oh, they're all buddy-buddy with Russia, but Mongolia as a country still has a huge grudge against China for something. I don't even know what! It's like they have a mysterious history together that everybody has treated like taboo for so long that nobody remembers what it's about. It's sorta weird.
The religion: Buddhism/Shamanism. It's sort of a mix of old, traditional religion, and some newer stuff (like, 1000 years old, newer). There's lots of random stupas and temples and weird little stone piles with blue scarves strung around them (I think they might be called ouaas). Our tour guide pointed one out within the first hour of our trip and said that was where the people gathered to worship. Sarah and I turned to each other and said, "What people?!" We hadn't even seen any gers or people for what seemed like miles, and yet it was a central location. Distance is so relative! When people worship at these rock piles, they pick up a stone, walk around three times clockwise, add the stone to the pile and make a wish. At least, that's the gist. I'm sure there's lots of subtleties and other rituals they do. It was quite interesting.
Well, there's your overview of Mongolia. Man, I'm not even like halfway done! Some of this has probably been a little bit confusing for you, I'm sure, as I haven't even explained how we got there in the first place! Well, it was the alien technology. Didn't you catch that little bit of foreshadowing?
Nah, I'm kidding. We got there on a plane. We could have gotten there by train and automobile, but we opted for the two-hour travel plan, instead of the 24. Sunday morning we left bright and early to go to the Beijing International Airport, which I'm pretty sure is not the same one we flew into six weeks ago. Okay, it probably was, but it was sort of unrecognizable when not viewed in a nighttime, jet-lagged stupor. Well, we sat down on the plane and waved goodbye to Beijing. Sarah and I were sitting next to a man who seemed WAY too excited to be on a plane. Like, you know how you want to take pictures out of the plane window, so you take a few, but then you're like, These are kind of lame pictures, it's just more clouds with the faraway ground. This faintly smelly, long and greasy-haired Mongolian had none of those scruples. He took pictures pretty much the whole two hours. Pictures of him with Sarah and I, too, and Daniel when he was passed over to us (I did stop the guy from holding Daniel in his lap, though, I thought that was going a little too far). He would get his friend in the row in front of us to turn around and take pictures, chatting in Mongolian with him. It was kind of cute, but I was sort of like, haven't you ever been on a plane before?? It's not that exciting. Through subsequent conversation and his broken English, however, I soon found out that he had just been serving in Afghanistan for a year and two months, hadn't been home to Ulaanbaatar in all that time, and was going to see his daughter, which made him "very very happy." He showed us a picture of her, and she looked about three. I almost cried. It just doesn't do to think uncharitable thoughts about people when you don't know anything about them, you know? The greasy-haired Mongolian taking too many pictures out of the plane window might be doing so because he hadn't been home in a year, and wanted to show his little daughter pictures of the nice American girls he met on the plane.
"Let's make 'We're going to Mongolia!' faces."
Quite a friendly guy.
So. Philosophical moment aside, we cheerily waved goodbye to Sodo (umm, I think that was his name) and stepped off into Chinggis Khan International Airport. Hmm. Not so spacious. We got off and stepped into a room that held rows of chairs to wait for boarding, a dinky Duty-free shop, and the customs booths where they stamp your passport. That's all! As we got through the rest of customs and baggage, we were met by out tour guides, Mugu and Nande. We followed them into the brisk Mongolian air, took a look back at the piddly airport, and got into a stranger's car. Mugu was our English-speaking tour guide, a nice woman of about 28. Nande was our driver who didn't speak a lick of English but was pretty friendly-looking anyway. He was pretty chill.
Mugu!
Nande!
And we were off! We drove around Ulaanbaatar, the capitol, then out to the middle of nowhere. We stopped for lunch at a little settlement and ate the most amazing food ever. It was my favorite of the whole trip. This weird milk tea (whose primary ingredients are milk, tea, and salt), some mouthwatering soup, an amazing dish of noodles, cold bread, and a few galoshes. I mean goulash. Overall, we ate way too much but it was very satisfying. We drove on and eventually made it to the ger of a very nice nomad family.
This is where we ate lunch. Look at that sky! Even bigger than in Montana.
Holy cow, that was an experience of a lifetime. We drive up (bumpity bump) on this dirt road and see this ger, by the side of which are dark forms that turn out to be camels! Real life, double humped camels! As if that wasn't cool enough, we then went inside the ger of the nice camel owners and sit down, of course moving around the room clockwise. We sit down on the edge of the little cot bed and take some biscuits the lady owner offers us. Inside the ger are traditional rugs, a cozy stove, and the most recent kill. Hanging by the door is the family's meat locker, including a sheep with its hide sitting on the floor and its skinless body hanging above. Of course, the whole picture wouldn't be complete without mentioning the solar panel outside, and the black-and-white TV sitting inside, playing (of all things!) Super Junior's performance of "Bonamana". Like, Sarah and I haven't seen or heard one bit of our favorite Korean's band music playing anywhere in China so far, and yet we heard our favorite song on a nomad's TV in the wilderness of Mongolia. Life deals strange hands, doesn't it?
Yep, I was serious.
If I knew who that was on the screen, I would fangirl.
Well, as we sit there, pretending to understand what our hostess is saying, she begins to pour us some bowls of what looks like weak milk. Being polite guests, we accept them and begin to sip. My first thought was, "That tea is WAY too salty," and then, "that is not tea." Mugu says something to the lady and tells us that it is actually mare's milk. Yes, like a horse. Then, as if it's the most exciting thing in the world, "This is the only kind of milk that can be fermented!" We all exchange looks and begin to set the bowls down, then Mugu adds, "That means that it can contain up to 3% alcohol, a good way to keep yourself warm!"
Recovering from that experience, we then headed out the ride some camels. Dude. I rode a camel, in the desert, in Mongolia. I am so lucky to be having this experience! I named mine Humphrey. Get it?! HUMPhrey?! Okay, fine. Dad named his KHAAAANNN!!! complete with a shaken fist and three exclamation points. I later learned that mine was in fact pregnant. Humphrietta and I will be lifelong friends, I think. Oh, we were riding through this sand dune kind of area and saw some people (no, not sandbenders or Fremen, sorry to disappoint) doing a photo shoot. Like, middle of nowhere! And this girl is wearing what looks like a wedding dress. They turned and took pictures of us riding camels, so we took a few pictures of them too. That's a two-way sword, my friend! (wait, what?)
Nande rode a little horse.
Somewhere in that picture is a super old, prehistoric painting of a deer or something.
Off we go adventuring!
My buddy Humphrietta.
Well, after that adventure we headed to the nearby tourist camp and set ourselves up in some gers. It was seriously cool to be there. There was nothing for miles except hills and a few scraggly trees, a pretty stream and the occasional ger and co., and yet we had cucumbers in our salad for dinner! Sarah and I waded through the ice-cold stream and climbed a little mountain, which was quite fun. There's just nothing in the world like hearing "The Hills Are Alive" echo across the Mongolian landscape. Well, there's watching the Mongolian sunset on the vast horizon, and seeing the Milky Way in below-freezing weather while lying on a hoe-down cart in the middle of the Mongolian frontier. Those things are sort of like singing in the Mongolian mountains. Have I impressed upon you the awesomeness of being in Mongolia? Good.
Mom went exploring and found some people to take a picture of.
So, these gers are heated by a wood-burning stove in the middle. As I mentioned, temperatures are already below freezing at night, and before bed Mugu told us to make sure to keep the fire going during the night. Sarah and I thought, oh, it will burn for a few hours, and then we'll be asleep so we won't mind and we'll be fine. My advice, if you ever plan to camp in Mongolia? KEEP THE FIRE GOING. I have never been so cold in my life. Okay, maybe I have. I went to sleep at about 9:30, then slept really solidly, and when I woke up I was like, Oh, good, I must have slept through the night! It was only midnight. I almost cried, except my tears might have frozen on my face. A few miserable hours later I crawled into Sarah's bed, we piled all of the blankets on top of us, and at about 5:00 in the morning I was finally warm. Lesson learned.
First thing Monday morning, I saw the Mongolian sunrise, we ate some sort of funky breakfast including cold bread and crumbly butter, and we went off on out day. We stopped by this cool old-new Buddhist temple. I say old-new because it's a new temple built on the ruins of an old one, and surrounding it are some seriously cool real-live ruins. It was an old temple complex built in some century a few centuries ago, and there's still like, old rocks there. It was in the foothills of some mountains and supposedly at the very top of the mountain was a site on which once stood a huge temple complex. There's nothing there now. That's sort of a thing in Mongolia.
We then drove a few hours to Karakorum (or Kharkorum, who knows?). That was kind of a surprise, we had driven for hours, hardly seeing anyone, and then it was like Bam! Settlement! Yaks! (Inorite?! real yaks!) and lots of dilapidated buildings, a couple of cows, and a huge temple complex. We first went to the Karakorum museum, in which there were real tile floors! It was the swankiest place we saw outside of the capital. We even got a personal tour from the English-speaking Museum curator, three-fourths of which I paid no attention to. She mentioned "Shan Yu", "Huns", and "the Han Dynasty" within a few sentences and I spent the rest of the time happily putting Mulan into context. She talked about Chinggis Khan (who is actually Genghis Khan, but somewhere between Mongolia and the western world "Ching" changed to "Geng". I don't really know how, but I blame Bill and Ted.) and a couple other eras in Mongolian History, but pretty much I heard nothing until Kublai Khan, who connected China and Mongolia and was pretty cool. He even did something in Xanadu, although I've never been sure what. (How's that for an obscure reference? I bet none of you even got it. 'Kay, maybe one of you. Tell me if you did.) So yeah, it was a museum. I've seen lots of those.
I haven't, however, seen many Black Markets, which is as good a segue as any, I think. Yeah, we went to the Black Market. No, it wasn't illegal or slave-related. In fact, it is called that because it's dirty. Like, street vendors and stuff. It was pretty neat, though. Kind of small, but it's where regular Mongolian people go to buy hoses and buckets and grain and fabric and boots. Next door was a supermarket, where we proceeded to buy half of the store so that we could try some real Mongolian food. Seabuckthorn juice is very good. Aloe vera juice is not.
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Think William Shatner wants any?
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At the Black Market
Umm... the parking lot of the Black Market.
We then went to our other tourist camp, had lunch, took naps, and proceeded back the way we came to got to the big monastery. It's this huge complex, a couple hundred years old, with a wall surrounding the whole place. Inserted into the wall are 108 stupas, which is a pretty cool feat. There used to be lots of buildings inside, but now there's just a few temples and even one that is still running. This was the place that was closest in image to China. Buddhist temples are a dime a dozen there, and in Mongolia it was like, Yay, another graven image that you shouldn't be worshipping. That guy has a cool hat.
In our ger at the tourist camp; it's a thing to have a thermos of hot water.
Daniel's new sign: cookie.
Their method of label the bathroom.
Gers at the tourist camp.
Outside the temple, we looked onto a vast landscape where Karakorum used to be. I told you it was a thing- the monastery wall seemed to be the only ruins that actually have stayed up, and that was finished in the 1800s. Karakorum was the place where Chinggis Khan established his empirical capital, and it was the end of the Silk Road or something. Literally the only thing left is a rock shaped like a turtle. So we went to it like frogs leaving their logs and took some pictures of a couple-hundred-year-old Turtle Rock. Pretty cool I guess. I mean, it's the thing to do in Mongolia.
It's a turtle all right.
Afterwards we hiked up a little mountain, danced around a pile of rocks, and saw this monument thing. Okay, we didn't actually dance around the rocks. Everywhere in Mongolia they have these little piles of worship rocks, I think I mentioned them. Well, we added our rocks to a pile,--on which also rested a camel skull-- Sarah did some Tai Chi, and we headed over to this cool mosaic monument. Just randomly at the top of a hill are these three huge walls, each with a mosaic showing a map of Asia, with Mongolia as it is now in blue, and Mongolia as it was in gold. They had the empire under the Huns, Chinggis Khan, and Kublai Khan. Dude, Kublai Khan pretty much conquered all of Asia. He had from the east coast of China, stretching all the way to eastern Europe and Saudi Arabia. Cool beans.
Like, seriously a huge territory.
The wall thing from afar. There's a big pile of rocks in the middle.
Cool view from the top of the hill
So, we chilaxed after our hike, played some Uno and tried to invite Mugu and Nande, but they didn't know how to play and didn't understand what we were saying, respectively, and went to a delicious dinner. I heart Mongolian food. This time Sarah and I kept our fire going for a few extra hours, but something about the night was a lot warmer, so I ended up not being able to sleep because it was too warm, instead of too cold! Ach nein, mein leiderhosen. My nice daddy came in at about 4 o'clock to restart the fire after we ended up letting it go out, and at about 5:30 I got up to go to the bathroom, and Holy stars in the night sky, Batman! They were even clearer than the night before and SO pretty. I will always feel disappointed when stargazing in the U.S. from now on. There's no such thing as light pollution in Mongolia, it seems, so the stars were just so clear. I could probably go on for another paragraph about how awesome the stars are and how much I wish I knew more about them, but I'll move on.
Last day in the Mongolian wilderness, best day. Not really, actually. I mean, it was a good day, but most of it was spent driving back to Ulaanbaatar. We drove for like four, five hours on a paved road, then another half hour on a bumpity bump dirt road, and eventually made it to this wilderness reserve, on which lives the last of the Asian wild horse. Mongolian wild horse? I don't remember. Pretty much, it's endangered and this is the only place where the horses live in the wild. It was kind of an annoying trip to have to go all the way there just to see some horses, but we did have a nice buffet and they even had some Coke Zeros, which made my parents happy. How did the soda get there?! It was like the middle of nowhere!
We then went back to Ulaanbaatar. It seemed like every other building on the main downtown road, Peace Avenue, was either a little supermarket or a Karaoke pub. Those Mongolians sure seem to love their karaoke. We persuaded Mugu to take us to a church building, the mission office, and chatted with a missionary couple. The church is super strong in Mongolia, they have at least 6 wards and branches in the city alone! They have a lot of missionaries, too, and it was cool to see the building. They even had an armchair with the same exact fabric that you see at every other LDS building! You know, the green leaf and flower pattern that's kind of faded and 90s looking? You totally know what I'm talking about. Well, it was in Mongolia too. The church is true wherever you go.
We got to our hotel, went out to some "real" Mongolian grill, and started strolling the streets of Ulaanbaatar. It was a pretty nice city. It was sort of dirty and the sidewalks were often in disrepair, but the traffic was about as crazy as Beijing so we felt at home. We went to this State Department store in which they sell EVERYTHING. TVs, furniture, food, sound systems, swimsuits (there's one pool in the city and the lakes and rivers are too cold to swim in 11 months of the year. What do they do, wear them around the house??) and much more. There's even the largest souvenir shop in Mongolia. That's where you get your felt slippers, embroidered bags, t-shirts, old coins, traditional music, camel skin vest, etc. I saw these cute little traditional jacket things that I decided would be so hip as a short jacket/shrug type thing, so I made Sarah try one on. A few minutes later I realized that it was in fact a child-sized jacket. She wouldn't speak to me for at least 15 minutes.
Souvenir-laden, we headed back to our hotel and had a good night's sleep. In the morning we had a great buffet, got to the dinky airport, bought a few more souvenirs, updated our Facebooks, and managed to fly home in one piece. Well, five pieces. You know what I mean.
I didn't think I would ever be so happy to hear someone speak Chinese to me. While in Mongolia, I kept wishing for them to speak Chinese instead of English! I probably said "Xie xie" to Nande at least three times, instead of "Bairlaa" like I was 'posed to. We were very glad to be home in Beijing. It really feels like home now! I just said to my dad the other day, "This feels like real life now." I will definitely be sad to go home in five and a half weeks :(
So, the rest of the week proceeded as normal. Except, coincidence alert! Sarah and I were getting some dinner rolls on an alley and we saw some white people. You never see white people on that street, so I was like, Hey, I'ma talk to them. I searched around for an icebreaker that wasn't a pick up line, didn't find one, but it turned out I didn't need one because the red-hair-with-a-blue-streak-ed girl was wearing a "Boys and Girls Club Redmond Sammamish" shirt. There's an icebreaker for you, the "No way we're from the same obscure Washington town and now we're both in Beijing at the same time in the same random alley" technique. Works every time.
Friday I went out on a date :) Turns out, when a boy says "Let's go climb a mountain" he actually means it. We went to the top of the mountain in Fragrant Hills Park. It's the place way out in the Northwest of Beijing, and it's got this cool mountain with lots of trees and stairs, and random buildings peppered throughout. We got all the way to the top and I was like, We're taking the cable car down, but tickets were like 60 kuai! Twas ridiculous. It was a beautiful day though, and there weren't too many people. I did feel less sorry for myself when I saw the girl hiking in front of use wearing a nice dress and low heels. She made it all the way to the top and I even saw her on the way down too. All of the random buildings in the park had these explanation signs that said "This building was such and such during the reign of Emperor Qianlong, was built in such and such year, but was destroyed in 1860 by Franco-Anglo forces." It was sort of sad that somebody would destroy all that. Maybe they were tired of all of the tiled roofs. Also, in some cases there were these old buildings, and it was like the park rangers were just living in them! There were literally strings of laundry hanging outside of the White Lotus Pagoda. I just made that name up. I don't remember any of the names of the buildings. They probably had something to do with harmony or peace.
I'm telling you; flower arrangements.
Yep, that is someone's laundry right there.
I think these might be prayers.
Something is up with this forest...
We got some pretty good meat sticks. Don't know what kind of meat...
I just thought this subway station was cool.
Saturday we watched General Conference, which was quite nice, and we brought home with us a random stranger to stay the night. Not really. Okay, really, but she is 17, just graduated, living here teaching English about 2 hours away from Beijing, and she took the bus up with her friend just to go to General Conference. Mom has decided that she is the guardian of lonely souls here, which is awesome, and the girl said that she didn't have definite plans for where to stay Saturday night so Mom invited her to come to our house. It was kind of fun to have another sister for a day :) We played a mean game of Pirate Uno. Oh yeah, pretty much every Sunday we've been here, we've invited someone over for dinner during church, and then they come home with us. Mostly they are BYU-Idaho students living here for the semester, and they don't have kitchens in their dorms, so they are always very appreciative of our home-cooked meals. I'm pretty sure we've eaten the same thing every week, but we have different guests each time so they all rave about it. It's really a very clever tactic. I'm so lucky to have such a good, generous example as my mother :)
Pretty cool random stranger. I don't think I even have her email anymore... oh, and Sarah (left) is wearing the shirt she got in Mongolia.
Well, we are inching timewise into this week (which is already halfway over) so I think I shall wrap it up like a Peking duck pancake (which are hen hao chi, btw). Mongolia was awesome, Beijing is almost like a friend, and Mormons are cool and friendly.
Zai jian!
Ellyn
P.S. I did end up watching Downton Abbey and Doctor Who when we came home, so don't worry about me. Lavinia's secret was in fact very anticlimactic, and Thomas still is a jerkface, in case you were worried about it. I know I was. I can't wait for next week! Aaaah!
P.P.S. This has nothing to do with China or TV, so you are welcome to stop reading if you like. In my American Literature class, I just read Rip Van Winkle (random, right?). In the lesson it said that everyone had heard of it and would get it if you said you "slept like Rip Van Winkle". I had only heard the name before now and had no idea what the story was, and in fact would not have gotten that reference two days ago. I'm curious, is it something everyone knows about and I just got out of the loop, or is it something the rising generation is forgetting about? I didn't even know Johnny Appleseed's story until last week. I feel like I'm missing something.
