Downtown UB

Now it is just Aaron and I left in the hostel, so its hardly the liveliest of places, especially as he can't go out and therefore spends most of the time just lying on his bed and is very quickly getting fed up of being an invalid (he gets to go out once a day, when the Peace Corps doctor comes round or sends someone to pikc him up for a check-up). Hence, after a slow start today, writing a few postcards and trying to find the addresses for some of the hopefuly recipients, I headed out and went for a long walk down Peace Avenue, past the temple into the slightly grottier side of UB, which was, admittedly, more like what I had expected the capital to be like, although it still had its certain charm, with Korean restaurants and karaoke bars dotted around and with a scattering of manicurists and hairdressers interspersed amongst these.

Eventually, after walking far enough for my knees to ache, I decided it was time to turn  back, and slowly walked through the heavy wall of heat (there was a haze on top of this today, which meant that the mountains in the distance were barely visible) back to the State Department Store. Here, I bagged some food, and then, realising that I was starting to hunger-buy, I raced to the counter and left, sadly not managing to spent any of my 50 togrog notes, of which I have a great deal (1300 togrogs), and headed back to our place, giving Aaron a box of corn flakes to munch as a snack for the rest of the day. I also found a Mongolian standing outside our door knocking impatiently, as nobody was coming to open up. I let him in, therefore, as I assumed that he was coming on Eiggy's business, and he left a mattress in one of the other rooms, which I assume was for her. I also manged to give Eiggy Erias' and Uthas' money for the stay today, as they left quite suddenly and weren't around when Eiggy came over.

A while later, one of Aaron's friends from Peace Corps, Blaine, arrived to keep Aaron amused, so brought with him two card games - Aquarius and Fluxx, which I was invited to play, winning one each time, although Fluxx was fairly complicated and it took me a while to realise what on earth one had to do in order to win!