Shannon's pictures are here!

Mongolia through Shannon's lens, Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

You can read more about our trip in older posts. It's only 4 more days til we begin our next big adventure! We're not sure how much internet access we'll have, but we'll try to keep this updated with photos and stories of our travels.

Great Gobi Goodness

After the green and the cold and the waterfalls and the lakes of Central Mongolia, we took a southern turn and headed into the Gobi. We knew we'd arrived when we started seeing camel herds instead of herds of horses.

These bactrian variety are enormous, but seem friendlier than the one humpers.

Though there are roads (dirt) in the Gobi, we didn't tend to stick to them as often there. Looking out from the van the terrain appeared flat and even, but there were many small canyons, ditches and ruts to look out for. But despite the difficulty of the landscape, we only got stuck once.

Brian and Ryan made quick work of that ditch.

As you can see, most of the Gobi is not sandy. It's mostly rocky with small shrubs everywhere, getting browner as you go deeper, but surprisingly green on a good year. But there are sandy areas. After a night of camping near a cave full of crystals we went to Kongoryn Els, or the Singing Sand Dunes. This is the movie version of the Gobi, and it's gorgeous.

A neighboring ger with the dunes.

Ewwww.

We timed our hour and 45 minute climb up those dunes perfectly. It was sunset when we finally made it. We also discovered why the sands are singing. With each 3 ft step up you take, you slide back 2.5 ft and start a sand slide from about 15 ft ahead of you. The shearing of sand on sand makes a deep reverberating hum that sounds like a train coming on the other side. This of course makes for a very difficult climb, but well worth it.

But the best part was coming back down. The sand was so soft and at such a steep angle that you could jump straight out and run down as fast as possible without fear of toppling forward.

The next day we drove to Bayanzag and got there in time for this spectacular Gobi sunset.

The following morning this guy, our wonderful guide, took us on a camel ride and showed us his secret dinosaur head that he found. The area is famous for dinosaur fossils and has yielded a lot of whole skeletons and the ground is littered with fossil flakes. You can tell the difference between a fossil and regular bone or stone by putting them to your tongue - the fossil will stick (albeit usually only on one facet of the surface) but the others won't. The guide is demonstrating with a fleck from the skull he showed us.

This rock formation is condensed sand, not really rock. We rode by it on our camels.

I love my camel.

When we left Bayanzag we went to a town to restock on food and water. There was a family putting up a ger near where we were staying, so we got to help out and see the process. The land in the countryside is all public and families can set up wherever they wish, but in cities the people have to rent a lot. They still live in gers though. We read that 85% of Mongolians live in gers even though only 50% are nomadic. The other 15% live in apartments in the cities.

They're holding up a layer of felt as it gets tied into place.

Next stop was the Painted Desert. The colors were amazing and the whole thing made me want a big bowl of sherbet.

After the Painted Desert we went to Ice Canyon (Yolyn Am) which was gorgeous (oh the puns) but devoid of any and all ice though it wasn't for lack of looking.

And our last night out in the wilderness Ikman, our driver, took us to a beautiful, mountain wrapped campsite where we built our very own poo fire and had one last look at the starscape before our final drive back to UB.

Scenery near our campsite.

A stupa around the mountain were we camped out.

Back in UB we ate delicious Mexican food and praised something for the change-up from mutton meals, we went to a market where we found amazing, weathered old Buddhist relics, and headed to the main temple in town and the Winter Palace of the Bogd Khan, now a museum full of fantastic Buddhist art and a strange emporium of the bizarre gifts the Khan (King) was given during his life.

A stupa at the temple.

One of the halls in the Winter Palace.

African birds that were once a living part of the Khan's zoo. Look at the bill on that one farthest left.

It was wonderful.

It was certainly the most epic trip I've ever done, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who can spare the time to go. The landscapes were breathtaking, but the best part of Mongolia is by far the people and the incredible way of life they've preserved for hundreds, maybe even a thousand years. I think all 4 of us would highly recommend UB Guesthouse (Bobbi even came to the hospital to check on Shannon when she got food poisoning) www.ubguest.com, but if I had it to do over again I would want to spend more nights with families that aren't used to hosting tourists, like we did around the lake.

Brian's working on making videos of all our short videos and Shannon's pictures are coming soon. We're down to 14 more teaching days before then end and life's getting hectic in order to prepare for our upcoming trip and the move home. If you have a job to offer us when we get back, please let us know because we've got 6 months to bum off parents and burn through savings and generally be drains on society until we get one.

A Rebutal! and our temple stay

First of all, I'd like to back up and say that shortly after the video from the arm wrestler post Mi Yeon and I wrestled with our left arms (her "strong arm") and I won. And I want a rematch now that Brian and I have been pumping kilos in the gym. Incidentally, our gym is called city sports, but in Korean an s sound followed by an i sound always makes a shi sound. So naturally, we work out at shity sports.

But aside from all this, last weekend Ryan and Shannon suggested a temple stay in nearby Gyeongju, the old Shilla Dynasty capital of S. Korea. David and Duck opted out but Brian and I were excited to go, so early Saturday morning we all hopped a bus to another bus to Golgulsa (sa means temple), which is the headquarters for sunmudo. Sunmudo is a martial art one monk told us was developed in India at the very beginning of Buddhism. It is an "active meditation" meaning that it's a tool for enlightenment rather than a tool to defend yourself. It focuses on breathing as well as intensely controlled movements and it's beautiful to see in action.

We got to try it out on our first day there, but the second session and the demonstration from the monks were cancelled due to rain on the second day.

So our first day at the temple was lovely but cold. When we arrived it was lunch time, so we headed into the dining hall where Shannon and I had to sit with the women and the guys with their fellows. We had plenty of time to talk and wander around together between activities, but within any temple structure we weren't to "associate". So we associated as much as possible while exploring the temple grounds after lunch.

We found this happy little guy guarding the watering hole.

The higher we climbed the more charming the characters we found.

A little higher and things started turning a bit more stately.

And regal.

Til the crowning glory at the top. This rock carving that supposedly happened in the 700s. It was beautiful and had a commanding view of the temple grounds. Check it out further down.

Then it was time for archery. We headed over to the Sunmudo center where archery was to happen in time to catch the tail end of a game (can never remember it's name) of foot volleyball between 4 monks. In foot volleyball you have a regular volleyball net and 2 or more players per team. The ball can bounce once between each kick, but a person can only kick it once. It's amazing to see them spike it. Then it was time for archery, which at Golgulsa is also a meditation. We all got pretty good, but it was really cold in the shade where we had to stand and I was glad when it was over.

After some more downtime (spent warming up in our separate girls and guys quarters) it was sunmudo training or bust. There we heard chants to Buddha and learned the proper way to bow to Buddha along with our kicks and hand meditations. It was fun and hard and beautiful to watch the monks who were perfectly amazing at it. And then it was bedtime because morning comes early at a temple. 4 Am early, and the penalty for missing 4:30 morning chants is 3,000 bows to Buddha.

The dormitory (girls on top floor, boys below)

So Shannon and I retired to our room. I've never loved the heated floor so much. There were no beds or even mats, just 2 blankets per person and a small pillow - traditional Korean style, plus an added dose of minimalism for the temple. And our room had paper doors, also traditional. I was amazed at how warm we stayed though, slept like a baby. It was especially nice during Sunday's downtimes when it was cold and drizzly outside and you could hear the rain so nicely through the paper.

At 4 AM as promised we were awakened by a monk with a booming voice and a wooden gong walking by our paper doors chanting and gonging. I'm not typically a morning person, but I was excited to wake up that way, and we were off to morning chants, morning meditation (cold!), and then a short walking meditation up on a hill where the sky was just starting to glow red with the beginnings of dawn. It was cold and quiet and peaceful. Below is where we did walking meditation, only it was dark then.

From there we were on to the mess hall for Baroogongyang, a ceremonial meditative meal.

Baroogongyang has a protocol not only for eating, but for the setting and cleaning of the dishes as well. Eating, between bites you put down your chopsticks and chew slowly and mindfully each bite. However, this was a shortened version for laymen to experience, so it was quickened. Ryan and I were the last ones finished cleaning up with the kimchi because we took it to heart when they said chew slowly. I had to speed eat the last bit of my meal to come in last place while everyone waited for us to finish. Oops.

I forgot to mention the other selling feature of Golgulsa, it has the only cave temple in all of S. Korea. That's where the monk that chanted us awake started out and marched on down from there. Here are some pictures of that lovely spot.

Temple entrance above and altar below.

Buddhas in the wall of the cave temple.

Then, somewhere around 6:30 AM, it was naptime. Then at 8:30, tea time with Q & A with one of the monks! He told us about sunmudo and how he became a monk. Then many of the questions came our way being amongst the only foreigners there. Everyone wanted to know how we found out about Golgulsa, what we thought about sitting on the ground, if we knew about Korean traditional dance and so on.

After tea time there's usually community service, but at that temple it's usually gardening, and it was February, so more downtime. Eventually it was lunch time again and time to go home because most of the daily activities were cancelled due to the rain. But here are some photos of where it would have happened.

Above is the view from the Buddha rock carving of the main temple hall where we meditated and had morning chants, and where the sunmudo demonstration would have happened.

Fighting monk murals.

We were sad to miss a lot of the second day, but happy we'd come to Golgulsa. We'll just have to go back sometime. Sometime warmer. We had to get all bundled up as we waited for the bus back home, but we were all smiles too. Great job Golgulsa!

The Arm Wrestler

I think the majority of Americans assume that Asians are a much smaller people in terms of physical stature. I know that Jess and I both figured we would be towering over most people here. While it is true that the average size of a westerner is larger, in term of height and weight, the difference is not substantial. Much to her dismay Jess would probably be considered only slightly above average height in Korea. Her dreams of being the BMOC were crushed shortly after we got here. Of course Im only kidding. What I really wanted to accomplish by this post was to show everyone a video someone just sent me today. In this video Jess is arm wrestling our friend Mi yeoun. Its obivous that Jess had completely underestimated her foe and paid the price. Perhaps she was a bit fatigued becuase she had just gotten killed by another friend, Saw-Jin, not five minutes beforehand. Regardless it wasn't a pretty sight and quite a demoralizing experience for Jess. Another blow to her ego came when Jess found out that Mi Yeoun is left handed - ouch.