I just rode on the back of a dirtbike...

to get to the one and only computer that has internet in Bulgan.

Bulgan is a small town in the Gobi that I was dropped off at this morning (this is DAY EIGHT in the Gobi for me). My guide flew back to UB today and I am supposed to meet Bolor, the Mongolian paleontologist, here in Bulgan at some point today. She's driving from UB and there's no saying when she'll arrive. But she has to be here today because she's teaching a course on dinosaur fossils to nomadic children tomorrow morning! That is why I am here, to record her work with the kids.

Bolor told me were staying in a hotel. Hotel is the wrong description. It's really just a few gers in a local family’s backyard. ("gers" are what we know as "yurts" in Canada...but you are not suppossed to call them that in Mongolia because that's the Russian word and the Mongolians don't really love the Russian...that whole Soviet-rule thing). I call it HOTEL GER. And for $8 US/day for a bed and three meals, I’m not complaining. Except that the outhouse smells like death. I hold my breath when I go it and when I come out, I can still smell the stench all over me. Gag.

The ger is pretty spacious. Actually, I just did yoga in it.

After I was shown to my ger, the father of the house – Poli – showed me his gorgeous greenhouse. Bulgan is known in the Gobi for its vegetables. A stream flows through the town and locals use this precious water to irrigate their fields. Poli gave me a bowl of his plump red and orange cherry tomatoes to snack on. I think they were better than the ones I plucked off the vine in Italy! Poli also grows cucumber, melon, watermelon, onion, carrot and potato.

Now back to "how I ended up on the back of a dirtbike..."

Mono (a pretty woman in her mid-20's and the Park Ranger for the area) saw me typing on my laptop outside my ger and introduced herself. She seemed to know who I was and why I am here, though she spoke very little English. She asked me if she could "help me" and I said..."internet?" Next thing I know I am riding on the back of her dirtbike through the village finding the guy who has the key to open the one and only internet cafe in Bulgan. I spent the afternoon catching up on emails (via an uber-slow dial-up connection).

Around 4:00 p.m. I went back to HOTEL GER. An hour later, Bolor and her crew showed up. I felt relieved. I met Molly, an educator with the Museum of the Rockies in Montana. She would be my roomate and English-speaking companion for the next week. We got along famously right away. Also with Bolor was "Baska", her grad student. Baska is doing her master's in paleontology. She speaks English also, which is great. Then there is her driver "Bimba" and a camera-man from Mongolian Education Television, named "Hootlay".