Diarrhoea and hard work in the canicule in the land of heroes -welcome to Mongolia!

First of all, thank you Jesus for you comment. I couldn't answer on the comment down there so I do it like this. Dana, Roby and Maurizio just arrived to Ulan Bataar today whereas me and Tuula came here already on Monday. Mongolia is boiling now it's a real heat wave here, it has been +42 degrees here for all week. Say hello to Nicolas and flamingo and good luck in China! Dana says hello to all of you. Her CS/HC nick is msnice, contact her there.

Mongolia is rural and urban at the same time. Although democracy is developing fastly only half of the population have access to pure drinking water. The capital is not beautifull, but I like the names like peace avenue and the capitals name actually means red hero - Ulan Bataar. If you don't know a guys name better call him Bataar. The MCE's boss is called Enkhbataar which means peace hero.

So..... We have been workcamping for five days. I really got an idea now how it is to live like a local in an underdeveloped country. No running water, no electricity, hard work...
We have wash the clothes and ourselves 1km away or in a spring 30 minutes walk away. Because of the heat wave we have to get up at 5 am and start weeding at 6 am and continue untill 10am and then start again 7pm.

The toughest work is watering the plants with a 80 liter tank and when we (my, Se ryon and Celia) were on water team we had to roll the tank over two creeks about 1km away. Cooking is also tough with 3 meals and preparing food for 25 people. We live in gers and me and Tuula lived with four korean girls Jihye, Jihon, Jiyoung and Ming Ji. The gers have bed with wooden plaques with a matress. It's comfy compared to tents but in the daytime it's very hot and impossible to sleep.
The kids from the orhpanage who are teenagers help us with weeding. The children are really helpfull and really easily approables, most of them speak decent English. Quite many have one parent but because of family problems they have been replaced. When they are 18 they move out and there is somekind of fund for those kids after leaving the orphanage. The small kids are in the forest in the kids camp.

So, we are 20 volunteers, 5 koreans, 4 french, 3 italians, 2 americans, 2 Finns, 1 austrian, 1 japanese, 1 australian and 1 spanish. This is high season, because Bataar, the boss says that there are 75 vols in total so we have 1/4 in the camp. I personally think there are too many people with so many volunteers that group spirit is hard to find especially when there are some korean groups coming and going all the time.

The camp site is 45km from UB in the middle of steppe semi dry grass land with cows, goats, horses eating grass. It reminds me of the wild wild west with dust coming from cars and montains in the horizon. The night sky is beautifull with all the stars when there's no light.
There are people from all the walks of life. Youngest is 19 while the oldes is 52. In general the Koreans are twenty something and the Europeans older, around 30 years.
I have been a bit mad at this Italian couple who seem to have an world of their own with their own cooking equipment and starting work later than the others....Many people came together with someone... Jackie and Keith (USA), Me and Tuula, Antonella and Gian Pierro (IT), Audrey and Pauline (FRA), Miyako, Helene (FRA) and Jihye and Jiyoung (KOR) It's intresting how multinational some people are Miyako being French who is half Japanese and half Armenian, Keith an American half Irakian and Jackie half French and half Polish.
It's cool that I can practice my French, speak Finnish when I want and even learn some new words in English and German.
Chita, the Japanese, is living in Guilin in China and I think I will visit here as I plan to go there as well.

We have the weekend free so some of us went to the ancient capital near a dessert. Well, we went to UB and planned to go to Terelj. I had diarrhoea in the morning and it got worse in the hostel. I was either vomiting or shiting everything out and felt terrible. Even water with salt and sugar wouldn't stay inside me... Matias and my father called me to the hostel and when I was running in the toilet all the time I decided to go to the hospital. (It must be scored top 10 in romantic phone calls that I had with Matias: "I just shitted in my pants. I love you." :D )
Tuula sent a message to Bataar and he took me to the hospital. He was my interpret and a nice women investigated(?) me. I was given some injection so I wouldn't vomit and one bag with liquids and one with salt. I layed down for 4 hours and I had a nice chat with Bataar about Finland and Mongolia and the relations to Russia and China. He said that I know a lot and love to refer to statistics, trivial facts and grouping people. It's true. Manuela, the Austrian woman, said that I'm a walking encyclopedia that knows a lot of things. It's true that I like to get as much information as possible, I love reading and museums. I noticed once again that my French STILL need improment, I still have problems with the feminim and masculin.

Aiti oli varmasti tosi huolissaan, kun kuuli sairaalareissusta. Ei mulla kuulemma mitaan vakavaa ole, sanoivat etta se johtui luultavasti ruuasta. They ordered me the same medicine I had taken+water with salt which was the med. I had been taking already.

This morning Tuula was going to fetch the others from the train station but she found Maurizio in our door steps. They are staying in the hostel right above us! Dana has an own room in an other hostel. So now we are located in three different places. I managed to eat jogurt and today I felt better. The anti-vomiting injection seems to work(well, actually I kind of thin that the Imocure I take makes my nocious...so I should maybe stop taking it) and I have been drinking a lot of coca cola. It was smart to take this small travelers brochure form YHTS, it provides a lot of usefull information.

I think I will stay in UB the whole weekend. Hostel cost 5 US$ with breakfast included. The hostel manager is really helpfull with everything and he even made me some salt water and wasn't angry when I was dirtying the floor with my liquids. I really missed home yesterday and it's hard to spend 8 hours with no liquids staying inside in 40 degrees heat. Cold shower is something wonderfull. I think I will have a cold bath after this. This weather is unsual for Mongolia, so the green house effect is obvious. It shouldn't be too hard to have combined tickets to Beijing like train Erlian, bus Beijing. I will buy them on Monday with Maurizio, he will go there. I will see how I will do with next weeks workcamp...We are missing the rain!!!

Ooh... I wish I will be okay. Workcamp is really WORKcamp. I will appriaciate Finland MUCH more after this... Shower, clean water, cold days, lakes, buying train tickets from the internet, working in the evening in an air coned room.

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