Get Me to the Yurt!

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It's been a long week of traveling! I've decided to split the week into more than one entry, because I have so much to tell, and 1,000 photos to sift through. This entry is about my trip to Inner Mongolia.

We (the entire ACS CIEE group, ~20 people) left Shanghai on Friday morning for Hohhot, the capitol of Inner Mongolia; not to be confused with Outer Mongolia. Inner Mongolia is part of China, and most of the residents in Inner Mongolia are Han Chinese, not Mongolian. Though the street signs generally are bi-lingual, with Chinese and Mongolian. Hohhot is a nice city in Northern China and features blue skies and lots of three-wheeled cars. We spent Friday night in a rather nice hotel in Hohhot before heading out to the grasslands on Saturday morning.
The Xilamuren grasslands are north of Hohhot and are quite barren this time of year. The scenery holds the promise of green grass and warmth, but so far, it's only a promise. It's still very cold on the grasslands. We went to a family that rents out yurts for tourism, and they rented us giant military style coats to fight off the grassland winds. Aside from the extreme cold, another shock to our systems was the lack of toilets...or anything resembling toilets. We literally picked a spot we liked out in the fields and did our business. There were, of course, various crumbling brick walls, etc. to talk shelter behind while doing our business, but it was still a bit...open. Squatting in a field under the stars of the Inner Mongolian night was not something I ever envisioned doing, but it was a worthwhile experience, nonetheless.
We had the chance to ride horses through the grasslands, which was fun. It was slightly less fun when we turned around to head back...into the wind. Even the military coats couldn't fight off the cold. This led my friend, who under normal conditions would balk at staying in a yurt, to cry out, "Get me to the yurt!"
Speaking of cold, that doesn't quite capture how chilly it was in our yurt at night. We slept with eight girls in one yurt, fully planning on huddling together for warmth. The teachers had asked us throughout the day if we wanted to split, worried we would be too crowded. But unlike the guys (who slept four to a yurt), we wish we had more girls in our yurt to huddle together with. We could have fit at least 12 girls in there, and even that wouldn't have been enough I think. The coal furnace that heated our yurt went out early in the night and my attempts to stoke the fire at one a.m. were fruitless. On top of that, there was a dog that was kept tied up beside our yurt all day and night, and it decided to bark throughout the entire night (no exaggeration!). Needless to say, it was a fairly sleepless night.
We also got to experience Mongolian/Northern food. The diet up North consists of a lot more meat (my teacher explains that this is the reason Northern Chinese have squarer faces than Southern folks-more chewing) and a lot less rice. Instead, they eat mantou, which is a type of steamed bread.
After leaving the grasslands, and my cellphone, behind, we headed to a desert control center at the Baidan desert (I believe). At the center, we had a lecture on the importance of desert control, why the deserts are spreading, and the environmental and economical impacts. Then we went to the desert and ran around like five year-olds for a while. This is understandable though, as we drove five hours on a bus to get to the desert and control center.
We also visited the Dazhou Monestary, which was situated in a cute little village. The local middle school ended classes for the day right as we arrived, so that led to a lot of picture-taking and funny encounters. One of the girls in our group was taught how to double-dutch by some of the locals girls.
Our plane for Xi'an left Hohhot at 11:30 Monday night, so we had some time to kill after dinner. Our teachers decided to take us out for karaoke. It was my first time to a karaoke bar, and I had a great time. We were forced, by limited English selections, to sing a lot of Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys' songs, but it was all in good fun. Our plane arrived in Xi'an around 1 am, so by the time we got to the hotel we were all pretty tired.

This is where I'll stop for now. I have a lot of homework to do and am under the weather, but I'll hopefully get the second part of this trip typed up within the next couple of days! Enjoy!

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Photos

Mongolian Saddle
Not what I used...I just used a blanket. But still cool looking.

The Inside of a Yurt
Note the coal furnace used to heat the yurt.

Body Heat
All this huddling still wasn't enough to fight off the cold.

Before and After Desert Control
Pretty amazing results