Adventures with Melissa

Last Saturday I went with my work colleague/friend to Gorkhi-Terelj National Park. This was one of the stops I had made with my friends the previous Saturday, but this time we got to spend more time and do different things. The whole day was great and I had such a fun time hanging out with Melissa and Max (our driver/sort of tour guide).

First let me introduce Melissa. (I had meant to write a blog post dedicated just to Melissa when she first came to Mongolia during the first week of April but I never got any good photos of her and I got super lazy in April as evidenced by the number of posts I actually put up.) Melissa is a Regional Program Advisor for the Asia Pacific Habitat for Humanity office. She’s currently based in Manila and our Blue Sky Build project in July is one of her assignments. She acts like an advisor and helps us out with anything we might need. She is especially helpful to me because her background with Habitat is in communications. Melissa completed the same MSW program at Boston College as I did a few years ago. For her internship she was placed with Habitat in Cambodia. After her internship she stayed on with them for a couple of years before moving up to the regional office. I love it when Melissa comes to visit because firstly she motivates everyone at work to get more stuff done and be excited about what we’re doing; secondly because I like her as a person and really enjoy her company. She’s incredibly nice and we have quite a bit to talk about. She has had a really interesting life and lots of fun stories.

I suppose that’s enough fawning over Melissa. So she arrived a week ago Sunday and had planned her trip to coincide with our Corner Stone Laying ceremony and the building of the test build house for the BSB (they build one house before the project to work out any kinks and to time it to see where each house needs to be at the end of each day). Unfortunately the test build schedule didn’t go according to plan and Melissa decided to leave a few days early which meant that her Saturday was free to do something touristy. I was more than happy to have a touristy adventure and get out of the city. We looked up a bunch of places to go for a day trip but most of them got shot down by our Mongolian colleagues as being sub-par so we settled on going to the national park.

Gorkhi-Terelj National Park - you can see one of the ger camps in the distance.

 

Our driver for the day was Max, a friend of Billy one of our colleagues. We were especially lucky that Max agreed to drive us because he speaks great English which made the whole day go a lot smoother. Our first stop in the park was Turtle Rock which I loved seeing the week before. This time we actually climbed it (well, some of it).

Turtle Rock, obviously.

Melissa and Max.

Me and Max climbing(ish).

After the rock we went over to the monastery that was on the side of a hill. We climbed all the steps (which really weren’t that many) to the top and enjoyed the spectacular view. We chilled up there for a bit, enjoying the sunshine.

Really not that many stairs.

These were all around the monastery.

Beautiful view

Then we headed to a hotel where we were hoping to have an archery lesson and eat lunch. Sadly the archery was a bust and we didn’t do it. We did however go check out the much fancier hotel next door which was really nice (Melissa and I ended up using their bathroom 3 times throughout the day because it was so lovely and the nicest bathroom I’ve seen in Mongolia).

So then in an attempt to kill some time for a reason that I can’t remember we rented 3 horses for an hour to go riding. Mongolian horses are much smaller than horses that I’m used to. The horse riding experience was…interesting. First my horse wouldn’t go (apparently because it could tell that I was a foreigner), so Max switched horses with me. Well then he couldn’t get it to go and Melissa’s horse liked to run her into walls. Eventually the horse keepers forced our horses to head towards the river. When we got to the river I assumed we’d find a bridge to cross. When I could see no bridge I assumed we’d just walk along the river. Nope, Max told us to just press full steam ahead through the water. Granted it wasn’t that deep, but deep enough for our shoes to get soaked and the current was strong enough for the horses to walk diagonally from one side to the other (I kept picturing John Wayne movies as we forced our way across the river, I thought it was kind of cool but Melissa did not agree). And of course, Max’s horse still didn’t want to go and it was quite the battle for him to get that horse in the water. On the other side of the river things went more smoothly and we just wandered around the semi wilderness. I kept trying to get my horse to go faster but could only manage to get him up to a very bouncy trot. After not too long we crossed back over the river, passing a stalled SUV in the middle of it and went back to hand the horses over.

The horses are finally moving.

About to cross back through the river.

 Our last activity in the park was to have a slightly extravagant lunch at the fancy hotel. It was so nice to get to splurge a little despite the fact that we were all a little dirty. Then we headed back to Ulaanbaatar. Melissa had a couple of hours to kill before her flight so we relaxed at my house and got pizza from a place only 10 min walk from my house (I will definitely be going there again – thank you Jared for the recommendation).  And that was it.

My lunch: I love the fries in the pan.

I was exhausted and a little sunburned (though not as much as I had hoped) and was a little sad for Melissa to leave, but super happy with the day. Melissa will be back in town at the end of June and stay pretty much until I leave Mongolia. 

Yeah for Melissa and getting to hang out with her.