DAYTWO.
ADAPTING AND ROCKCLIMBING

yup, we woke up freeeeezing cold many times in the night, and was cold to the point where you'd rather not move and freeze, than to get out and adjust yourself into a warmer position, but freeze while adjusting yourself. and your thick sleeping bag gets cold once you leave it.

mm so there's this morning assembly thingy where there's flagraising as usual, but of the mongolian flag, obs flag and blue peter flag. then there was a morning game to wake everyone up, and was called 'celebration', which is simple 'da feng chui'. this game allowed us to know the names of the others, including the mongolians there, regardless of instructor or fellow travelmate. we had four mongolian teens joining us in our camp, and they're names are not exactly easy to spell: zolboo, namuun(no idea how it's spelt), nasaa(otgonnasarr), and okna(ugas$@(*$�, no idea how to spell also).

and soooo, we were split into team SAR and NAR, meaning moon and sun respectively. i was in sar, and we designed our team charter -> mature, optimistic, open and never say dieeee. which makes up MOON=SAR :D

after that was the rockclimbing. there was the usual belay lessons, and lessons on the ATC. then was the real hands-on, and this was completely different from previous experiences as we were climbing a real rock mountain, and not some fake wall. it was so much harder, as you need to find your own foothold and any crack which you can grasp on for support. there were two walls in total, the first was gentler, but there was a lack of nice footing and grabbing. the second was almost vertical, but had relatively more cracks.

i tried the second one, and failed terrible =x i reached only halfway, before giving up because i got stuck in a stupid crack. the presence of more cracks also didn't really make the climbing much easier, cause they didn't provide very much balance. and it was very painful to slide down the wall face after pulling yourself up, cause of lack of grip. but zolboo amazingly stunned us by completing it in around seven minutes, where the first person took half an hour.

oh, and we had to chop our own firewood to be used in the furnaces in our gers, as well as collect water from the stream a distance away. and woodcutting was damn fun, though alot of people weren't very good at it as they were very hesitant, fearing to chop off their fingers =x

before we slept at night, we chatted through until the lights went out, and it proved to be a great team bonding experience as many of us didn't know each other very well. david also sacrificed some of his beauty sleep to keep up the furnace until we were all sleeping soundly, which was really nice of him. and now that we know the names of the mongolians, our ties and relations with them have taken a step further (:

BIG EDIT: I SHALL BUMP UP THIS POST LATER ON, THUS UPDATES WILL COME IN LATER :D

treasuring the memories of you. | 0 comment(s)