Even the news I got is not good news

Finally got to talk to the school director, Bolormaa. It turns out that the hot water is systematically cut to different parts of the city while they do repair work on the radiators. This will last for a total of 7 days, which means I haven't passed the halfway point yet. I may have to make a return trip to the spa that Christina and I visited on my last night here last year. I never described that trip in this blog because I took the train to Moscow the next morning and was out of communication via the Internet for the next two weeks. So, I will tell you about that last evening now.

Christina called me that evening and suggested we go to the Gobi Hotel spa. She had already been there and said it was wonderful. We got there around 8pm, I believe, and went into the changing room. We had paid for a scrubbing and when they say "scrubbing" they mean it. You lie down on these benches and girls in swim suits take a loofa pad and go to work on you - every square inch of you. After the scrubbing you can soak in either a cold or hot water pool, or take a shower. Then there are these mineral rooms you can enter. There are several different rooms with various crystals mounted in the walls. I know there were amethyst and salt, but I can't remember the others. I'm not sure what these were supposed to do for you and basically I'm not very "woo-woo" anyway, so I didn't stay very long. After visiting the mineral rooms we went to have a massage. There were three different types of massages available, but we both chose a Thai massage. I can't remember what the other two types were, but the Thai massage was magnificent! These tiny girls climb all over you and twist and contort you in ways you didn't know you could bend. They twist and stretch you for an hour and you come out of there feeling like a lump of Silly Putty. I'd be afraid to go to any massage parlor at home and sign up for a Thai massage, but at the Gobi Hotel it's like going to the Red Door or its equivalent and of course, the price was incredible. My memory is shaky on this point after a year, but I'm sure the whole experience was less than $20. So, yes, I'm very tempted to return this weekend and have them scrub some of the city grime off me.

I got back to my apartment around 11:30, tired and limp, but very clean and relaxed!