Back in UB

Arrived back in UB this afternoon. Only 2 more days before I fly home! Our trip to the monastery yesterday was wonderful. The monastery was built from 1727-1737 and was only partially damaged by the Soviets and it is beautiful. We hired a driver to take us there (3 hours by car, the last 35 km on a dirt road). Saw dozens of marmots - very cute, a cross between prairie dogs, meerkats and chipmunks. They build their holes near the road, so we'd see one scamper across the dirt and disappear down a hole less than 12" from the side of the track. Of course, the roads keep getting wider as one track gets rockier as the dirt is worn down to the boulders underneath, or the gullies make driving too difficult, so maybe the marmots were there first and the road has come to meet them. I was fascinated to see that the poles carrying electricity to these remote villages and settlements still have glass insulators on them. The poles themselves, although made from trees, stop about a meter above the ground and are lashed to a concrete post coming out of the ground. This is because of the severe freezing half of the year. At the monastery, Marta and I happened by a temple room where the monks were chanting. One of them was even throatsinging. While we we eating our lunches at a small restaurant near the monastery, it rained briefly, but we didn't think too much about it. It was a different story as we made our way back on the dirt road. There were parts of the road flooded and the driver often had to get out and walk ahead to find the best way to proceed. He had a Toyota, and not a Toyota SUV, either. It was still raining on this section of the road as we were driving. I think if we had left an hour later, we might have had trouble getting away. In some places we saw hail.

That night we went back to our favorite Texas Pub and I ordered a quesadilla. The description on the menu said "chiken cheese and vegetables", so I was surprised when it arrived and, although it was good, it didn't have any cheese on it. I usually let things like that go, but this time I decided to ask, especially because it was difficult to eat without the cheese binding all the veggies together. Pointing to the menu, I asked the waitress about the cheese and she went to the back to inquire. When she returned, she pointed with vague gestures to her torso and said that that was the chicken cheese. I looked at Marta and said "So chicken cheese is chicken breast?" Marta shrugged and I said OK. I kept thinking about it, wondering how "breast" became "cheese" and decided that someone had looked in a dictionary for "chest" and had mistakenly written down "cheese" instead. We had a good laugh over that.