Dear All:

Just a short one today, as I've got only a short amount of
time to write tonight.

A big "thank you!" to all who have written. I thoroughly
enjoyed all of your comments and thoughts. Please understand
if I don't respond to you individually until I get back.

Work continues apace and we are really accomplishing quite
a bit. We're working on about six houses at once, and it's
so heartening to see the changes that we are
able to make every day.

Floors are going in, roofs are going up, chimneys are rising
higher and higher and the outsides are getting stuccoed then
painted. Soon they'll be full of Mongolian families who will
finally have a place to call their own.

Yesterday began the season of accidents. Two thumbs got
hammered and required BenGay. At the cookout we went to way
out across the plains last night (more about that in detail
later), we had a blown out knee incurred during a volleyball
game with some of our Mongolian co-workers, along with a
dislocated thumb. Thank heavens I bought the more expensive
First Aid kit from EMS. Still waiting for a chance to use
the syringe and some of the other fanc supplies within!

One of our team had a close call the day before yesterday
which could only be something out of a Monty Python sketch.
He was crossing the one main road in Erdenet, looked
carefully both left and right, then stepped out. It was at
this juncture that he was hit by a man on a yak who had
just turned the corner and was going at a fairly decent
clip. Martin was knocked to the ground, but not hurt, and
when he looked up he saw both man and yak disappearing down
the street -- the man completely occupied with the
conversation he was having on his (you guessed it!) cell
phone. One of these days there's going to be a law passed
here to prohibit yakking on a yak in traffic!

Must go now. More later.