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Last night's language lesson went well. I learned some numbers, and how to say "How much is that?" and "I like books." (I like/ I don't like etc)

Mongolian is so hard.

Last night it rained. I love waking up in the middle of the night to hear rain on my roof. I had a dream that I was shopping for clothes at Cotton Ginny, in Mongolia. How strange.

There is a drunk sleeping in my stairwell. I think that's the third one since I've been here.

I have already started packing. I am so bloody sick of packing, but oh well. Our plane leaves early in the morning. I have to get Ingrid to look at our plane tickets because I can't figure out where it says when we are leaving.

I got an email from my friend Dave who is teaching in Taiwan. If I go in January, he might not be there, but he has already said that he would set me up with some of his friends. He is planning to move to Cairo. He's enrolled in arabic school. I'm not sure if this means that he will be teaching at the school or studying arabic. I told him to buy me a jingle scarf. I want one for belly dancing.

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I just finished the essay about travel and my father and sent it off by email. I'm not happy with it, but then I'm not happy with anything I write.

I have learned not to care about my opinion about what I write. That's one good thing about journalism school. Now I just write, basically because I have to, I want to and I don't really have a choice about it.

I always want to write more, or to be a better writer. I'm never satisfied with the amount that I'm writing. I always feel that I should be writing more.

I wonder what I would do if I didn't write or have this burning urge to write.

I am ultimately terrified that I will never publish a book. I don't know why this means so much to me. It's meant so much for years. I don't know how I would live without the urge to keep spilling out words.

I always have something to say.

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When I got home from doing errands (buying crap for our trip), the power was out. I used this as an excuse not to work. I wrote some poems and I'm going to write more.

Then I had to buy socks. Mongolia is hard on socks. All my socks seem to be dying quick, painful deaths.

There have been so many foreigners in Ulaan Baatar lately. It's really noticeable. Ingrid says that the tourist season is starting. Most of the people are probably coming in through Russia, due to SARS. It's likely that we won't get a lot of Japanese tourists this year.

Whenever I start seeing lots of foreigners, I am always shocked by how tall they are. That's one thing I like about being in Asia. Almost everything is my size.