Today I woke up very late, since I was up late last night fixing the laptop. I grabbed a quick breakfast (really just a protein bar and some leftover Thai) and headed off to SOS Medica. I met up with Dr. Philip and then he organised for me to head over to the infectious dieseases hospital for a look at the hand, foot, and mouth outbreak.

I went with one of the female doctors from the clinic in the company car. Upon arrival at an old Russian built hospital made of brick, we made our way to the hand, foot, and mouth building where they initially screen the kids. The woman at the front wouldn't let us in because we didn't have our "protective white coats"! Nevermind the evidence that actually says the those coats provide a great little environment for all the bugs. Anyway, we headed to another building to enquire about a coat but were told that we had to go somewhere else. We went to the next building and were told that the ward is closed by order of the government and we can't go in without permission of the medical chief. So we went to see him on the second floor but he left for the day at 3:30. We were told from some other nurses that there was another building we could possibly go to and finally we found someone helpful who provided us with the necessary protective gear. Actually, as it turns out, it was better on that ward because that's where the patients go after they get seen initially at the first place that turned us away. We got to see about half a dozen cases, all kids under 5, and about half under 2. The kids all had small vesicular lesions on their tongues and on their mucus membranes (side of mouth, roof of mouth), and most had little lesions on their toes, palms, and fingers. In general they looked fairly ok but a few had developed meningitis and went to a different ward. It was great to be able to actually see what it looks like. At his point, over 1,000 confirmed infections have been tallied and they are all enterovirus 71, one of the more serious ones.

By the time I left the hospital, it was pouring rain. I quickly hopped in a taxi and headed home. About 1km into the trip, the rain had settled down. However, traffic was at an absolute standstill due to an accident so I paid the driver the fare and hopped out. I could walk much faster than we were going. Besides, I was anxious to get home and get some work done. I still have a lot more to go on my longitudinal task it turns out.

I got about another hour of work done then decided to head over to the weekly English Club at Dave's pub. This week there were quite a few Monoglians and just three native English speakers including me. I got to chat to a nice guy who just started work at the Christina Noble Children's Foundation. He had a degree in English and is a new translator for them. He translates letters from the sponsored children for the sponsors, and vice versa. I found out that he has to do a bit of content editing sometimes - nothing major, but just little things to fall within the scope of the guidelines. For example, children aren't allowed to ask the donor for more money, supplies, etc, and no personal contact details are allowed to be exchanged, as all correspondence and parcels go through the foundation. Anyway, we sang a few more Beatles songs but they're getting really old. I hope next week we get some better songsheets; I thought I might bring a few. After the singing, I got talking to a few other Mongolian guys about local music. I got some good suggestions for CDs to get while here including Chono, Hurd, Quiza, and Lumino. These are all very popular groups among the young guys here. A few of the women chimed in with song and artist suggestions but all the guys there said "no way!". I wrote everything down in both Mongolian and English and will try to get some this week, maybe even some of the ones suggested by the women!

After about an hour and a half, I headed home to get some work done on the computer I volunteered to fix for the head of CNCF. I gave Michelle a ring for the night to say goodnight but it was late there and she was tired so it was a quick "goodnight".

See ya tomorrow!