Lake Khovsgol

Today was an eventful day.  We had permission from President Clark to go as a district to this beautiful lake outside our district.  It is really one of the gems of Mongolia and a place everyone says is a "must see" while we are in this area.  So we went today.  It was an experience.  We left the church at 7:20ish Mongolian time (supposed to leave at 7) and started out in a meeker that was a friend's of a member of our branch presidency.  A meeker is a large minivan and we use them to get around town.  They are very cheap but are usually filled with 12-22 people all packed as tightly as possible.  There were 11 of us who went and 12 who came back.  We brought back the Branch President's son who had been at the lake visiting his sister who is working there for the summer. Anyway, this meeker was a little shorter and was a cargo van, so those sitting in the back had no windows.  Wish I had a  picture of the whole thing, but here is a picture of me sitting in the back with one missionary and the YM president of the branch.  Alan was, of course, taking the picture, but had been also sitting back there with us.

The landscape was so amazingly beautiful.  It was green and lush, but, as you can see, the roads were still a bit dusty.  It was about 60 miles to the lake and it took us 4 hours to get there.  The driving was slow.  There is a new road being built that will be really nice and cut the travel time by about half.  We tried to use that where possible, but entering and exiting the new road was sometimes difficult.  We just took the old road(s) on the way home and it still took us about 4 hours.  There are many roads and they all lead to the lake.

This was our first view of the lake.  It is so beautiful and blue.  Everyone says it is pristine and is ok to drink from.

After seeing how the animals use the lake, I had my doubts and did not drink the water.  One of the missionaries did and I hope he doesn't get sick.

 

There was no sand on the beach, but lots of rocks.  Our grandchildren would have had a wonderful time there throwing rocks into the lake.  They would have been in heaven, which it really is a little piece of!

 This was our first time really seeing a yak and they are everywhere.  We also saw huge herds of sheep and goats.  They use the goats for their wool and make angora items from it.

 Because the Branch President's daughter worked at the camp, she was able to get us a ger to fix our food  in and eat.  We used one of these, complete with wood burning stove.

Elder Munkbold (yellow shirt) did all the cutting and preparations for the food we had, which is a noodle dish with meat, cabbage, onions, potatoes and carrots called Soven (I think).  It was really good, but it took him about 6 hours to cut up everything.  We all would have helped had we known.  Anyway,  Sister Oktober was one of the ones who cooked the food on the big wok like pan that sets right into the wood burning stove.  Others of us took cookies and drinks and helped with the ingredients for the lunch.  Sister Bayenjargle (the BPs wife) provided herram (hot water and milk) and rolls, and her daughter brought us some fish from the lake that had been boiled in oil.  I was a little hesitant and was already really full, but I tried some of Alan's and it was so good.  We had so much to eat.

We walked around the area a bit while the young elders and sisters played volley ball and frizbee.  We had a translator which made it so wonderful for us.  He is an RM from Ogden who is from Murum and is visiting his family for a few weeks.  He will be here for a few more weeks as his wife and children are coming from UB.  We have been so thankful to have him.  We feel so much more useful and a part of what's going on.  Anyway, while walking around with him, we came across this fish drying place.  They pull the fish from the lake in nets, clean them and hang them in the sun to dry.  Then they smoke some of them and others just eat dried.  It was interesting.


We also had a devotional where all the missionaries prepared a short thought on how to keep the spirit with us.  They all did a wonderful job and the spirit was there.  We are working with a choice group of young people who truly love the Lord and the gospel and who want to share it to bless the lives of Mongolians here.

On the way home, we stopped to take pictures of some TeePees Alan had seen on the way up. It turned out to be a camp of reindeer people!  We were so excited.  We got to touch the reindeer and take pictures of them. The antlers on some of them were huge as you can see, and are very soft and velvety. The world created for us and the animals in it are truly beautiful!

There were about 8 reindeer in all and they were all beautiful. Some had large antlers, but the younger ones just had little stubs and were so cute.  We ran into Elder Inkbold who is working up there for the summer.  He was initially to have been our translator in Murun, but he is working making and selling jewelry to tourists to make money to go to college.  We bought me a bracelet and tiger eye necklace from him.  He wanted to just give them to me, but we insisted on paying him for them.  I think he still gave us a really great deal.  He is a fine young man.

 On the way home we say this huge herd of goats and sheep.  This also shows the roads we were traveling on.

Overall, we had a great day and slept very well last night.

Youth Camp

We are here as English teachers and have a sponsor here in Murun that has a youth camp.  They asked us to go up and teach there for a few days and so we went.  It was about 20 kilometers (15 miles) from Murun on dirt roads.  A member of the branch drove us up and, since we don't have an interpreter yet, a member of the branch who speaks some English,, went with us.  He was truly a lifesaver.  We had an interesting experience at the camp.  It was probably a highly attended place in its prime, but is now in sore need of repair and maintenance.  Our cabin had one window broken completely out and two others had cracks or holes in them.  The cabin itself was really sort of cute.  The camp was large and attendance was not limited to the youth in our program.  Mongolians go to the "country side" in the summer to be rejuvenated and invigorated.  I can see why they do that because the country side is very beautiful--lush and green.  But while there, most of them drink a lot and have quite the parties.

The beds were basically made of wood with a small pad on top.  That did not make for very good sleeping.  We had sore backs every day and very little sleep.  And it was a little colder than we had expected, but we were glad we had taken at least two blankets with us.  We used the pads from the unused beds to help keep us warm.  It also rained everyday we were there, at least once a day.  Then the sun would come out and it would be nice and warm, with almost no puddles or mud.  The water just drained into the sandy soil.

This is a picture of most of the students we had.  We took a hike up the hillside.  There was tall grass and lots of greenery in the trees.  When we came out on the top, there was less grass and fewer trees and a gazillion flies!  They were almost bad enough to make it wish we had not gone--but not quite.  It really was pretty from the top.

 The flowers were incredible--meadows and meadows with orange, blue, purple, yellow, pink, red and white flowers.

We took another hike by ourselves the next day and this is the view we had from the hilltop we climbed to.  It shows the camp and the surrounding area. In many ways, it reminded me of the hills at home in Idaho!

The day we left to come home, we took little treats to the camp cooks who had prepared our food--most of which was pretty good, after we fished out the fat chunks. Alan took a picture of the food being prepared for lunch that day.  This picture gives a whole new meaning to "baby back ribs!"  Actually, this was sheep ribs and I'm sure the end product was very tasty.  I was just sort of glad we didn't stick around long enough to find out.  It's probably better in many cases to now know what is in the food we eat.  Notice the huge 3-foot wok built right into the wood burning stove.  They used lots of wood up there everyday and had the cutest little old man who cut it for them.  We helped him carry in a few loads some days, until he indicated he really didn't want us to do that.

After our last class, some of the boys asked me if I would play basketball with them.  They were sure I would be an "all star" because of my height!  Well, they were surely disappointed, but I did make one basket, but that was only after getting the ball to a member of the other team who scored.  It was a 3 on 3 tournament and, even though my team lost the first round, they substituted another player in for me and they won the tournament.  I was pretty beat after the first game and was ready to be substituted for!

It was fun opportunity, but we were gone from our work for about 3 days and taught English about 8 hours. So we are hoping we are done with that assignment.   They told us they didn't care if the students learned much English, they just wanted them to have fun.  It was fun when we split the classes into two, but when we had them all, it wasn't fun for either them or us!

This is a sunset picture Alan took after one of the rain storms.

We shared our camp area with others--some of the 4-legged kind.  We also saw herds of cattle, sheep and a huge herd of goats.

Naadam Carnival

One day we went to a children's park in the center of town that some fun things to do.  This "roller coaster" was leg powered and pedaled like a bike.  There were no ups and downs and cost about $.70.  These people were not in our group, but this was the only way we could get a good picture. 

This "ferris wheel" was a real hit with the Mongolians.  It was made our of concrete and didn't look too stable to me!

This is our district.  We tried to make it look like we were on a cruise, but we didn't quite all fit in the picture in front of the boat.

The man in the grey deel brought two camels to the park for tourists like us.  He was a big hit.  Camels are very interesting in the way the three joints of their legs work.  It is quite interesting to be on them when they get up and down.  The impact is first to fall forward and then to fall backward.

Notice the two humps on the camels.  We are told they are found mostly in Mongolia and China.  They say it makes them easier to ride and to stay on.  Pictures of the ride were $2.25.  When we went to pick ours up, we found a member of our branch presidency was processing the pictures in a tent with all the electronic equipment necessary for instant photos.

This is one of the sisters who really wanted to hold this bald eagle.  She it was pretty heavy, but it was something she really wanted to do.  The bird was really beautiful and was immature because the head was still brown and not white.

While wandering through the park, I ran across this handsome Mongolian warrior.  Does he look familiar?  The costume was pretty authentic of the 13th century and weighed about 15 to 20 pounds.

We had our first Hosher, or Mongolian hamburger as Alan calls it, which is very similar to Buuz, but it is fried instead of steamed. The woman who owned this booth also owns a store in town and said she might be able to special order some things we just can't get in Murun, like peanut butter, powdered sugar, baking powder, brown sugar, curry, etc.  We plan to find her store after Naadam.

Those in the picture from left to right are Sister Largin, Elder Flint, Elder Munkbold, Sister Oktober and  me.  I really was not angry, but my looks like it.  Maybe I was a little miffed.  One of our fellow drunk diners told the others that I was the one with the fat face!  They are very honest people! Needless to say, that didn't make my day.

All drinks are served in a bow.  This drink was made out of plants collected from the mountain side, with lots of floaties.  It really tasted pretty good, until we got to the last part with the settled floaties. We went back the next day and she gave a cup full of the base mix to make 10 liters of juice. It's still in the freezer and we haven't tried to make it yet.  One of the elders said it was like jam and put it on his bread.  We haven't tried that either!  We were trying to make the photo as attractive Abbey and Alison's food shots!  Did we succeed?

Archery

This was very interesting to watch.  They shoot weighted arrows at a stack of PVC pipe marked with red and black.  Any arrow that hit the red area was a high score and any arrow that knocked down any of the pipes was scored.  The distance was about 100 yards and 90 yards for the women. The lady setting up the pipes had to very aware of any wayward arrows!  I don't think I would have liked her job!

These are 13th century recurved bows that gave Chinngis Khaan the advantage in his battles because they shot farther than a long bow.  They are very hard to string and it takes two people to do it.

The man in the gray deel did the best.  It was interesting to watch. 

Naadam Opening Ceremonies

Naadam celebrates the "Three Manly Sports" of wrestling, horse racing and archery and is started with a large opening ceremony which was pretty amazing. Women are now allowed to compete in archery, but not wrestling or horse racing.  The opening ceremony included dancing, singing, wrestling, youth flag presentation, military groups, a band and 2-string horsehair violin orchestra.

Playing this violin seems to be a form of Mongolian culture.  The sound is mellow and beautiful and it takes great skill to be able to play one of these considering it only has 2 strings!

The little boy in blue was just learning the dances and was so cute.  He captured every heart in the audience!

This is our Branch President.  He is a wrestling coach and was involved as a judge in the wresting matches.  It was pretty neat to see many of the people dressed in their traditional deels--both men and women.

All the wrestlers circled this platform before entering the demonstration field.  We are not sure why, but it was very interesting to watch all these huge Mongolian wrestlers go through their traditional rituals.

 The match is over when one person is thrown to the ground.  This was only demo and we didn't see any of the real matches.

I obviously was not in the wrestling competition, but this was a good picture of the platform.

Naadam - Horse Racing

 Naadam is one of the two national holidays in Mongolia.  We have not quite figured out what they are celebrating, they sure do celebrate--like for 5 days!  It was not possible to meet with investigators or even most members during this time, so we had the instruction from the mission president to keep the missionaries busy so they would not miss their families too much.  So we did our best.

We went to horse races several times.  At one we saw the end where a horse ran away and, while the officials were stopping to from going into the crowd, the horse turned sharply and the young rider, probably age 6-8, was thrown from the horse.  He had to be carried off the field with, we think, a broken leg.

This was taken right before the child fell off the horse.

 This is the winner of the 20 kilometer cross country race.  Note the colorful Mongolian flag in the background.

Bread and Buuz (Pronounced Bows)

One p-day the sisters wanted to learn how to make bread, so we decided to do that.  Also, Naadam was close and Mongolians always eat Buuz for Naadam, so Sister Oktober said she would teach us how to make them.  The bread turned out pretty well and the buuz turned out wonderful.

  There doesn't seem to be such a thing a hamburger in Murun, but the Mongolians cut up the meat so fine it is almost like hamburger.  She added onions, water and salt to the meat.  Then we made the flour and water shell to put around the meat.  There is really a skill involved, and I didn't get it very well.  But Sister Oktober could make them lickety split and they looked really nice.

I felt like I was all thumbs trying to put them together.   Alan even tried.  While we weren't very successful, it didn't change the flavor, and they were very good.  Those who had eaten before said they were better than any you can buy at the store.

You can tell the ones Sister Oktober did and the ones the other missionaries did.  But, like I said, they were so very good!  They are steamed in this pan for about 20 minutes and that cooks the meat through.  At least, we assume it did because we didn't get sick from it.  We have been told that meat needs to be cooked for several hours.