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.
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