Senior Missionary Trip 2013

On Wednesday morning, July 24th, we took a taxi to UB. We spent the afternoon meeting with other Senior couples to look for additional resources they had for teaching English. We also attended the Mission President Staff Meeting to report what we're accomplishing in Darkhan.  That evening we took one of the couples to dinner at a wonderful Thai restaurant.   They have been very supportive to us. Thursday and Friday we spent touring with all the Senior Couples, wonderful, historical sites about 30 miles East of UB. 

We first stopped at the Ghenggis Khan Monument. It is an amazing site.  It is about 180 feet tall with a viewing platform on the horses head. There is an elevator and winding stairs up to the horse then out to the platform.
The small dark horse statures you can barely see on the left of the monument are four times the size of a regular horse. They are planning on having 10,000 of these statues on the site!!

On our way to the 12th Century National Park to see a herd of Yaks and a huge herd of horses being driven by cowboys, and they were boys.

 

 

 

 

                                                                         

Boys in Mongolia start to ride by the age of two. By six or so they are the jockeys in the Annual Naadam Festival we reported on earlier. Last year two boys were killed falling off the horses. This year at Naadam they were required to wear helmets for the first time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a Golden Eagle I decided to have a close encounter with to discuss his hunting prowess.  If you haven't seen the video of  "Mongolian Golden Eagles Hunting Wolves" just Google those words. It is incredible! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was taken in the 12th Century National Park.  So much of their treasured past took place when Ghenggis Khan ruled over the Mongolian people.  He is revered today.

We are now in a monstrous Ger which was similar to Ghenggis Khan's Winter Palace.  Debbie and I decided to get comfortable in his chair and stay warm. We had lunch here with traditional Mongolian music, a tour of the grounds and heard lots of historical facts about him and his armies of 10,000 men that conquered most of what is now Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

 

 

 

 

While driving through the countryside we came across a white camel. It reminded Debbie that she wanted to ride a camel again. Notice the size of the camels humps here. They are much larger than the ones we rode at the Naadam Festival.








These are Southern Mongolian Camels where it is much warmer and very dry.  They store many gallons of water in the humps. 

Debbie also had to ride a horse through the beautiful mountains we were in.  I decided my back didn't need to take the punishment.









At another Ghenggis Khan encampment was the Education Camp where the children went to school. One of the things they were taught was old Mongolian script. A current teacher demonstrated the technique and then invited us to write something she would write in script.  The one on the left is the Fredley name.  The one on the right says "Love at Home". A couple of others had love at home too and the script matched perfectly. It almost seems like it was copied in a machine.  Another camp we visited was for the Craftsman that made wheels, wagons, swords, spears, chainmail and other armor.

 

The batteries in our camera died (they were brand new) so we didn't get to take as many pictures as we wanted to. It was a wonderful trip. We slept in a Ger in the Torelj National Park the final night of our trip. The ger experience is something that everyone who visits Mongolia needs to try. It was fairly comfortable except for the rice-filled pillows. The pillows were noisy as well! There is a small wood-burning stove in each ger to keep you warm. The food we had at this camp were some of the best since we've been here.