End of the Year Festivities--Trip to the Khuduu #2

So, the second trip to the khuduu (countryside) was with all the teachers, staff, and administration from my school. We went to the school's farm. The farm is only about 7 km outside the city. There are 2 or 3 cabins with a bunch of beds in them and a cook house out there. Three or four students take turns staying out there to take care of the crops. They grow potatoes, carrots, cabbage--all the regular mongol veggies. And it's near the river. The cabins are pretty nice. They're log cabins. Of course, there's no plumbing, so there's an outhouse. There's a family that lives in a ger not far from the farm that helps oversee the farm. We had some visitors on this trip too. A couple of petroleum engineering professors from the Mongolian University of Science and Technology and an administrator from the Da Chin Petroleum Company (a Chinese mining company for whom our school provides trained workers). Petroleum mining is one of our big and growing bigger majors. Any hoo...this is a day for all the school's employees to eat khorkhuk (barbequed mutton), drink a little vodka, swim in the river, sing a few Mongolian songs, celebrate the successful school year, and start vacation. It was a very good day!  We had a lot of fun.


Sheep skin--good eats!



While waiting for the khorkhuk to finish cooking I went down to the river (maybe a hundred yards away) with my counterparts, and when we got back the first round of khorkhuk had been eaten up. So we had to wait for the next round to finish cooking. We were pretty hungry, so while we were waiting I was given this plate of "food." It's sheep skin and the layer of fat right under the skin. I'm not sure how it was cooked--smoked, fried, roasted? It was very rubbery but it had a delicious smoky flavor to it. Slap it on a thick slice of bread, taking off some of the fat, and it tides one over for the real meat.



Waiting for khorkhuk. That's Chuluuntsetseg, my CP,
on the left in the red hat. I'm sitting betweeen Naraa (social studies teacher)
and Bayasaa (agriculture teacher), who were in my teachers' English class.



Chuluunkhuu (welding and heavy machine operation teacher
and one of my English students) belting out a Mongol tune.



Me, Ariunaa (my CP), Bayasaa, and our school's Director, Enkhjargal

From left Chuluuntsetseg, Naraa, Ariunaa, Batsurek
(petroleum mining teacher) and Enkhbayar (mining teacher,
branch manager of the mining branch, and one of my English students)
 sitting in one of the cabins.

The men are racing across the river,
having taken running jumps off the bank.

Well, tomorrow I'm headed to UB and on Tuesday I fly out to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. I'm going with my sitemates, Trinh, Joel, and Bob, and my friend from training, Becky. We'll spend 2 weeks in Vietnam and 2 weeks in Cambodia. Trinh has family in Vietnam, so we're going to spend about a week with them in the Mekong Delta. Should be fun! And Trinh speaks both Vietnamese and Khmer, so that will be very handy. We'll spend a week at the beach in Vietnam--I can't wait. And you can bet your bottom dollar that I will not be eating any sheep products. Only seafood, fruit, and green vegetables--YUM!  

Great Picture

I took this picture from the airplane when I flew from Ulaanbaatar back to my site at the beginning of June. We were circling around UB to go back east. This is right outside UB. You can see the edge of the ger district at the top.

End of School Year Festivities--Khuduu Trip #1



One of the boys learning to race horses.
This is at the herder's ger in the middle of the steppe--
note the solar panel and satellite dish.



Sook Bin, enjoying his camel photo op.



These are porogons--rugged and uncomfortable.

A couple saddled horses. So beautiful.

Yeong Ji being hoisted onto the camel...1...



...2...



...3...



Success!



The man to the left with the cigarette in his mouth is the best horse racing coach in the aimag and my school's herder.

Hi All! My school year finally came to a close a couple weeks ago. I had 2 trips to the khuduu (the countryside) to mark the occasion. The first trip I went with a couple branch managers, the deputy director, my counterpart Ariunaa, the 2 Korean volunteers at my school (Yeong Ji and Sook Bin), the visiting educational consultant who was French Canadian (Jean Luc), and his interpreter. Much ado was made over the international make-up of the group. There were many toasts to the international cooperation for the success of the school. I have no idea how Mongolians find destinations in the vast steppe lands. We all rode in the school's porogon. A porogon is kind of like the Russian version of an all-terrain VW Bus. The engine is under the front seat, and I'm pretty sure shock absorbers are non-existent. So, we drive out of town on the paved road til we hit the gravel road which we travel on for several kilometers until we turn off on what appears to be a random dirt road across the steppe. We follow the dirt road which winds around so that it's difficult to tell what direction we're going in. Then at another seemingly random spot we turn off the dirt road and go tearing across the steppe. We're probably 20 kilometers or so outside of town but I really have no idea where we are. We come to a ger in the middle of the steppe with a herd of horses and a small herd of camel. We get out of the porogon, and go into the ger. We're served suutai tsai (milk tea) but for once it's not hot. It is a swelteringly hot, sunny day. And we also get aruul (dried milk curds) and aruun (which is this creamy butter kind of stuff that is quite good--milk is boiled and the cream rises to the top then the milk with the cream at top is set aside for a few days; then the cream is scraped off the top. Sometimes you have to pick a fly out of it but it's still tasty.) The ger belongs to my school's herder. Because my school is a vocational school with agriculture and veterinary majors, my school has a herd of animals (mostly sheep I think but a few horses too) and a farm. I found out that my school's herder is known as the best horse riding coach in the aimag. He trains boys to ride race horses. There are 3 or 4 boys at the ger too, along with the herder and his family, learning to race horses. We stay at the ger long enough to drink a cup of suutai tsai and pick up the khorkhuk (the barbequed sheep) which the herder has already prepared for us in the traditional way using hot stones. We get back in the porogon and go tearing across the steppe again to a perfect spot by the river. Khorkhuk is absolutely the best way to eat mutton. It's delicious. Everyone just grabs a big ol' bone and eats with your fingers. A knife is handed round to assist in getting the tough bits off the bone. And of course the Mongolians eat everything off the bone, fat, gristle and all. When I'm done with my bones, I give them to a Mongolian because they think there's still lots of edible meat on the bone. There are also potatoes that are cooked with the khorkhuk and are delicious, and some of the broth is passed around too. I soak bread in the broth. It's really quite tasty. Of course, vodka comes out and there are several toasts. After lunch we take a little dip in the river. A couple of the boys have brought the small herd of camel, which belong to the herder's friend but have been brought for the foreigners' delight. Yeong Ji, Sook Bin, and Jean Luc all got on a camel for photo ops, but I declined. The camel does not go down on its knees so you can get on. The Mongolians hoist you up onto the 7-8 foot tall camel. I decided that getting on and off the camel could pose a danger to my leg, so I declined to get on the camel. Also, I didn't want to be "hoisted" up. I took photos, though of the others. After the camel photo ops, we headed home, tearing off across the steppe again.



Jean Luc, looking a little uncomfortable with a moving camel
and nothing to hold on to but the hump.
Mongolia has the only 2 hump camels in the world.