Trip to the Russian Border Park

Hello!  Сайна байна уу!  It is the last day in July, and I have been in Mongolia for over two months already!  The time has really flown by.  I have about a week and a half left of pre-service training and a language proficiency exam at the end of training.  Then, on August 12^th, I will leave my host family for the last time and return to Darkhan, where all of the incoming volunteers’ sites will be announced an we will have a week of site-specific training and preparation before all moving across the country.  This summer has been a wild ride of ups and downs, and I have made many great friends along the way.  It will be sad to say goodbye for now to Sukhbaatar and my host family, as well as my fellow Peace Corps trainees.  I will try to update you all when I learn my language proficiency score (we are supposed to reach a novice-high level, which is basically general introductory conversation skills and about a 100 word vocabulary) and my site placement.  I am so excited to find out where I will live and what organization I will work with for the next two years! 

But back to my current adventures.  This past weekend my family took a trip to a park at the Russian border, a favorite picnic and sightseeing location in the area.  The park is mostly on the cliffs at the edge of a plateau, and offers astounding views of the lower river valley, where the Orkhon and Selenge rivers join together before flowing north to Lake Baikal in Russia.  I have seen the point of these rivers before from a different angle, but the view of the entire valley from the park was beautiful.  

Here is a distant view of a road that illustrates how it is easy for one path to split into several, where drivers decide which path will be the smoothest, least damaging option.

A few days before going to the Russian park, we drove to an Ovoo (Buddhist shrine) on the top of a small mountain by Sukhbaatar.

The main path to the Russian Border: fairly nice for an unpaved road!

For some reason, driving on this precarious frontage road was the driver's choice.  You can see the main road off to the left, so it definitely still existed for this stretch....Some things about Mongolian driving I may never understand.

We arrived at the park, and started our climb up to the plateau edge, where the main section of the park is located.

Up and up!

A cliff that sort of looks like a face! People were climbing to the top as well, you can see one person on the top in this photo.

Chinggis Khaan and his wife!

A re-creation of what Chinggis Khaan's cave home could have been like.

Me, with Sukhbaatar (a great war hero from the 1920s), a gun, and a buddy of his.  The 'gun' was extremely heavy, because it is made out of steel and concrete!

A naked baby statue, where many people were taking pictures of the statue with their naked babies.  Therefore, I did not touch this statue when I took a picture with it!

My Mongolian host mom putting an offering on a large Ovoo at the park.

My host sister posing with the amazing view behind her--this picture is an amazing thing in itself, because my sister never wants to take pictures!

My family (according to my mother, Lorre is my little sister) at the edge of the cliff--we had to jump over a little space in the rocks to get to this ledge.

The view of the rivers joining from the Russian Border Park!

A panoramic of the great view.

Lorre was wearing a dress, and my sister thought it was hilarious when the wind blew her dress up and Lorre attempted, Marilyn Monroe style, to keep it down.

The second Mongolian horse I have 'ridden' since arriving!

This girl is sitting on a reindeer statue. There is a community far north in Mongolia that raises reindeer, and it is apparently an amazing place to visit.  I hope I have the chance while I am here!

My host brother with an awesome eagle statue in the background.  Eagles are used for hunting in the far west region of Mongolia, where most of the ethnic Kazakh Mongolians live.

My brother and sister playing a game where you get hit in the head with a bottle if you are incorrect--I refuse to play with my sister because she gets too excited/violent after a few rounds.  They kept it all in good fun this time around!

Me and the view!

I have a lot of assignments and studying to do before my language exam next week, so I probably will not post again until next Thursday or Friday.  Until then, I hope everyone is doing well!

For the first year in as long as I can remember, I am going to miss my county fair.  To everyone working at the Boone County Fair in Illinois this year, good luck!  I know it will be a hard week for me, even thinking about the fair makes me really homesick.  The fair is always a time to see everyone that you don't normally see, and it finishes up the summer with a finality that even my big transition can barely equal.  But most of all, it is about the family and friends that I get to spend an entire week hanging out with and working with.  Of course, I could really go for a taco from the stand by the Livestock Show Arena, some mozzarella sticks, and several ice cream sundaes.  You all will just have to enjoy them for me!

Until then, see you later!  Дараа Улзье!