More River Fun

The rain FINALLY broke (only for a day, waah waah) and the sun decided to blaze so Koty, Philip and I headed to the overflowing-it's-banks river for some long overdue summer fun.

 What riverbank!?

 Some of the kids from my neighborhood floating by.

 Philip and I got to the river first; we were minding our own business when this gaggle of late teens/early twenties guys came over.  

 Turns out one of them knew Philip (and by "knew" I mean rode a bus with him once) and they were actually really cool!

 It's like the Olympics!

 Philip hit a rock and skinned his ankle :(  so he was relagated to watching us from the shore.

 Koty and me soakin' up the sun.

 The guy in the middle is Altanbulag.  He wasn't sure how old he was (first he was 19, then 21).  I tried teaching him how to float (his floundering was hilarious).  He asked me to...ahem...I politely declined.

 Getting swept away by the strong current.

One...Two...Three...Jump!  Yes, I'm in my underwear...When in Rome, yo!  In my defense, I wasn't expecting to be mobbed by half a dozen young men, just get my swim & tan on with my friends or I would have worn my swimsuit.

Camels

So there were a few things I knew I had to do when I found out I was coming to Mongolia, one of which was ride a camel.  I mean, c'mon, it IS Mongolia, land of dinosaurs in the Gobi and camels roving the landscape.  After finding out that there are camels in Dornod and asking around about ownership, it turns out that Tsetsegdelger, a nurse at APDC, has a brother who owns a small camel herd 25km outside the city.  After negotiating a date and time, we snagged a cab and head out to the hudoo yesterday to be "silly American tourists" for a few hours.

There they are!  Camels to the left, baby cows in the pen to the right.

The family also had horses.

The family's ger with the camels in the background.

Tээмэ!

The sad old man camel.

Aav and duus getting the white camel ready for us to ride.  She was bellowing and a bit stubborn about it!

Testing her out with a duu first.  Yep, she'll do.

My turn!

Ready...

Up!

Camel butt.  Great shot, Koty. 

I had the biggest, dopiest grin on my face the whole time.

So.  Much.  Fun!

Sain tsagaan temee, sain.

I can only imagine what the duu was thinking, leading me around.

I loved her, minii jijig tsagaan temee.

Aaaaand back down.  :(

Koty on the temee.

After we were done riding the family made us khorkhog (although my guts have been doing weird things for the last 2 weeks so I didn't eat any), we gushed more thanks and then were on our way back to the city.  It was a super fun afternoon, and an experience I'll never forget.

LEOS English Classes

Just because it's summer doesn't mean I get any extra time off.  PC requires us TEFLers to work as if school was still in session, and while many other PCVs travel around to do camps, I chose to stay in Choibalsan (A. because of Bambuul and B. because I want to enrich my own home community as much as possible with what little time I have here).  One of my projects was the Women's Empowerment Seminar and I'm also doing some one-on-one English lessons/tutoring, but the bulk of my summer work is teaching English to orphans (could that BE any more Peace Corps!?). 

 Koty intro-ing animals to the 4-7 year olds.

 Me doing the animals on a coloring sheet.

 Bluuuuuue.

 

 

 What color is this? Yellow!

 Pink camels and blue cows are the BEST!

 Sticking your tongue out helps when coloring the dog green.  

Koty doing a grammar activity with our other class, 10-15 year olds.

Bambuul Update

It's been awhile since I've indulged my helicopter puppy parent and posted about the hound.  She's been gettin' a lot of lovin' lately, I suspect because sometime in mid-July was her birthday!  As I have no idea when her birthday actually is I counted back five months from when she lost her teeth, hence my July estimate. 

Big yawn waking from our nap.

Staring contest!

 Munching on a new rawhide knot sent from Uncle Jon.

Being crazy with a new crunchy ball sent from Auntie Cystal.

Another Goodbye

This weekend we had the sad task of saying goodbye to another volunteer, Beth.  Beth was part of a pilot Australian Red Cross program and thing's just weren't working out so she (and a few others in the program) are heading home.  We did dinner and karaoke on Friday, then went over to Beth's on Saturday for dinner and Twister.  At the end of the night we sang a song in our respective native languages for each other and with such a diverse group, it was a really cool way to end the evening.

 Me, Beth and Betty (a Czech UNICEF volunteer visiting from UB) doing Rocky punches to "Eye of the Tiger."

 The karaoke crew: Raj (C-town VSO), Philip (American formerly on Fulbright, now working in UB but visiting C-town for the summer), Jyothi (C-town VSO), me, Koty (C-town PCV), Betty (UB UNICEF), Nim & Bimba

 Playing Twister at Beth's apartment.  So American Twister is many people all moving the same body part to the same colors...

 But Czech Twister is two people, only one moves at a time and you move in a line up then back down.

 Czech Twister rules are way better than American!  Get ready for it when I get back.

 Cake with "Sain yvaarai" in peanuts.

Gonna miss her charisma!