July 13, 2007 - Khiid & Naadam

Well, this is what we did last p-day: we went to the Manchuriin-Khiid. [Khiid is a Buddhist monastery. More info.] I’m not exactly sure what this place was all about, but there was a bunch of cool stuff there spread out through a green forested valley and up a rocky mountatin: ancient ruins, a Buddhist-type building, a natural art museum, and a big big pot. Yes, not only did I see the big pot in which you can cook the meat of ten cows all at once, but I got in the big pot with ten cow’s worth of missionaries and we took a sweet picture. Not with my camera though, because at that point my batteries were dead. 30 minutes later, however, they were undead (one of the nifty features of cameras you purchase in Mongolia), and we took this picture in front of the Buddhist building.

Then we played hot-potato with a football (an ancient traditional Mongolian game) and then it started pouring. Everyone started screaming, we ran down the mountain, and I had the sudden revelation that Mongolia is pretty much the coolest mission in the world.

Most importantly, this week was NAADAM!!! Happy Naadam everyone!!! [Wikipedia article on Naadam] What’s Naadam, you ask? Why, it’s only the second biggest holiday in Mongolia! Naadam is Mongolia’s own little national Olympics, comprising three “manly” games: wrestling, horse-racing, and archery. On Wednesday all the missionaries got the day off to join in the festivities as there was absolutely no possibility of teaching lessons. We all went down to the stadium to watch the opening ceremonies for the wrestling tournament. They had a bunch of cool dancers and singers, including a guy in a red-sequined tailcoat and top hat who sang some really bad rock songs. Here's a picture of the opening ceremonies with some people wearing traditional Mongolian clothes. Aren't they the coolest? The dancing was probably really cool, but from where we were sitting we couldn’t see a thing. The program choreographer decided it would be a good idea to have an army of guys holding up huge banners in a v-formation around the dancers and thus completely blocking the view of 60% of the people in attendance. We tried to get the people around us to help us yell at them to take the flag down, but there was one problem: everyone around us was foreign. Germans, Frenchies, and a bunch of lame Americans. All tourists. We didn’t have time to teach them all to say, “Hey! Take down the banners!” in Mongolian, so we just sat there and pouted.

After the opening ceremonies we watched the first round of wrestling, which was mildly exciting. In the first round they usually pair up all the huge guys with really little guys who are just starting out so they have a chance to get a feel for where they need to improve. It usually gets over really quickly, but there was this one little firecracker who was giving his big guy a lot of trouble, and after a minute or two of struggling the little guy won! Yay for him!

After that little bit of excitement the missionaries all piled into 3 meekers and started the 45-minute drive to the horse races that ended up taking 2 and a half hours because everyone and their aimee was going there too.

As for describing the horse race, I don’t quite know how to do it. There were thousands of people gathered there, half of them on their own horses just running and weaving through the crowds. We were just out on the steppe, with most people gathered on the hillsides to get a better view of the race. We got there well after the race started, so there wasn’t any possibility of actually seeing the race, unless you got lucky like these people and could climb up on somebody’s truck. We couldn’t see, but we could tell when the race was over because everyone charges down into the valley after the racers come through. It’s considered good luck to get the dust kicked up by the horses, but I was content to just sit back and watch everyone trample each other. A few minutes later, in an apparent attempt to get more people killed, they started sending all the young riders through the crowds of people so that people could run up and try to touch the horses themselves. It was crazy! One of the elders managed to touch a horse and let everyone touch his super lucky hand afterwards. Pretty much it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. I imagine it was like the running of the bulls in I-Can’t-Remember-The-Name-of-The-Place, Spain, only it was out on the steppes of Mongolia, and I’ve never eaten so much dust in my life. By the time we got home all of the elders shirts were very much not white and I looked Mexican (well, more than usual) with all the dust on my face.

Naadam was a good day. That’s all for now.