Conference

7/7
That morning we went back to UB, and I met up with Halshka to take her to the apt. We then went and ran some errands together, and ended up running into Grace. Grace was going to go hiking with the HASH group, so we tagged along and did that. I was totally not dressed for hiking (dress shoes), but apparently hiking in Dansko's works just fine, your feet just slip around a little bit.

7/8
This day we spent "touring" different parts of the Mongolian Public Health system. We started out going to the veterinary labs, and they spoke with us and gave us a small tour. Then we headed over to their college of public health, and they had a presentation for us there, and finally we went to the NCCD, and they had a presentation for us there too. Following our tours we went to a museum that had a lot of buddhist art. They also had some art by local artists for sale. Many of the local artists were actually there selling their paintings. Some of them were really neat, so if I had an easy way to get them home I might have bought something, but I didn't. Next we went to Star Apts. for a dinner that Eileen was putting on for everybody attending the conference. This was alot of fun, and it was good to get to hang out with everybody again.

7/9
This was the first day of the conference. The conference itself was pretty uneventful with many interesting presentations. The one thing I could not believe though was how many people had their cell phones going off, and were actually taking the calls in the conference room. About every 15 min one would go off. On top of that many people were talking too. I have never been to a conference where people were that rude to the speakers. Some of the speakers were giving their presentations in Mongolian, so they had a translator available, both for us, and to translate the English presentations into Mongolian. This was pretty cool, the translator was talking at the same time as the speaker, and then we just had little headsets to wear. I can't imagine how difficult that would be to listen and translate at the same time. I don't think I could even do that just repeating what the person was saying in English. That evening we went out to a ger camp right outside of town for a banquet. The gers were more permanent than the usual ger camps and were very decorated. The inside of the main ger was lined with snow leopard furs. They had dinner, and a show for us, and of course lots of vodka.



7/10
There was more of the conference with workshops in the morning this day. After that everybody went shopping. I chose not to go along shopping, because I had done most of my shopping, and Halshka was supposed to be coming back to the apt. while they were out shoppping.
I met up with everybody at a show that night. The show had Mongolian singing, dancing, and contortionists. It was a really good show. I could not believe the behavior of the other people there to see the show though. When I arrived the lobby of the theater was full of people. I could see the people from our group, so I started trying to get through to them. Some guy then decided to yell at me. And everybody was just pushing into eachother, especially once the doors opened. I just couldn't believe it. We were all going to get in to see the show, there was no need for pushing and shoving and yelling at eachother. Tehn once we were in there it was really crowded, so they brought in some benches for people to sit in front. Well this guy sitting next to me was throwing stuff at the people sitting on the benches. I thought that maybe he knew them, but he didn't he was just throwing stuff at them. Who does that? The people in the front did eventually end up sitting on the floor and they moved the benches to the side. In all the show was excellent, but it was just the behavior of my fellow toursits that was horrible.
After the show some of us went out to the Chinggis Khan Pub. We really had a good night. There was a huge group of us though. Zima, who works for the NCCD was with us, and some of her friends, then Halshka, and I and her cousin, Konrad. Then some other people from the conference, and some of Zima's friends as well. After dinner and drinks at the pub then we went to Metro which is a dance club in UB.


7/11
The following day was the first day of Nadaam. We met up with everybody at the hotel and then went over to the stadium. The opening ceremony was really neat. There was a lot going on, dancing, singing, horse back riding, speeches, everything. After that there was some wrestling that we got to see too. They took us to lunch at 1 that day, so we didn't get to see much of the wrestling. After lunch we came back and went to the archery. That was really impressive. I can't imagine firing the bows that they had and not hitting a target. Especially having fired a bow with all of the high tech aiming stuff on it before and failing miserably. For dinner that night we headed out to the countryside to Dr. Burmaa's ger. She made dinner for all of us and then we had lots of singing, and just hanging out. One of the coolest things that night was that Dr. Fu who was there from China was singing a song in Chinese and the Mongolians were like "We have that same song" so they sang their version. Even though the words were different the story of the songs was the same. Halshka and I also had fun playing this volleyball game with some of the kids out at the ger camp. That night after we got back Halshka and I went out again.











7/12
The next morning we were supposed to go to the horse races with the group from the symposium. They had told us to meet them at 6:30 in the morning though. I had already decided when we were getting back from the ger camp at 2:30 that I wasn't going to be getting up that early to go to the horse races, but Halshka really wanted to go. So we decided to call up these Korean guys who we'd met the night before, because we figured they would probably be going out to the races. They were going with one of their Mongolian coworkers, so we tagged along with them. It ended up being a really amazing experience. We went out and joined up with Sagi's family at their ger camp. We hung out with them and they gave us some food and airag and vodka. Then they pulled out an extra del that they had for Halshka and I to put on. And they also brought out their shotgun for us to pose with. They were also milking some of the mares in order to make more airag. Then we headed over to the finish line for the horse races. Once we were over there some of Sagi's friends brought over some horses and we ended up riding around on horses all afternoon. Then we stopped by one of the food gers and got some Hashore for lunch, and then headed back over to the ger camp, for more food and vodka before we left. All in all it was just an amazing experience to get to experience Nadaam with a Mongolian family. We headed back to UB at about 4 because I needed to get packed for my flight home that night. We just hung out while I packed things up, and then Halshka, Konrad, and I went out for dinner at Hazara. After that my ride came for the airport and I was on my way home.