Countryside Reunion, Part One

My language teacher in America is home visiting Mongolia for a few weeks. This past weekend she invited her American students currently in Mongolia (me, K and T) to travel with her and her family to the countryside for a family reunion of sorts. Our party of ten traveled in two SUVs, leaving Friday afternoon. But before we could actually leave the city we had to find a filling station that hadn't yet run out of diesel. This proved remarkably difficult so K and I passed the time by playing games with the six-year old girl who was traveling in our car to the countryside. The two favorites by far were one person making an animal noise and the other two guessing what it was, and her saying to one of us (in Mongolian), "Look there out the window. Now look here," and when we turned back to look at her she would jump into our face with her hands up like claws and scream "Ahhhh!!" before falling back in a fit of laughter. It never failed to amuse.

After driving around (in city traffic) for probably two hours we finally found a place that had diesel and were on our way! Quickly leaving paved roads behind us, our drive took us south of the city toward Dundgovi province. As we drove the gentle green-ness of the hills surrounding Ulaanbaatar gradually transitioned to a sandier, sparser landscape. At sunset we stopped for a bit to stretch our legs, "fix our bodies" and enjoy a snack of bread, sausage, cucumbers and tomatoes. It also provided an ideal photo op.

Well after dark we arrived at the ger encampment of the family who we would spend the next couple nights with. The night sky was amazingly beautiful with millions of stars. I can't remember the last time I saw the milky way so clearly. After greetings and a friendly welcome from the family with tea and dried meat/ noodle soup we all tucked in to bed.

The next morning we drove to visit more family in the sum center of Deren (sort of like a county seat) which has a population of about 500, its own school, a hospital and several stores. It also has a public garden (established in the past few years) with an orchard of seabuckthorn bushes and what maybe were some little willows. A group of volunteers was planting more seabuckthorn bushes, grass lawns and some flowers while we were visiting. It was a nice little spot of green in the middle of the Gobi. And gardening in the desert, well that's something I can relate to.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to my weekend in Dundgov...