Day 193: Horseback Riding — A Real Paleontologist — Teachers from Local Performing Arts School —Rain!
Teddy woke up early for a bike ride out onto the plains. He passed the guard dog from the family whose ger we’d visited yesterday — it was having a drink at the lodge’s open-to-the-nomadic-public well.
As Teddy rode by he prayed the very aggressive dog wouldn’t chase him (like it did our car yesterday). It didn’t. When Teddy passed, the dog broke into a sprint back across the plain to his family’s place, which was a solid 20-minute run away.
Meanwhile, I woke up to this from Willa: “Mommy! Did you know that Jackie Robinson’s SISTER was named WILLA???!!!”
She’s reading one of those Who Was? biography books and got very excited.
Today was a chiller day than others here in the Gobi.
Breakfast was at 9. Notably, the breakfast at this otherwise perfect, spectacular spot is terrible. All other meals are fresh and delicious. Breakfast is a fly-swarmed mediocre spread with little staff where requests for coffee or plates can go unanswered. The flies keep us company.
The cat was back today and stole James’s chair.
With our free morning we did school. Our guide is our best friend but is also worried when we aren’t scheduled 24/7….so it took a lot of convincing on our part for him to finally leave us to do school on our own for a few hours. He was like, we could watch a movie! We could fly a kite!
It’s hard to say: we actually hate being scheduled 24/7 (without offending anyone).
But we did and it was nice to have some just-the-four-of-us downtime.
We learned that Alan and Carol had left at 6 this morning and left us their contact information. Glad there was closure there because the kids had been asking about their whereabouts nonstop.
At 11:30 am we rode horses. We were proud of James because he got up on his own horse all by himself and didn’t need to ride with anyone.
Before lunch, Ganzo had set up a surprise for us: a 20-minute meeting and presentation from a real Mongolian paleontologist!
We sat in the lodge screening room and got a PPT presentation about the local dinosaurs and what’s been discovered (we’re going to one of the sites tomorrow — the Flaming Cliffs — so this was a good overview).
Blue School is so good at preparing kids for interviewing and asking questions. From an early age the kids are taught to ask experts a million questions. So Willa and James have been awesome so far asking local people questions about their lives.
In this case, paleontology. Two funny things though: After his whole presentation, Willa raised her hand and goes: “I used to want to be a paleontologist but now I don’t want to be one anymore.” HAHAHA — she was trying to tell him that she used to want to be one when she was three and four but has changed lately to want to be an engineer — but it sounded like this specific presentation had turned her off.
Then James raised his hand and asked: “Which came first, Genghis Khan or the dinosaurs?”
Def the first time this scientist had been asked that after a lecture.
Next up: Lunch with the husband-wife head teachers at a famous traditional Mongolian performing arts school in the Gobi. On summer break, teenage dancers and musicians from the school live and work at the Three Camel Lodge, occasionally performing for guests. Ganzo invited the teachers to sit with us and chat.
The kids were generally good but Teddy was sitting near them and eventually they got antsy and he had to escort them away, leaving me alone to ask a lot of questions to these polite invitees. I was scraping the barrel a little toward dessert, asking: “Have any of your students ever been on Mongolia’s Got Talent?” (Answer: Yes).
After lunch, sat with eight or so of the kids — dressed in full garb — for a meet and greet.
Willa asked where they got their traditional clothes (school has a tailor). I asked if they had a favorite American recording artist. One kid responded. His answer: Yanni (not American).
The rest of the afternoon was chill. I rode a bike, the kids flew kites with Ganzo, we all showered and had cocktail and game time back in the lodge around 6.
Ganzo trounced me at chess — uggggh — then we had dinner at 7. James has been trying to say Bon Appetite, and it comes out “bona potty.”
The rain that had been threatening all day finally arrived, so the musicians playing at the sunset spot for dinner outside got postponed until tomorrow night.
At our table, as we watched the storm roll in, Willa goes, “Wait, which one is faster again…light or sound?” I said, “Light.” James says, “So that candle is faster than my talking?” Amusing — yes, bud! Then he goes, “Even faster than this? OOGA BOOGA!!!”
Hahaha.
The rain is going strong now as I write, cozy in our yurt.
Night!
PS – The rain drove all the bugs into our ger and we were under attack all night from these little flying black beetles. Not my favorite experience but we were tough (and I think they came and sprayed the next day after we said something).
