A busy day

First we went to see a rehab centre for disabled children located inside a hospital. It was 2 small rooms containing all the essential equipment and was filled with many people. One of the rooms was where the physical therapy took place and the other was a place to sit and had work that the children had done on the walls.  One girl that we saw was excercising her hips as when she was born they were dislocated however they didnt realise this quick enough and in the mean time she has had 6 operations to try to fix them. This was a sad story to hear because if they had noticed quick enough she would not have had to have so many operations and would be able to walk.

We then went to a meeting with the association of parents with disabled children. This ended up turning more into a consulation! as many parents were asking grandpa questions about their children. One also asked Philippa for help but Save The Children cannot help individuals, they help groups so she found this quite hard to answer. When a mother was hinting for money grandpa said he would write to the government about how well the centre was doing. He turned it around very well. Sophie then gave out some training books to the parents to help them with thier children.

Next we visited the kindergarten to have lunch however the children were not there as it was the summer holidays. We were fed so much food! They also thanked us by giving us some diluted (cucumber tasting) vodka. In the lovely building built/funded by Save The Children were mini toilets and toothbrushes, so cute!

After this we went to the childrens palace where children go for after school clubs. They can go for music, english, maths lessons ect. They played us some music, they are so talented!

Then we went to a ger kindergarten for ages 2/3-5/6. It was held in gers by the river on plenty of land. It was such a nice place! We walked into the first ger were all the younger ones were sitting on their stools. So adorable! and the cheeky one was so funny! We walked into the 2nd ger where the older ones were. We sang twinkle twinkle little star hopeing that they would sing us a song after. Tho we were totally upstaged! They had music and dancing aswell as singing! They were brilliant! Also when we were there we were offered more food! Dairy products. We had yoghurt and nana tryed something that she thought was shortbread but was actually dried curd! she said ‘i couldnt bite it as it was so hard!’ This made me giggle.

In the evening we went to a ger camp for a picnic. The scenery was the most stunning yet. Riviers casually flowing down the fields with rocky bridges across. Mountains surrounding the whole camp, green grass and animals. We had the meal with many people, one being the education director of the whole province. To show how much they respected us they cooked us the insides of sheep for starters such as liver, intestine, stomach lining, kidney and heart. For the main course it was the traditional mongolian bbq. They boil a sheep in a pot and place hot stones inside so that it cooks from the inside aswell as the outside. Everyone liked the taste saying it was gorgeously juicy. (me, kayleigh and nana had some very nice vegetable soup) We held the hot stones from inside of the sheep as its meant to promote good health. After the meal where they kept giving us ‘Chinggis Khann’ vodka for respect, they gave us some prezzies! The education director then said that we should go for a walk to the river as this is what your meant to do after a meal. Although this turned into a game of volley ball! It was really fun and quite funny that the fact that we were playing volleyball in the middle of Mongolia in such a beatiful place. Firstly Kayleigh managed to hit Philippa in the eye with the volleyball! Shortly after i hit the education director in the face with the volleyball! (thank goodness he was laughing! We are offically the ‘dopey sisters!’. He joked about it for the rest of the night (woops) and we said our goodbyes and went back to the hotel. It had been one of the best days yet. 🙂