Naadam

Naadam is one of Mongolia’s 2 big holidays. It is 3 days of traditional sports like wrestling, horse-racing, archery, and this bone flicking game. For more accurate information, here’s the Wikipedia link: Naadam. I was told that an extra 1 million people were in the city for it and I personally saw a ton of extra tourists walking around. For a city that already has too many people it made things a little crazy.

I got to go to the Opening Ceremonies on Wednesday, which was quite fun and a great cultural experience. I got there super early because I was told to be in my seat an hour before the 11am start time (which means I got there at 9:20am, oops). The ceremony was mercifully only an hour and involved bands playing, horses marching around, the president speaking, and lots of people in Mongolian traditional clothing. I was sitting with some of the Habitat volunteers from Australia (our tickets were bought by my co-worker Billy), so it was nice to chat with them while we watched.

This is the Mongolian Olympic team that's going to London later this month.

Afterward the wrestling competition started. It was frankly kind of boring because there were a lot of them going on at once and I couldn’t really see what was going on. Then we checked out archery which was really cool. I ran into some of the senior missionary couples I know from church, which is always fun.

Wrestlers getting ready in their oddly skimpy outfits.

Male archer getting ready to shoot.

Female archers preparing.

Guys competing in the bone flicking sport that I never got the name of.

I’m really glad I got to experience Naadam and I’m really glad that I was able to leave when I wanted (I was still tired from the week before).