I was one of the 30 kids selected to go to Mongolia through a 4-H exchange program, and I leave tomorrow!!! We were selected out of a group of 156 throughout the Western United States, and every cent is being paid for by an EXCEEDINGLY generous (and, as far as I know, anonymous) donation. We will spend a week in the capital city/only city of Ulaanbaatar (say "OH-thlahn-BAH-ter"), then go on to host family stays. I will be staying in Tsetserleg sum (town) in the Arkhangai aimag (province), which happens to be Chinggis Khan's home province! Yes, it is Chinggis, not Genghis. The Mongolians I've spoken to are completely bewildered as to why everyone keeps mispronouncing their hero's name.
Then, we will stay in Hoytola gher (yurt is the Soviet word) village, and attend the sports festival of Naadam, which is kind of like the biggest thing ever in Mongolia.
The purpose of the trip is to learn about ecology (water quality, land reclamation, etc.). Also, there is hope for it to become a true exchange, in which case my host sister could come and stay with us next year! Did I mention that this is for a whole month? During that time, there will be a blog that we will all get to write in, hopefully daily, called Memoirs of Mongolia. Please follow us! http://mongoliamemoirs2011.blogspot.com/
I'm in the blue flannel jacket on the left in that picture...hopefully soon there will be more pics, 'cause it's kinda lame right now.
One of the requirements for going on this trip is that we must do follow-up projects. Right now I've got 3 presentations, one newspaper article (probably-- the lady insisted on putting one in the Oregonian like, a month ago, so I don't know...) and an idea. I already run a community garden (among rather a lot else) and I was thinking that my next big project could be learning how to do fecal exams and doing free ones for people in my county and educating them about worms and how they relate to your animals' health. The reason being that, around here anyway, people don't seem to understand that evolution works on worms too, and they tend to just dump chemicals on their animals at random intervals. That's not exactly effective, plus it creates tons of problems for the rest of us-- anybody with horses (or goats, or cows, or sheep...) know about the problems that can arise from resistant worms. So, I figure since our county just got a bunch of microscopes that will be allowed to be checked out, I could teach others how to do their own fecal exams, thus saving money (27 dollars per exam around here), saving animals, and preventing more worms from becoming resistant. Does that seem like a good idea? Do you have any other ideas?
Well...that turned out to be a ramble. Thanks for any input!
~*edited for clarity, 'cause I'm silly like that*~
The purpose of the trip is to learn about ecology (water quality, land reclamation, etc.). Also, there is hope for it to become a true exchange, in which case my host sister could come and stay with us next year! Did I mention that this is for a whole month? During that time, there will be a blog that we will all get to write in, hopefully daily, called Memoirs of Mongolia. Please follow us! http://mongoliamemoirs2011.blogspot.com/
I'm in the blue flannel jacket on the left in that picture...hopefully soon there will be more pics, 'cause it's kinda lame right now.
One of the requirements for going on this trip is that we must do follow-up projects. Right now I've got 3 presentations, one newspaper article (probably-- the lady insisted on putting one in the Oregonian like, a month ago, so I don't know...) and an idea. I already run a community garden (among rather a lot else) and I was thinking that my next big project could be learning how to do fecal exams and doing free ones for people in my county and educating them about worms and how they relate to your animals' health. The reason being that, around here anyway, people don't seem to understand that evolution works on worms too, and they tend to just dump chemicals on their animals at random intervals. That's not exactly effective, plus it creates tons of problems for the rest of us-- anybody with horses (or goats, or cows, or sheep...) know about the problems that can arise from resistant worms. So, I figure since our county just got a bunch of microscopes that will be allowed to be checked out, I could teach others how to do their own fecal exams, thus saving money (27 dollars per exam around here), saving animals, and preventing more worms from becoming resistant. Does that seem like a good idea? Do you have any other ideas?
Well...that turned out to be a ramble. Thanks for any input!
~*edited for clarity, 'cause I'm silly like that*~
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