I took some really interesting pictures today, but I updated my phone and now I can't download them onto my computer, so I'll have to wait till I get home.  I saw my last patient at the high school cabinet today and the school manager and several children came in to thank me and presented me with some very nice gifts and cards made by the children.  They asked me not to forget them because now I was one of the family.  I taught at a kindergarten and the children had prepared a wonderful little program.  I took some videos but they will also have to wait.
     Elder Maynes asked us to get some letters from the dental staff, the hospital administration, the mayor's office and schools expressing their gratitude for our being here.  They hope to meet with the Mongolian ministry of health in UB along with Clyde, and present these letters along with a plea to allow more dentists and dental supplies to enter the country.  I know the citizens and children of Choibalsan need it and would appreciate the expansion of oral health care in their city.  They are wonderful people who do the best they can with what they have.
     The dentist I have been working with, Battsetseg, is going to Ulaanbaatar to study oral surgery. The dental hospital will pay for her education in exchange for her coming back to work in the hospital for 10 years.  They really need someone who specializes in surgery.  This will be a big help. Her husband is in UB now going to medical school so they will leave their 1 year old baby with Battsetseg's mother until she finishes school in 2 years time.  She hopes to be able to visit home every 2 months.  This is the Mongolian way.  Grandparents are very much involved in the raising of children.  We see several of them in class whenever we teach parents in the kindergartens.
     This has been a wonderful experience for me.  I hope we have made a bit of a difference.  I have met some wonderful, caring people who shall remain in my heart and mind.

                     This mornings breakfast was knid of a cracked grain cereal with potstickers.

 This is the dentist I've been working with this week.  Her name is Battsetseg, which means flower.  She has a 1 year old baby which she brought to work with her.  She acted as my assistant and we helped each other diagnose.  It was fun.  They have no dental x-ray machine here so everything is decided by sight.  As I was working on a little boy Battsetseg was handing me instruments while nursing her baby.  Now that was a first!

This is a typical instrument set up.  The instruments are wrapped in a cloth napkin and sterilized.  The set up is the same for every patient.  Only 5 instruments.  Surgical instruments are sterilized and kept separately.

                                                         PE class at the high school.

                  Another Michael Jordan fan.  One of the kindergarten students in class today.

 This was a really smart class of ten year olds. They asked a lot of great questions then asked for my autograph after class was over.  Never happened before.

This is the city center of Choibalsan, sort of, looking east and west.  The tall statue is a figure of the horse violin, a two stringed instrument kind of like a violin, which is their national traditional instrument.  This is the prettiest place in the city.  It's mostly dirt and pavement everywhere else.  But the people are happy and friendly.  We have people shout hello (sambeno) from passing cars and today a lady yelled " Hi Duane" from across the street.  We feel very safe and welcome.

We had a really busy day today.  I took only one photo.  After working in the high school cabinet all morning, we had lunch and then went to kindergartens to teach parents, teachers and children.  In the hallway of one of the kindergartens was this security monitor.  Look closely.  It's naptime and all these cute little creatures are dreaming of candy.

They chose nap time for us to come so the parents and teachers could be taught uninterupted.

The kindergartens here have children from 2years to 5 years in age.  They are in school all day allowing their parents to work.  The teachers are special people.  They seem to love these little guys just like they are their own.  The following is a picture of Dr. Larsen working at a clinic in this very kindergarten.  He said if someone had told him he would be doing dental work in Mongolia on 2 year olds at the age of 70, without anesthesia, he would have called them crazy.

Yesterday we were invited to the Mayor's restaurant to eat with Chineses friends as I explained before.  We had to rearrange our schedule because we had been invited to dinner by some friends of Elder Maynes who had constructed 4 water projects under the direction of the church welfare services; i.e. Elder and sister Maynes.  So we went with them to eat shortly after we had finished at the Mayor's.  They are a very nice couple.  She is a member of the church.  Their daughter served a mission on temple square and is now living in Provo and is engaged to be married to a guy from central America.  They will come to Choibalsan to meet the parents and if approval is given the couple will be married in the Salt Lake Temple.  I gave them my contact information and made them promise to call me so I could take them out for pizza when they come to America for the wedding. As we finished dinner with them the Chinese called and said they had cooked a special dinner for us and wanted us to come.  We felt we couldn't refuse so we headed back to the restaurant for another meal.  Clyde said he had never eaten so much on a fast Sunday.  We all have to make sacrifices.

We have been asked to teach at the kindergartens, 1st the children, then the parents, then the teachers to try to instill good hygiene habits in the very young.  These are the kindergarten kids I taught this afternoon.  There were 60.  So well behaved.  They know about brushing and gave all the right answers but they have petty bad teeth.  Out of 180 kindergarten kids (ages 3-5) that Clyde examined one day, 90 had serious dental decay.  So I hope our instruction to the parents and teachers can make a dent.

We were given tickets to a musical tonight held at the Choibalsan Theater.  It was very good.

Having a great time.
Wish you were here.

 Last night after arriving home from the countryside we were informed that the dentists wanted to take us out to dinner.  We were stuffed from our late lunch but agreed to go  They chose an Irish pub and restaurant that only served Mongolian food.  Clyde and I had a salad and a smoothie.  We talked shop with the dentists.  Tim was there to interpret.  They were fun ladies.  All married with children.  The chief dentist is sitting next to me and has a private practice as well as working in the hospital clinic.  after dinner they gave us a gift of a nice leather wallet and key chain.  Then we went to the chief's private office.  It was small but very nice.  We talked about how we could get more supplies for them.  It was a very productive meeting.

This morning Tim called and said the Mayor has invited us to lunch.  He had Chinese friends come into town and he wanted them to meet us.  We had already accepted an invitation for lunch with some friends of Elder/Sister Maynes.  Someone they had worked with on some water projects.  So  we called them and were able to postpone our lunch with them until this evening.  Then the Chinese said they wanted to cook some authentic Chinese food for us tonight at 10pm.  So Maybe we'll be very full before bed.
 So lunch at the Mayors hotel and restaraunt was, you guessed it, goat.  It was a real spread.  The picture above is the Chinese guest carving the goat.  Below is my portion.  After eating so much I was about to burst they brought the goat skin and fat for dessert.  I'm afraid some of that ended up in my napkin.  But we made some new friends and they were impressed with Quinny's greeting in Chinese.

       The Mayor, Clyde and me, and the mayors Chinese friends, and as they said, now our friends.

Today was a wonderful day!  We were invited by one of the dentists to her family's geir in the countryside to eat a traditional Mongolian meal and to ride horses.  I'll try to present it as well as I can in pictures.

This is the geir or the "mobile home " people  live in.  The doctor's father explained to me that this was not his property.  In the countryside people can live where ever they want and their animals graze on the land.

 This is the doctor's father and mother.  They own 200 horses, 1,000 sheep and goats, and 100 head of beef cattle.  He is 60 years old and learned to speak English very well in school in Russia.

The horses are small compared to ours but very comfortable to ride.  Bolt, our driver said that most Mongolian children learn to ride when they are young.  Notice how the saddle sits forward on the horse and the stirrups are quite short compared to our cowboy's saddles.

The inside of the geir is quite comfortable.  They had a fire going in the stove, and the women were preparing the meal.  We were served refreshments when we arrived; cheese and bread and fruit and that yellow stuff which is served with traditional meals and quite tasty.  It's made from heating milk and stirring it  until it starts to set up.  You put it on bread and it has a sweet buttery flavor.  Notice that big pile of meat by the doorway.  They just slaughtered a goat.  That is placed in the milk can you can see, along with potatoes and carrots and turnips and very hot rocks, sealed up and steamed for an hour or so, kind of like our milk can dinner.  When the can is opened the hot rocks are taken out and placed on the plate with the meat.  You take one of these rocks in your hands and toss it from hand to hand until it cools down.  this cleans the hands and then you are ready to eat.  No utensils.

The women's side of the geir is to the right as you walk in the door.  Food preparation and kitchen stuff goes on there.  The man's side is to the left.

While the meal was cooking,we rode horses, took a ride to see the livestock, and watched the hands round up horses to lasso.  This is done with a long stick with a loop in it, kind of like our cowboys roping steers.  When they snag a horse with that loop it gets wild and crazy.  they get on their knees and take a wild ride thru the countryside until the horse slows down.  Fascinating!

They do a lot of their rounding up on motorcycles.  I don't think he trusted me to do it alone.

These are the horse ropers.

 When the dinner was ready we were invited in to eat.  Never had goat before but it was very good.  This is the real Mongolian bar b que.  They expected Clyde and I  to eat most of this.  We didn't do very well but we gave it a good effort.

These are great people.  So kind and easy to like.  We felt very special and made some friends today.

Today we did two good things.  Thing 1.  We met with the Mayor in my dental cabinet and made a dvd about how to take care of our teeth.  The mayor wants this dvd to play in all the schools.  It will be edited and circulated to the schools to be played on a regular basis.  The lady in the picture is Marta, the minister of health.  She's a smart lady and has been very helpful to us.  The girls were part of the dvd.  The girl on the far left is the Mayors daughter.

Thing 2.  Earlier we taught this group of doctors.  Every school has a doctor.  These are the doctors from the kindergartens.  We taught them good oral hygiene practices for young children. They will then continue to teach the kindergarten classes these principles.

Teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves.

This is Clyde teaching the doctors.

This is a group of boys from my class this afternoon.  I stopped two boys to take their picture and 6 more came zooming in.

This is a class at a private English school.  They start learning English from kindergarten.  Their teacher was an older man with a limp and a cane named Bud.  Real nice guy and he spoke English well.  He was my interpreter when the kids had a hard time understanding.

 Dinner tonight was sausage and pickle soup and chinese bread.  It was really pretty good.  We've been well fed.

The church is right next door to our rooms.  We think it's the prettiest building in Choibalsan.

 See what I mean.  There's nothing between me and China.

We see horses and cows everywhere.  This horseman has on Mongolian cowboy clothing.

We walk along this path from the park to the river quite often.  Today they installed the statuary.  We're part of Choibalsan history.  It was a good day.

Observers in my dental cabinet.  I must be getting better because I didn't make anyone cry today.  I've been working almost exclusively on first graders at the Khan-Uul school. Sometimes they start crying before I get the mirror out but for the most part they are very good. They must trust me because this week I've worked alone with the assistant without supervision. We taught this afternoon at the last of the schools in Choilbalsn so now we'll begin at the kindergartens.  We will teach first the children, then the teachers, then the parents.  This is a good idea to get them all thinking about oral hygiene early.

Friday we've been asked to join the mayor in making a video about good dental health habits that will be shown at all the schools.  He will ask us leading questions and we will answer with our schpeel about dental health care.  Should be interesting.  We turn in the questions the mayor will ask to our interpreters tomorrow so they can be confident of the translation.

The boys here just love basketball.  I caught these boys outside the school we taught at today.  The court is pretty darn rough but they were having a ball.  They wanted me to shoot one so I did and was short of the rim by about 3 feet.  They laughed and waved goodbye.

 Finally found the hats I've been looking for.  Got one for Bryan and one for me!