Amarjargal's and Booge's

We rode horses the next day to Amarjargal's and Booge's. His name you can actually pronounce: Bogey, as in Humphrey. Her name: forget it. Note more trees! The land here reminded me of Colorado at it's lower elevations. Every afternoon, around 1 or so, it would rain...HARD! We arrived here just before a wild downpour...Amarjargal was busy the first half hour or so mopping up the rain water that had pretty much flooded the linoleum (yup...all the gers we stayed visited had linoleum over the dirt floor).  She gave us the requisite milk tea (hot milk with varying amounts of brick tea and salt...you drink it from a bowl. And you WILL drink it..BoomBoom actually kind of got into it) and later some of her excellent yogurt, which sat in an uncovered 5-gal bucket. Batsetseg and Amarjargal also made a product called urum, which is the skin on boiled milk. It is skimmed off and served in a bowl to put on bread or just plain...very rich, like a combination of cream, creme fraiche, and butter. I liked it.The next photo is maybe my favorite of the whole trip so far. Modern time, mon, modern time.

That's Booge and their daughter, Baisa, from the inside of the ger. They all had little solar panels, too, to charge their cell phones.
That's Baisa again. She is 4 and pretty rugged, tho also sulky. She and a cousin of the same age played and waded and goofed around down by the river for hours unsupervised. Kids can really handle so much competently. I think we really spoil and over-protect our kids in the US.
Just to show the colors inside the ger (note orange painted bed-stead), also Amarjargal's beautiful seamstress work (she asked me to put on one of her vests for a photo.) She sews on an old hand-cranked machine. Her right hand cranks, while her left guides the cloth under the needle. This is hard! Especially when she makes the intricate interlocked trims. 

She is pregnant with their second child. She will go to Ulaan Baatar to hospital to birth. I was told by a French woman we met at our guest house in UB who was in Mongolia to teach social work at university in a provincial capital that, to the best of her knowledge, midwives are used, "natural" childbirth is common, but so are Cesareans. That as close as I've come to any info about birthing here. In Amarjargal's case, it may actually be good that she gets a little rest in hospital after the birth, since my guess is, she wouldn't get any at home, being pretty much the engine that powers this family. The family is mostly female and lives in the 3 gers in the top photo. Gramma keeps a little one whose mother is elsewhere...the little one is just known as "Baby" and gets lots of extra hugs and kisses. At dawn and dusk, the women milk around 12 cows. Jeez, cows give a lot of milk!
The next day, Booge drove us to our next ger in the family ox cart. On the way, he stopped a lot to hang out with various friends and neighbors. At one stop, we saw these beautiful hoses with their beautiful saddles.