Sumo at Zaisan

It has taken us 8 months to get to the Zaisan memorial in Ulaanbaatar. The girls have actually been there twice before, with Nymaa, but Chris and I had yet to make the effort. One sunny Saturday afternoon we got a key for an ADRA car and set of to Zaisan ("where?" said Chris). Zaison is a memorial on a hill overlooking Ulaanbaatar. It was built by the Russions to commemorate unknown soldiers and heros from past wars. At the base of the hill there is a tank that apparently went from Moscow to Berlin and back. After walking up the several hundred steps to get to the top (carrying Keira and dragging Alesia). Chris was taken with the Soviet depiction of breasts as heroic objects.

Behind Zaisan is a Mongolian ovoo. It was a nice spot to sit and enjoy the sunset, and the special views of our local power plants. Chris had a play with the camera so most of the photos on this post are from him.

We were not alone at the memorial. A group of touring sumo wrestlers and their police escort were also enjoying the sunset. Chris had seen some of them on tv and told me to get some pictures. One of them took a leak behind a gift shop, the highlight for two giggling Mongolian men who used their mobile phone cameras to capture the sumo wee moment. I could have used my big zoom, but had much more respect for a guy that weighs in at perhaps four times my size.

We thought that the Sumos would take away the spotlight from our girls, but we thought wrong. We do not know who the people are with our children in the photo below. This happened about four times. Thankfuly the girls seemed to take it ok, as it was pretty low key compared to their superstar experience in Beijing airport.