Naadam

Naadam is the Mongolian national celebration similar to our Fourth of July. We celebrated with the Mongolian people last weekend. It lasted Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. We enjoyed watching the opening ceremonies at the National Stadium (which is much smaller than our Commonwealth Stadium!). Here are pictures from the opening ceremonies...

Look for the horse hair flags that are like the flags of their famous warrior Ghengis Khan.

Here are some of their beautiful traditional costumes. Each people group wears a different clothing style. Look at some of the creative hats!

Naadam is known for their 3 national sports: wrestling, archery, and horse racing. Wrestling is a huge sport in this country. Here is a picture of the men getting prepared to wrestle.

Archery is also very popular. Men and women both compete in this sport. They still make their bows and arrows by hand.Don't you love the traditional clothing of this female archer? You can see her arrows in the quiver by her side.
Horse Racing is a bit different than in Kentucky. Children between the ages of about 5 and 13 are the competitors in these races. These kids race from 10-18 miles over the beautiful land to see who has the fastest horse. I bet some of you would love to be one of the kids on the horses! Unfortunately, our bus got stuck in horrible holiday traffic for a few hours and by the time we got out to the horse racing...it was finished:( We were sad that we missed it, but I did get to ride a horse!