Mother and Children's Day

Yesterday was Mother and Children's Day, a national holiday in Mongolia that occurs annually on June 1st. The day of celebration is a variant of International Children's Day which was proclaimed in 1925 at the World Conference for the Well-being of Children. I had heard that in UB the festivities would start at 11am on Sukhbaatar Square, but I didn't quite know what to expect.

I had fallen asleep after a much appreciated early morning skype date only to be awoken an hour later by horns, yelling and cheering. I looked out the window of my new apartment (which is a hop, skip and jump away from State Department Store) to see a long parade passing by along Peace Avenue. I grabbed my camera and headed down to see more.

I followed the parade down to Sukhbaatar Square which was packed with people. Multiple stages had been erected for dancing, singing and contortion performances and vendors had set up shop selling everything from sea buckthorn juice to umbrellas to games and toys. One particularly entrepreneurial pair set up game where for 500₮ you got three chances to knock over a pyramid of old paint cans with a ball of packing tape.

The music, games and celebration echoed across the city until dusk. I suspect that it would have gone longer, but the strong gusts of an evening dust storm chased most of the families home.