The Mongolian milk tea was hot and the reception from local residents was warm when thirty summer camp students joined nine foreign English-language teachers and staff members for an educational field trip on Wednesday, July 13, that included lessons in cooking, speech-making, and archery. 

        Lauren Allie Stewart, the USA teachers' group leader, marveled at the scenery on the two-hour bus trip from Hohhot.  "It's just so beautiful," she said while reviewing dozens of photos she took of the countryside. She also took photos of the teachers on her team:
Leland "Buck" Ryan, her lead teacher who is a journalism professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky; 

        Isaiah Kriegman, a recent high school graduate from Boston, Massachusetts; Michael Spires Jr., who teaches pre-school and kindergarten kids in Baltimore, Maryland;Trung Nguyen, a college graduate from Vermont;           

        Jimmy Liu, of Boston, Massachusetts, who is headed for graduate school in international relations with a focus on China; and Khalil Abdullah, a writer from Washington, D.C., who is joined on the teaching team by his grandson, Farooq Abdullah. Joining the American English language teachers is a Canadian, Estelle Weng, of Montreal. 

        Lead teacher Buck Ryan serves Mongolian milk tea to the kids, who added millet, tea, and salt to boiling milk to create the special drink. 

 Teacher Khalil Abdullah tries his hand at archery as instructor Han Wei 

and the kids look on.