The Tangerine Dream: One Month in.

Hey everybody! I have been enjoying Mongol life so much that I have not had so much time to write down my funny reality tales. In recent news, I have gotten a stomach bug that I have had for about a week now, which has not been fun at all. This set back was made better however by celebrating Naadam, the holiday celebrating the 3 manly sports here in Mongolia, wrestling, archery, and long distance horse racing. I will write a whole separate post about those festivities later. :) But for now, here are a couple short stories and some photos.

1. Awkward family photos.

My family loves to take photos, and they love to make me pose. They also get really into jumping photos, and using props in photos. We went to the river a while ago and visited this lady's house and garden in the same trip. On the bank of the river, we took countless jumping photos, and random photos of my family posing, and them making me pose in different ways. Then, later when checking out the garden, I had to pose in it with a watering can, rake, and randomly posing like i was working in the garden.

So this photo posing and prop using is actually a hilarious trend. It happens all the time. My favorite this far, was when i was making potato pancakes for my mom, and she runs in the sleeping house real fast, and comes back with a chefs outfit. complete with apron and hat. My host mom made me put it on, and wear it while i cooked. After the food was made, I also ate in it, again, complete with hat :)

All of my 9 classmates came over to my house also to make a traditional Mongolian food with my Mongolian Mom. The first thing my mom did to greet us all was to bring out the chefs outfit for me to wear in front of everybody. It was awesome.

2. A kitten's tale

so there are a lot of visitors in Mongolian culture, sometimes announced, but from what I have seen, mostly unannounced. One day, we had a visitor with three small children. I was told to go rest, so I was in my room, and I hear these kids running around...eventually they quiet, and I assume they are gone. Soon after, there is this incessant meowing coming from another room. I exited my room to investigate to find the tinest of kittens had wandered into our house. I tried to get it out, but it ran further into the house and hid beneath a cabinet. Luckily, I had a half piece of Arolth (dried cheese curd) in my pocket, and I broke off tiny pieces to coax it out of the house. Once on the porch, the kitten and I bonded, and I kept feeding it the arolth. We played with leaves, and strings and dirt, and were having a great time...until the children came back. The 5 year old started smacking the cat around even though she wanted to play with it, and the cat took refuge in my lap. I was then called for tea, and had to leave the kitten to fend for itself. About a half minute later, I saw that six year old carrying the cat by one of its back legs...and even later its tail. I felt pretty awful for the cat and later the family left and took the cat with them. One can only guess what happened to it.