Mongolian food hairs

For this story, let’s pretend we are in America.  For most of you reading this, it should be quite easy for you.  You are at a restaurant, the food that you ordered has arrived, and you start to eat.  You see a huge piece of hair right in the middle of your food.  What do you do?  You send it back, or maybe you just pretend not to notice, but then stop eating.

Now, let me tell you about Mongolia…you are anywhere, and you are eating food. You find a hair. You pick it out, and you just keep eating. No big deal.

This one time, I was at a restaurant, and my food came and there was a hair so large and noticeable that after the waitress set the food down, that she fished the hair out for me with her bare hands right in front of me.  I just ate my meal without even thinking about it.

Artz

Artz is yet another dairy product, that I cannot really tell you what it is.   What I can tell you about artz, is that you drink it, it is most likely served hot, it is really thick, and that it smells and tastes (to me) much like vomit.  Something else that I can tell you about artz, is that I don’t like it.

Side note, artz also comes in a solid eatable form, for easy transport, and pocket artz.

Mongolian food hair and artz

Sometimes in Mongolia, I don’t always have a choice to eat or drink things.  You are given things, and are told to eat as you are watched to make sure you eat it.  Well on one particular day at school, I was given artz to drink, and watched to be sure I drank it.  I couldn’t refuse it.  I was stuck with a huge bowl of it.  So, I started to drink.  Slowly but surely I took sip after thick sip, trying to get it over with as soon as possible.  

That’s when I saw the hair.  Now, I haven’t really been bothered with hair in my food since living with my host family, but on this day, seeing the hair along with the smell and taste of the beverage just made me gag. It was literally complete devastation.  Unfortunately I knew I still had to gag the reset of the bowl down.  I slyly took the hair out of my drink, and continued on the difficult quest. Luckily, when I was just about finished, someone came and snatched my bowl away.  I couldn’t have been more relieved.