Herding, Slurping, Living.

So I'm back from my little countryside adventure. It was sweet, and a fitting way to end my trip here. On Wednesday we drove out to Terelj. It's about an hour from the city and is possibly the most beautiful place on earth. The scenery is stunning. In a few days I'm gonna try to upload a ton of pictures. But for now, maybe Google will aid your mental picture. So we drove out there, stopping at gers every now and then to ask where this family was. We found them, right by Ayanchin, a fairly nice resort that Mr. Ambassador likes to frequent. But that's neither here nor there.

The family consisted of a mother and father, three sons aged 20, 14, and 10, and an adorable little 5-year-old girl. And it made me wish that I too had an adorable little sister. Oh well. They spoke no English. So that was fun. And even though they repeated their names to me like 5000 times, I still only know the mother's name, Tsetsgee Ikhchee or something like that, and the youngest son, Purbaatar. That's because they were always yelling at him. Even when the mom was going over their names, she introduced him as the one whose name they were always yelling "Purbaatar! Hey Purbaatra!" Not that he was causing trouble, but just because he'd run off and wander around and generally not listen. But he was hilarious. The little kids liked playing with my camera and phone, so they took hundreds of pictures and went through every single one I'd taken, and play snake on my phone. And they'd accidentally call people every now and then and then hang up, which must have annoyed a few people. The 2 younger kids were crawling all over me within 5 minutes, and the rest of the family warmed up in short order.

The standard day was quite relaxing. I'd hang out with the kids and amuse ourselves while the two older sons rode off somewhere, I think to tend the herd. They had about 20 cows and maybe 10 calves. The kids' favorite activities, aside from the aforementioned snake and camera, included running around, sliding down a gravel pile, throwing rocks at the windows of an old abandoned shack, and pushing each other around in some old rusty hand carts. There'd be some chores, we'd clean the gers (they had 2), chop some firewood, and collect dried cow dung for the fire. The kids quite enjoyed standing on top of the dung pile and throwing chunks at me for me to catch and put in the bag. And I'd never have thought that getting cow manure thrown at me could be fun. And there'd certainly be a nap at some point, and I'd hike around and explore the beautiful park, and take tons of pictures. And food. The food was simple, hearty, and plentiful. Mostly milk products from their cows: yogurt, bread and butter, buuz, soup with meat and noodles or rice, and copious amounts of milk tea. I didn't have anything else to drink for those 5 days, not even water. Milk tea is a miracle drink. It's warming on cold days, surprisingly refreshing on hot days, thirst-quenching, stomach-soothing, and a universal dipping substance, for buuz, bread, anything. Milk tea is always drunk from a bowl, and always slurped aggressively. Our dad was a pretty good slurper, but the best was the grandma next door, I suppose because she's had 70 years to fine-tune her slurping technique. My favorite meal was when we all sat on the ground around a leg of meat, and the dad would cut off chunks and hand them to us. My favorite part of the day was in the evening when the cows would come home and we'd head out to milk them. The mom would milk while Purbaatar and I would wrangle the thirsty little calves away from their mothers. The doorless outhouse was out back, but I used the neighbors' doored model out of modesty. And the sanitation system consisted of a jar, which when filled with water served as a sink, shower, bathtub, anything. It was a remarkably versatile little jar.

On Friday, some relatives from the city arrived and stayed the rest of the weekend. And these city dwellers brought cigarettes and potato chips and cheap plastic toys to this pristine environment. Sort of indicative of how the city has corrupted the Mongolian people. In UB, they smoke and drink and rob and cheat and lie and fight. And in the countryside they slurp their milk tea and tend their animals. So there were 14 of us between two gers, and that slept us all. 2 to a bed (except for mine), roll out some blankets on the floor, and voila. And we all ate together in one ger, covering every surface and slurping away. It was remarkable how such a simple lifestyle worked so well. They had few material possessions, mostly just necessities, and housed 6 people in 2 rooms, but they were well-fed, healthy, and happy. And very loving towards each other. It made me miss my own family quite a bit (do you like that one Mom? That was for you).

They were very warm in general, and we got along remarkably well considering we couldn't communicate. But I understood the hand signals for eat and sleep and pee, and I picked up a few Mongolian words. Like when it was raining, they talked about boroond a lot. I learned that one from Fire. And I got used to "tsai uu?" which means "tea?" That's not to say they didn't talk to me a lot and try to teach me things. But Mongolian is a very difficult language, and I think I was there for the perfect amount of time, because any longer without communication would get awkward.

On Saturday, the company had a picnic in Terelj, so I met them up that afternoon. Most of the people were staying at a ger camp up the road a ways, but the boss and our advisory board members were staying at Ayanchin, about 50 meters from my little ger. So I had quite a bizarre experience when I washed up with the jar, said goodbye to the grubby little kids and walked 5 minutes to meet 4 guys sitting on a deck talking about hedge funds and real estate and high net worth individuals. That's kind of what Mongolia has been for me. Weird transitions between things like this. Then we drove out to the ger camp, where most of the company's employees were hanging out, and we played some bball and ate some hurhog, which is meat and veggies in a big pot cooked by hot rocks. It was delicious. A lot of times, they just cut open the animal and put the hot rocks inside and sew it up again and let it cook. But this time was less exciting. After about 2 hours of being away from my family, I began to miss them. That was strange. And then I returned home that night to my little ger and all was well.

I returned to the city the next afternoon. Most of the family was gone, I have no idea where, so I didn't get to say goodbye to them, which was pretty disappointing. And right as I left came the surprise of all surprises! I discovered a very funny coincidence, but something that you will have to wait until next time for, dear reader, because my fingers are tired and it's a long story. Try not to wet yourself in your anticipation. But all in all, it was a fantastic experience. I lived the way half the country lives, and met some wonderful people. And frankly, I was happier to have made their acquaintance than that of Odnoo or Asashoryu or Agiimaa (I didn't tell you about Agiimaa, reader, but youtube her if interested). They were simple, lovely, welcoming, and very generous.