In the interim...

I've got more stories from my trip to the countryside that I will be posting in the next day or two, but in the interim I'll tell you about the picnic I had with my family yesterday.

I had originally wanted to visit the Museum of Mongolian Traditional Medicine this Sunday and my host family in UB said they would be happy to accompany me (my host father is a doctor of traditional medicine...I watched him do acupuncture in our living room.) but when I woke up that morning my mother said that her brother was going to a monastery and asked if I wanted to come. Of course I did, so I postponed the museum outing for the time being. After a fresh breakfast of eggs, 'sausage,' cucumbers and yellow rice tea (like milk tea, but with sauteed yellow rice kernels added into the mix) my uncle, aunt, and two cousins arrived at our house with a Chinngis Khaan hot water thermos and a bag full of apples.

We piled nine people into their low-rolling van and set out. I thought we were driving to the Gandon Monastery in town, but as it turned out we started driving to the next aimag over, Tuv. Forty five minutes and a flat tire later we arrived at the gates of Manzhir monastery park. At most parks or famous sites foreigners have to pay two to sometimes five times the entrance fee, but my host mother successfully told the fare collector that I was her daughter and I got in Mongol price.

We pulled into the parking lot filled with tourist buses and minivans, poured all nine people out of the van and started up the hill. Manzhir is one of many monasteries that were destroyed during the religious oppression under Soviet control. All that stood was the clay bricks of a foundation, a partially reconstructed wooden building turned museum and the modest wooden roofs scattered across the mountains face protecting large paintings of Guatama Buddha on the largest of outcropped boulders. My host father and mother are both practicing Buddhists, so the summit to each hut yielded whispered prayers and bowed heads.

I was es tactic to have an opportunity for climbing. Being in a crowded district and just coming out of a cold front the air quality in UB is horrendous and will only get worse, inhibiting my runs or any form of exercise out of doors. My mother called me a mountain goat as I hopped up the rocks to the peak where an ovoo had been erected overlooking the valley. After circling it three times in solitude, my family finally caught up to me and we decided to descend back down to our van.

At the base, my father and uncle went down to the car while the rest of us staked out our picnic spot for our late afternoon meal. When we found a few square meters of stone free grass my uncle and father returned with a rolled up carpet on one shoulder and bags and bags of food and drinks. We rolled out the floor rug, removed our shoes and began the feast and I mean feast.

My mother feeds me like there's no tomorrow. Even when my hands were full with an apple and half a sandwich she reached out to me with a cookie and yet another sandwich and said, 'Eat Lindsay, eat.' We had three loaves of bread, apples, grapes, oranges, chocolate cookies and wafers, pickles, salami and the holy grail of Mongolian picnics, an entire pig's head. My uncle whipped out the cutting board and started slicing pieces of fat from it's neck and ears. Shortly followed by my mother making me another sandwich. I tried to explain to them that I prefer the leaner meats, but my attempts were lost in translation and my ability to reiterate my preferences obstructed by the two other sandwiches I was being forced to eat.

When the sun set over Tuv aimag and our family had finished eating we packed up the leftovers, rolled up the carpet and piled back into the van to drive into the early evening lights of UB. What I had expected to be a three hour tour (a three hour tour) of Gandon Monastary turned out to be a whole day of climbing and chewing the fat. It didn't work out so well for the paper I had to write that evening, but I must admit it was one of the most interesting picnics I've had in a while. And that beats the watermelon and three spoons party I had on the Ithaca Commons late this August.