Culinary and other adventures

January 29.

It's 11 p.m. and the electricity just went out, so we're over to battery power and one fluorescent light hanging from the ceiling. The five of us have finished our dinner, and our hosts, a kind couple, are starting in on theirs. Mishig is joining them as well. He said, "mor," (horse) indicating the sausage-looking thing in the big plastic bowl. "Mash goy!" (delicious!) he added, with a big grin, urging me to try some.

At that moment, Badmaa was somewhere else. So I said, "Amerig mor khool ugui..." (in America horse is not food). But they already know that. I mustered what it took to try a jigjig (little) piece. It was sausage - I couldn't down the skin, but the meat was okay. I couldn't help but recall hearing that it tends to be older horses that suffer this fate...

Earlier in the day, I found the container of Old Bay seasoning I had brought as a gift for the cook, Magi. So I gave it to her, and asked Badmaa to describe it as a blend of seasonings kind of like American curry, for use on meats and seafood. So when I smelled Old Bay on the stove that evening, it momentarily transported me back to the Chesapeake region. The mutton tasted really good at dinner. However, the rice had been seasoned with equal parts Old Bay and Indian curry, with a curious, yellow-colored result. Eminently edible, however.

In the evening everyone sat around watching a Russian soap opera on tv that had been dubbed into Mongolian. The lady was sewing a new deel for her daughter, using a hand-crank machine. The man cut kindling for starting the fire the next morning. These people are amazingly accommodating in hosting five souls for two nights in a row, and they didn't even know we were coming.

Before letting the dog loose in the yard for the night, our hostess made sure I had one last safe run to the outhouse. She stood in the yard to keep the dog calm. That dog was one of the more vicious creatures I've met - certainly an effective deterrent from entering the yard - and could potentially traumatize her foreign guest. I certainly gained an appreciation for why all the Mongolian guidebooks have prominently listed the phrase, "hold your dogs!"

They let me have the cot this evening, on the same wall I had slept along the night before on the floor. So I rolled out my sleeping bag with the head towards the corner - same orientation as the night before. Then some conversation ensued. Badmaa told me I had to put my head in the other direction. Why? I asked. Because the god is in the opposite corner and you cannot sleep with your feet toward the god. When I mentioned that I had done so the night before she said, no, your feet were under the god, so it was okay. I flipped the sleeping bag around. But I also acknowledged to myself that I'm not accustomed to thinking of a deity that is in a certain physical location, but rather, thinking of God as a loving, ever-present, all-knowing, all-powerful, unlimited infinite Being. With that thought, I drift off to sleep.