Camus and Goats

Lest I fail to provide an opportunity for my fellow Bayankhongorians to comment on the excessive citation of awesome French people I will now relate what I did in the countryside for two and a half days. Right.

My family and friends are always talking about going to the countryside and its glories so I will admit that I had high expectations.

Here's the skinny on countryside "activities":

1) People milk animals (twice a day).
Turns out that this is not one of my most impressive skills. I was quickly asked to "go drink some milk tea."

2) People watch TV. But intermittently because they are run on solar power.
It was Naadam in UB when I was in the countryside so guess what we watched? People wrestling. Again, and again...

3) People catch up on news: Bayankhongor happenings, family, the latest terrible that China "sent" here.
At least, that's what I think they talked about.

Since it was one year since I first read The Myth of Sisyphus I thought it would be acceptable to take a break from Goedel, Escher, Bach for a while (sorry Julie). Reading is not terribly commonplace here and is usually associated with EXTREME loneliness or boredom. Needless to say I was asked approximately 629 times, "Are you bored? Do you want to go home? Is everything ok?" etc. Yes, everything is ok, no we can stay here, and no, I'm not bored. In fact, reading by a beautiful and clean river is actually something I enjoy and is not a sign of impending suicide.

Soccer was played (at about 10:30 at night which means we really just kicked a ball around aimlessly and often into the river). No vegetable or fruit was eaten (except maybe my secret stash that I brought along). Gave the family I stayed with pudding and showed them how to make it: the kids ate it up in record time. Jello company: you owe me.

Despite my protests against the thesis that I was bored out of my skull my family insisted that we leave early. Assuming that they weren't happy about this series of events I made them apple crisp with Russian ice cream when we got to Bayankhongor. This seemed to smooth things over a bit. Apple crisp: always a winner.

Check out the pictures for the equivalent of ~95,000 words.