Sunday, 8:30 AM, on the bus
So many mixed reactions to the past 24 hours.
An outline:
-arrive at the middle of nowhere, realize that we will be spending the night here
-subsequently realize the "bathroom" bears absolutely no resemblance to anything any of us are used to Note: the second picture is pretty gross, especially once you realize what that little mountain visible through the hole is made of
-notice that the dry, barely-inhabited grassland is so reminiscent of Nebraska/Texas... so beautiful
-interview with a local sheep farmer... in a word: awkward... but he had an adorable kid (the human kind, not the goat kind)
-return to base, watch our dinner get slaughtered, skinned, and gutted
-dinner + lots of singing + feeling like a zoo animal with so many locals coming to stare at us as we ate + weird alcohol
-Mongolian wrestling (so confusing) + some American singing to wrap up the night
-peeing outside in the dark behind a truck, because that was actually more preferable to trekking to the scary, distant bathroom
-sleepover in a yurt; making plans to experience the real Beijing in the weekends to come; using a lot of English
-breakfast... what's in that soup?
This is the farthest I’ve ever been pushed out of my comfort zone, including the time I visited an Australian Aboriginal tribe and had to eat kangaroo tail. The scenery may be similar to home, but the tastes, sounds and smells are not. And then there’s the lifestyle. They’re so alone out here, with only sheep and TV for company. For human companionship, they have to walk or drive through the hills to the next closest house. If they’re not herding sheep they basically just sit around and watch TV. That is the basic composition of their days. I feel like I would go crazy, especially since they don’t seem to have access to a wide variety of books, which is my usual avenue of escape from boredom.
More thoughts later.
ahahaha you look so happy and the child looks so concerned.
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