Amarbaysgalant

Amarbayasgalant

Last Saturday we went to Amarbayasgalant, the Buddhist Monastery. It was about a 4 hour drive there, and we actually weren’t packed into the Mikr quite as tightly as I thought we would be… Naraa and two PCVs who are our culture trainers came along in a PC Land Cruiser, so a few of the trainees rode in the Land Cruiser. We still had four people to a seat though, which made for a bit of a sticky ride. It was brutally hot, and even with the windows open it was just hot air blowing on us and we were all sweating and sticking together. The part on the dirt road was the worst, because either we were breathing in clouds of dust or sweltering. We chose to breath in the dust. Amarbayasgalant is in the middle of a giant field, out in the middle of nowhere. There are some tourist Ger camps there, as well as some herders that live there, but there are almost no trees in the giant field. I don’t know how people live there during the summer. There was a small stream running through the field, and there was a grove of trees where we parked and ate our lunch. We hung out there for about two hours, because we had to wait until one of the Lamas could see us. Apparently it was a holy day and they were reading a big sutra, so he didn’t have very much time. The Lama who talked to us studied in Sweden, so his English was really good. We thought he was going to give us a tour, but since they were reading a sutra he could only talk to us for about 20 minutes. The temple was built in the 1730’s, by the Manchu Emperor. During Communism it was closed (obviously), and the Communists actually destroyed 10 of the original 37 temples and statues. I don’t think anyone is really sure why they didn’t destroy all of it, someone told me that they tried, but it wouldn’t burn. The temple was reopened in 1991, during Communism no one was allowed to even go to the temple, and it was basically a haven for horses during the summer. Horses would go in all the buildings for the shade; I can’t say that I blame them.
Outside the main building of the monastery there was a thing (for lack of a better term…) that is supposed to symbolize a rebirthing. You crawl in between two stones, then you have to stand up inside and turn around clockwise three times (three is a big number here, three times around the Ovoo, three shots of vodka) and then crawl out the other side between two stones. It was really hard! Which I guess is kind of the point…


Me Reborn!

My family finally came back from the Hudoo on Monday night. They brought a few interesting things with them… Monday night I saw part of an animal which I assumed to be a marmot sitting on the kitchen table, which some hot stones that were presumably inside it. I also saw what I assumed to be innards boiling on the stove, so needless to say, I hightailed it up to my room and went to bed. On Tuesday morning when I woke up some of it was in the fridge, and there was another plate of “meat” (aka fat, skin, bones and a tiny bit of meat) sitting on the window sill. That worried me a little. When I came home for lunch on Tuesday the power was off, apparently all of Sukhbaatar was without power for most of the day, it happens fairly regularly. So there was no hope of me getting much of anything for lunch. My Dad asked me if I wanted some Aireg. I thought he had said “Taireg,” which is the yogurt I am so fond of. I sort of heard the word Aireg, but it just didn’t make sense to me that he would want me to drink that in the middle of the day. So I said “Yes!” and sat down at the table, and there was a pot of white milky stuff that was sort of frozen, it had chunks of ice in it. So I commented that it was “hueten taireg” (cold yogurt), and he quickly corrected me and told me it was, in fact, Aireg. And then he pulled out the marmot. I have yet to figure out how to politely refuse when ordered to eat, especially when it is the only thing available to eat, and I’m hungry. Mongolians don’t usually say “will you eat” or “please eat” they say “eat.” It was the plate that was in the fridge, so at least it had been refrigerated most of the night… So my lunch was marmot and aireg, with a little aaruul (really really hard milk curd) thrown in for good measure. The aireg was different from the stuff my Dad pulled out the day we all learned to chop wood and cook, that aireg was clear and looked like vodka. This aireg was milky and tasted really sour. I think maybe it hadn’t fermented as long, but I really have no idea. The marmot was OK, it tasted really gamey, and I didn’t really eat much because I was gnawing on a bone, trying to avoid the fat and gristle. But for the rest of the day I did have a bit of the “Gehdis Mo” (Literal meaning: Stomach Bad), which is a PCT slang term for anything ranging from an upset stomach to mild food poisoning (compliments of Bagh 5, they get the Gehdis Mo out there a lot more than we do in Sukhbaatar proper).
Our miserable heat wave has finally broken (at least for the time being). We got a tiny little bit of rain on Sunday evening, but it was really just a tease. It didn’t even cool off the night, it was still hot as ever. And on Monday we got a little more rain, but it was still miserable and hot. Finally, on Tuesday we woke up to a mercifully cloudy sky, and it was cool. Then in the afternoon it started raining and just didn’t stop. I was actually COLD!!! It was delightful. Tuya told us that August 1st is when it starts to get cold, and she was pretty close.


Me, my Host Mom and sister




My Host Dad, brother and me