Here is the little house (ger) on the prairie. Its door is open to us in the Mongolian style of welcome. This family lives about three and a half hours away from any civilization. The roads are dirt with great holes and rocks and hills and very hard to traverse. When we finally made it to a real road we had a flat tire. When we looked at the tire it was in shreds (at 11pm and in the middle of a thunder storm). It makes the trip to the "Seven" an all day affair.
These people are a part of our long distance branch and that's why we visited them.
Here is the fish cooked in the big pot over the fire in the outdoor kitchen. This is our dinner along with fresh berries picked off nearby bushes and watermelon we brought with us as a gift to the family we were staying with.
Here is the outdoor kitchen where they fire up the stove for cooking in the summer. Its enclosed on three sides and you can see a board taken out of the side closest to the hot stove. It gets pretty hot in there...hence the saying "if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen".
Its very colorful with the different berries and off to the far right is a big bowl of cream. Its almost like butter. I've never tasted anything like it. A few photos away will show you why they have cream/butter on the table.
It is the custom for the host family to not eat, but watch while the guests eat. Only when the guests are finished will the family take any food. Its quite unnerving. My food always sticks in my throat when eating this way, but it is to show respect so is not to be trifled with.
Do you see the fishing pole leaning against the camping chair? Yes, the doctor found time to do a little fishing at the stream down the hill from the ger. It was such a beautiful stream but had no fish...at least that's what the doctor says.
Elder Hill was doing his best to get the meat off the fish and leave the bones.
This herd of cows give milk every morning and evening. During the day they roam at will eating their fill of grass and in the evening they mosey on back to the ger to be milked. They are coming home in this photo.
They do enjoy a little stop at the stream for a cold drink of water before making their way to the corral and milking.
I think this is the cow I milked. I don't know...they kind of look all the same.
The other incentive to come home is that their calves are waiting for a little evening bottle before settling down for the night.
This is Osorjamaa, our translator, who is trying to get milk out of this cow. He's a city boy and did not adjust well to milking know-how.
When they are finished milking they try to cool down the milk by ladling it up high and pouring it back into the can. I took over for a spell. I also had a great photo of me milking the cow (I did really good) but it turned out to be a movie and I couldn't get it to download.
They also owned three pigs that came and went. Hey little piggie.
This is their little girl who rides her bike down the steep hill by turning it on its side and pulling it down next to her. She looked like a toddler learning how to go down stairs backwards. She was a tough little kid. Her big sister had to keep fetching her and her bike out of the stream.
They had built this house to use in the winter and they let us stay here. It was really nice but had only one bed so Osorjamaa and Elder Hill slept (sort of) on the floor and Sister Hill took the couch and we got the bed. I felt bad about that, but they insisted...a sort of age before beauty thing. I got up in the night to use the "big bathroom" outside and saw stars like I haven't seen since NZ. I even saw a shooting star. It was marvelous. What a grand universe. And what a grand adventure in the middle of Mongolian countryside.
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