We left Ondorkhaan. We asked Altansukh if he had a nice rest and he said he had. He only nodded off a few times at the wheel this morning, so I guess he did.
We had been travelling with another jeep throughout our return leg and it had broken down in the little village of Jaraltkhaan. A bit of time was spent while Altansukh helped out with the repairs, and I bought some candy at the village store. Eventually, the repairs were made and off we were. Not too much later our convoy approached a fairly large obo where the other jeep promptly pulled up. At first we weren't sure if the jeep was having trouble again, but, thankfully, that wasn't the case. Their reason for stopping was to pay respect to the obo, especially since they hadn't stopped there during the first leg of the trip. The wife of the driver in the other jeep was worried that their engine trouble was the result of the deity's displeasure with them, and she wasn't about to put her theory to test. Hence, we all gave respect.
When we were close to the Tow-Hentii border we stopped at a ger-bul('family') who were friends with Altansukh. Our stay was quite long, lasting until 10pm. We ate, and watched some local kids practice for the Naadam horseracing. I played with some of the kids here and then I got to see how the Mongols slaughter their sheep. The kill is done just like in the movie 'Close to Eden'. Some men also went marmot hunting and caught one, a clean shot right through the head. They were disappointed with the marmot they caught, because they had thought it to be a male, but it had turned out to be a mother. Mongols, generally, do not like to kill any animals that are either young or are females with/bearing children.
I asked Battoya many questions about how the sheep was killed, but it was not the best of subjects - Mongols don't like to talk about death, like most people.
I gave a boy a baseball and both him and his older sister wanted to know everything about the US. The sister was studying English, so I gave her my address. I ended up having a number of talks with the people about various things. It was just such a nice sunny day.
Altansukh said that he would get me some Mongol stirrups when I expressed an interest in buying some. That would nice.
I found out that Mongolia has two kids baseball teams! Hey, they certainly have the field space.
On Wednesday I'll call Battoya and we'll go to the dzakh(market) to get Tracy's dehl. This is going to be souvenir buying week.