Zeb CP#8

    Thursday evening (the 1^st) after my class was over I went over to Bayasaa's apartment for supper. We had rice with meat, cabbage, potatoes and I think there was an egg batter cooked in with it. I thought it was pretty good. During the meal I asked him the word for the different things we were eating in Mongolian and made sure he knew the word in English. For dessert he had a container with strawberries, pineapple chunks, watermelon chunks and grapes. Most of those fruits were unfamiliar words to him, and I think he wrote the words down. While we were talking about the different fruits I showed some of my Costa Rican pictures of pineapple fields and fruit, and we talked along those lines for a while. Then I showed some pictures of when I was in Bolivia, and Bayasaa seemed to find those interesting as Bolivia and Mongolia seem to share some similarities in that both countries have large numbers of cattle, have lesser developed infrastructure in their interior, have gold mines, etc..

    When I came to some pictures of a boa constrictor Bayasaa said that in his country there are many people that are superstitious and think that killing a snake brings bad energy and contributes to disasters and bad luck. Therefore, if someone is driving along and sees a snake on the road they will slam on the brakes and try to avoid hitting it. He was detailing how some people will go and rub their hand over a snake and then rub it on themselves to bring good energy and success. While we were discussing these things it was rather difficult because Bayasaa's vocabulary ability mainly consists of concrete objects, with abstract ideas being difficult to express. From what I could tell he thinks that bad energy from a killing a snake is rather far fetched, but he does believe in good energy from going to see the sun rise from a mountain top on the first day of the year.

    Our meeting lasted a little over two hours, and terminated when I said that I needed to go or it would be very late by the time I got back home.