Yet Another Revelation

So I just posted yesterday, but I heard something great today, as we were lounging around the kitchen, cooking pelmeni this evening

...but i should start the story a little earlier today, which was just about the best Saturday in the history of Saturdays. Now, I am all in favor of Saturday--it is just about the perfect day of the week, even when I have classes to teach, because the university is really quiet and peaceful, and people aren't bustling around all panicky like they do on usual days. There is no line for the printer or the audio visual equipment and no crowd in the minibus. However, I didn't need to go to work today, which made it all the better. In the morning I drank two cups of coffee and had a three and a half hour conversation with Namdolma about different moments in life, that wasn't all that different from a conversation I might have had with a friend in the states, which is more evidence for my growing suspicion that nations are an outdated form of organizing people. Then we went shopping. I guess this was actually my first time making the rounds of the Kyzyl shopping scene with serious consumer intent, and I surprisingly had a blast. I am not an avid shopper in my real life, and prices in Russia are usually sky-high.

First of all, we went to some of the upscale stores, where rich people shop, just to check if they had any bargains. I was looking for a sweater, because I don't really have one, and it seems like it would be a handy thing to have, given our recent weather. The only sweaters I could find had nonsensical misspelled English words printed on them, and I decided they were probably not ideal for an English teacher to wear, so we decided to go to the central market. Actually, I knew exactly what I wanted; the only trick was finding it...

What I wanted was a camel hair sweater, which are imported from Mongolia in vast quantities. Sweaters, vests, hats, tights, socks, and scarves made from camel are very popular here. At the market almost all of the dozen or so ladies selling meat had some sort of camel hair something on, and I find things made out of camel really beautiful because of their simplicity and functionality. Basically, they are just really plain really warm light brown sweaters.

Well, we searched high and low. We must have gone into a hundred shops at the market, poked through inventories, questioned salespeople, and peeked through windows. No luck! I had a theory that they were actually selling the sweaters at the outdoor market nextdoor, but Namdolma was categorically against shopping outside, because it would supposedly send me right back to the hospital. I did have a good time, though, explaining to each new shopkeeper that I wanted a plain, warm, normal sweater. They would crease their brows frustratedly, and show me some leopard print sweater-dress with giant bows, or perhaps leather cords wrapping around it, or a big frilly collar with decorative purposes, and we'd say no thanks and move on.

Finally, a shop caught my eye; they had ridiculously bright sweatshirts. I mean RIDICULOUSLY. They were nothing but colors, really bright ones, kind of in a skateboarding style or something. I couldn't take my eyes off them... and tried one on... it was ok, but then I imagined myself walking around the university in this sweatshirt. Let's just say that people already pay too much attention to me, and I normally wear black pants and a dark top. So I put the wonderful sweatshirt back, and decided instead on a pretty normal fleece jacket with epaulets. It was fairly well made and the price was right. I told the shop keeper her store was splendid and we went to buy potatoes.

So; I didn't get a camel sweater like I hoped, but it was probably for the best (at least for now). I found out later that it wasn't a good idea for me to wear camel, because camels only give birth once every three years. If I were to wear a camel sweater, I might become infertile! In Tyva, camel is discouraged for young women, although in Mongolia people don't worry about this, and apparently everybody wears camel. This place is full of contradictions. But Namdolma said she was seriously terrified of camels all through her pregnancies. I still have a dream to get a camel sweater to wear once I leave Tyva. Maybe these sweaters could be marketed as a form of birth control?

Ok, so finally we got home and started making pelmeni with the fresh meat we had bought, after seeing the frozen cow bodies laying on the dirty floor in the back corner of the market. The Russian meat markets are pretty old-school, even in major cities. In Tyva it was all business at the meat department. A couple guys with hatchets were chopping away at halves of cows in the middle of counters where Tyvan and Russian women were haulking their wares; liver on a plate, fresh ground beef, or beef and lamb, or beef and pork, chunks of meat, pigs' feet, and pure fat (sala) piled high on top of the counters. Namdolma is a pro and buying meat; she made the saleswoman dig all the way to the bottom of the bucket of ground beef to prove that it was fresh...

I took a little break from pelmeni to go to my fitness class (lots of spandex and techno), and then came back and we settled in to watch "Slumdog Millionaire," which was playing on the СТС channel. While we were sorting the pelmeni onto the plates, I was surprised by the following question from Namdolma:

"Have you ever seen poop in a dream, Riley, and wanted to touch it?"

I was flummoxed. "Uh, nope..." I answered "Have you?"

"No," Namdolma answered, sorrowfully. "In Tyva seeing poop in your dreams is one of the best things that can happen to a person. It means that soon you will become rich, or something really great will happen."

It's an understatement to say that this cultural revelation gave me pause.

Then we settled down to watch the movie, and I figured out what brought up the subject of poop dreams... Namdolma had seen Slumdog Millionaire before, and she and her husband had paid a lot of attention to the scene in the beginning of the film where Jamal jumps down into poop to escape the outhouse. They had a theory that it was due to this bath in liquid poop that he eventually becomes a millionaire!

Anyways, that's a long story to get to the part about poop in dreams being a good thing in Tyva, but I hope it means something to y'all. I'm going to get to sleep now; hopefully I'll see some poop in my dreams.