Sunday, January 25, 2009

What do you say to visiting Mongolians?

On Saturday the girls and I went to a performance/workshop on campus with people from our imagined favorite part of the world (meaning, we have never been there, but fancy that we would fit right in nicely).  An Da Union were a charming group of musicians from Inner Mongolia (so, close to Tuva, our dream destination, and when I say "our", Eliza at least is totally on board.  She told me with great confidence that she would really like to live in a ger, or yurt.), and they shared their instruments, throat singing, and dancing with us, inviting us at several intervals to join them on stage.  Eliza and I braved it for the dancing bit, but saved our throat singing for the privacy of our kitchen.  Eliza did decide that she needed to talk to one of the women after the performance and made a bee-line for her while she was packing away her instrument.  I watched as the Chinese interpreter saw her and knelt down to help with the interaction.  I stayed back with Anika and could only imagine what our family ambassador had to say - there were lots of smiles and tickling and at one point she fell over backwards in embarrassment when the woman apparently asked her to sing for her.  It wasn't until we had been home for a while that Eliza told me that she shared one of her favorite jokes with them. Keep in mind that this all goes through the helpful interpreter:

Knock knock! Who's there? (at this point she tells me he turns to her and checks in, "is this how it goes?") Peas. Peas who? Is that right? Peas to meet you!!

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