“The storm goes on out of control, and in her heart, the thunder rolls...” It was like a Mongolian version of the famous Garth Brooks song, except between girl cousins who are twelve. It started as a simple game of Uno during the largest electric storm we’ve had since I’ve been here: lightning, rain, hail and all. However, after adding several days of tension between two young girls confined to small living quarters, the situation quickly devolved into a worse indoor thunderstorm. It reminded me a lot of myself and my cousin Jared when we were around the same age. After a couple of days of putting up with each other’s nuanced annoyances, we finally snapped over something stupid that I can’t even remember. There were remote controls thrown back and forth, subsequent hurt feelings and a tear or two before the adults came in to rectify the situation with a couple of scolds, spanks and forced apologies. The same thing happened last night, minus the remote controls, and it also happened in Mongolian so I can’t tell you what was said. What I can say is that my sister was expected to apologize to me this morning, I suspect because it was considered rude for them to have argued in front of me. I smiled and told her it was all right. If I could have spoken better Mongolian, I would have told her the last time I argued with my cousin I threw a remote control at him.
July 12, 2008
The Thunder Rolls
“The storm goes on out of control, and in her heart, the thunder rolls...” It was like a Mongolian version of the famous Garth Brooks song, except between girl cousins who are twelve. It started as a simple game of Uno during the largest electric storm we’ve had since I’ve been here: lightning, rain, hail and all. However, after adding several days of tension between two young girls confined to small living quarters, the situation quickly devolved into a worse indoor thunderstorm. It reminded me a lot of myself and my cousin Jared when we were around the same age. After a couple of days of putting up with each other’s nuanced annoyances, we finally snapped over something stupid that I can’t even remember. There were remote controls thrown back and forth, subsequent hurt feelings and a tear or two before the adults came in to rectify the situation with a couple of scolds, spanks and forced apologies. The same thing happened last night, minus the remote controls, and it also happened in Mongolian so I can’t tell you what was said. What I can say is that my sister was expected to apologize to me this morning, I suspect because it was considered rude for them to have argued in front of me. I smiled and told her it was all right. If I could have spoken better Mongolian, I would have told her the last time I argued with my cousin I threw a remote control at him.
