Gooooooooood morning Ulaanbaatar!

It’s been a while since I’ve written. I figured it was about time for an update!

In a nutshell, Tyler’s home (YAY!) and I’m awaiting a new tasking to deploy (meh.)

Tyler finally got back from Mongolia last weekend. He’s got a million stories and I have to admit I’m jealous of his experiences. Well… most of them anyway. Sleeping on a hard surface, eating food solely boiled in lamb fat, showering with every other nation in an open bay shower and working 14 hours a day, he can keep. ;)

I think one of his favorite stories to tell, is the fermented horses milk story. I’ll do my best to retell it in the way he told me.

He had been in Mongolia for a few days and kept hearing stories about the locals drinking fermented horses milk. So he and a few of the other Marines started asking around about where they could get some. One of the Mongolians loaded them up and took them to a ger (the round house tents Mongolians live in) and when they got out, there were farm animals running all around, and all the kids gathered around the truck to see them.

He said they went into the tent and one of the Mongolians filled this kettle full of lumpy, smelly milk (that still had HORSE HAIR floating in it. BARF.) and started heating it up. Eventually, the lumpy, smelly, hairy milk was warm and he poured it into a bowl for them to drink.

At this point, Tyler’s thinking, “ok.. cool. We have one bowl full, we each take a sip, pass it around and we’re done.” Wrong.

Their translator informs them they have to drink the entire massive kettle full of hairy milk.

Meanwhile, one of the Mongolian mothers, whips out her boobs in the middle of the room and starts breast feeding this butt-naked baby.

Tyler said it got really awkward at that point and all of the Marines immediately diverted their eyes to the floor and started concentrating on not snickering, like little kids, at the naked lady and baby. They continued to pass the bowl and worked on putting away the hairy horse milk so they could finish it and  leave.

No sooner had she started feeding the baby, it let out this “massive, projectile, liquid shit (these are Tyler’s words mind you..) that shot, no joke, three feet across the room.”

The lady and baby are covered in it and she gets up to go outside and clean off.

So now they’re all looking at each other like, “WTF. It smells, there’s crap everywhere, let’s GO.”

As they’re leaving, they’re informed that it’s custom for visitors to give the baby money. Not, give the parents money for the baby, but literally hand the baby the money.

So as they were on their way out, they were all tucking dollar bills into the babies clothing.

Tyler said it was coming out of his sleeves, his collar, his diaper, etc. And in Tyler’s words, “he looked like a little baby Lil’ Wayne. He was big pimpin’.”

He wanted to take a photo, but was worried about offending someone.

Now, my other favorite story from his trip was Bush getting drug by a horse.

Before I sound mean for saying it’s my favorite, I’d like to add that he’s *mostly* uninjured.

Bush is one of Tyler’s friends that’s stationed with him at Camp Smith. He’s a little bit younger and just got here from MOS school a few months ago.

So one of the days they were there, they had the opportunity to ride horses. The Mongolians are sort of funny about telling you they want their turn though. They’ll just jump on right behind you and kind of push you off the horse. It’s a very subtle message.

So Bush is out there riding around and laughing, having a good ol’ time.

At some point, a Mongolian came up behind Bush on the horse and spooked the horse. It freaked out and sort of took off running, and then slowed back down. Bush got this freaked out look on his face and tried to jump off when it slowed back down.

However, when he made his getaway, he forgot one important aspect to dismounting your horse; remove your foot from the stirrup.

As Bush jumped down, his foot got caught and the horse took off. Bush was drug for about 200+ meters, kicked between the legs, kicked in the leg, has a bruised rear, back and groin. He’s missing patches of skin from his back, forearms and hands.

The best part? It was all captured on video.

Gunny Holly, Tyler’s gunny at MARFORPAC, began filming the initial ride and ended up capturing the drag too.  The audio was removed from the video, but had it been there, you could hear him laughing and cussing up a storm. Initially anyway. At first it was more of an, “OH! Crap!! Hahaha.. “ and then it turned into.. “ooooh.. crappp.. uhh.. “ Except his language was a little more explicit. So… use your imagination.

Like I said, Bush escaped without any life threatening injuries. Just a really sore rear end.

Anyway, that’s enough for now. More pictures to come soon!