Dolly the sheep

The jet lag hasn't hit me yet so I think I'm going to be just fine! I've spent the morning organizing some pictures on my computer and cheering on my Hokies to victory. Granted it was against Duke but I haven't been able to cheer for them in the last two weeks and I've missed them! You'll notice to the left there is a link to my pictures. I haven't gotten all the pics from the other folks on the trip but this is a start. I have to warn you. Some of the pictures are rather grotesque. I won't post the grossest within the blog just to make sure I don't offend anyone. Just think, I was actually there and survived it. Yes, me who gets queasy over the smallest thing!!

I wanted to share with you part of my experience from the village. It was something that I will absolutely never forget. On the second day we were there, the village people (not the YMCA song folks) all gathered for a beshparmak which is a big feast they have for special occasions. These people have next to nothing compared to us and they are for the most part very happy people. They opened their homes/village to us and treated us like royalty. But this is the part that I will never forget. They brought a sheep out and slaughtered it right in front of us. I had never seen anything like it. It was difficult to watch but I couldn't keep my eyes off it. It was actually a spiritual moving event. The sheep didn't really fight being sacrificed. The worst part for me was when they were skinning it and preparing it for cooking. My friend Don had to help take out the organs and then my friend Audrey and I helped prepare the intestines. Yes, that's right. I had to touch and clean sheep intestines. It's probably one of the grossest things I have ever done. Actually the women had done the first few rounds of cleaning them so by the time we got them, they were fairly clean. But still- I was basically doing a colon cleansing of a sheep! The thought just grosses me out but I figured that I would take in as much of the experience as I could because I really don't think I'll ever be in that situation again! When it came time for the feast, Don had to eat the sheep's eye because he was the oldest person in our group. I had to eat the sheep's ear (and trust me, it does NOT taste like chicken!). Then they handed me a large portion of the sheep's rear-end for me to eat. (I'm not really sure of the cultural significance of that but I'm sure that we can all figure that out!) Oh and the "soup" we had to eat was basically sheep grease/juice. Man, that could possibly be the most disgusting meal I've ever had to eat but we did so as graciously as possible. To see these people giving us their best and going out of their way to welcome us, it just made sense to pretend like we were enjoying eating Dolly the sheep! I can totally cross that off my list of things to do in life!