Living in a yert

Now that I have been settled in enough to realize I am neglecting my blog let me tell you what it's like to live here. I live in a yert, that is a Mongolian tent home. Here's a picture of it. It's actually pretty comfortable besides being chilly. There are a number of bugs that live in it with me but, I don't really get bitten so it doesn't bother me. In fact living with some bugs around can be kind of cool if the bugs are moths and they look pretty. Check out this one I found on a window at my workplace.

The main thing I miss is indoor plumbing. The first couple of days after I arrived I had food poisoning and there's nothing like vomiting in the woods a couple of times to make you homesick. After I recovered it was much more pleasant. Another strange thing about living in the woods is the giant slugs that you sometimes find. I remember the first time I saw one I thought it was some fresh animal dung but then it started to move. When you need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night you have to be careful not to step on them. Just to give you an idea of how big these slugs really are I made this handy picture of one next to a new number 2 pencil. In fact I think this slug was longer than the pencil, but when you get near them their heads suck up into their bodies so they look fatter and smaller.

One thing I love about living in it is the sounds I hear at night. Since I live in a forest full of wildlife there is a full chorus of night sounds to listen to while I lay in bed. Now you may think you know what a forest sounds like but it's nothing compared to what it sounds like late at night. All sorts of night creatures wake up that you have never heard in the daytime. It reminds me of the sounds you would hear in an old Disney cartoon if the characters went into a jungle.

I've begun working on my animation at last. I am animating a story called "The Rabbit Who Overcame Fear", it's like Chicken Little, with a rabbit and a falling mango that scares him. It's a Jataka Tale, which is one from a collection of stories of the past lives of the Buddha. As I was researching the story I was surprised to find that many of the Jataka Tales are the basis for modern children's stories. It seems that after the Jataka Tales were created, they spread to Persia and then through Alexander the Great to Europe. It's pretty funny to see the changes that each culture made to the stories. I read several versions of the rabbit story and in each one the falling mango was replaced with a new type of fruit. I think if I were retelling my version of the story I'd make the fruit a Durian. With all those spikes I bet they could do some real damage. My old roommate used to call them the king of the fruit.

Here's an in-process picture of the rabbit I am making for the animation. I think the animation will look pretty nice, though I wonder how long it will take to make the art. After all, this story has as many characters a Chicken Little, they just don't have clever names like Turkey Lurkey and Goosey Loosey.