I grew up in the Mongolian countryside, and my family lived on a rather swampy lake, although the seaweed was no turn off for me! I loved the lake. I would go out on it in a paddle boat with my brother, and sometimes my family would go fishing and end up catching bass, walleye, and sunfish, which we’d then cook for supper. It was especially fun to explore the lake because its boundaries weren’t so clearly defined...there were certain areas that were almost secretive, and we would always enjoy feeling like adventurers. I remember numerous times when we tried to construct boats out of planks of wood...and once when we even attempted a submarine! I made a tiny island near the edge that was quite fun to construct until I ran into some sort of underground bee colony?!
We also had a garden with sunflowers, tomatoes, rhubarb, carrots, peas, beans, corn...Once, when we were digging some sort of moat around the perimeter to keep out the deer, we hit what seemed to be natural groundwater. We thought it was a spring, but after a while, this peculiar smell surprised us. It turned out our septic system had a leak...
My brother and I would organize these family Olympics with events that generally involved running around the house, and sometimes when my grandmother came over, we would play hide-and-seek with her. We had a set of walkie talkies, so we would find hiding places and then communicate with each other as to her location. Let’s just say that Grandma is kind of a large woman, so to say the least, she didn’t enjoy walking all over our yard trying to catch us!
We would also occasionally "cook" dinner for our parents, although I could never understand why my dad didn’t seem so excited about it! The normal meal was garlic bread and probably scrambled eggs, and we (or at least I) loved pretending to be the chef and waiter.
In the winter, we of course had feet and feet of snow, which always made for some pretty awesome winter activities...ice skating on the lake, sledding down our hill, building snow forts and an igloo (once), snowball fights! I’d stay outside for hours in my humongous coat.
This is so much fun for me, but I’ll try not to bore you too much more
. My favorite other memories were probably exploring in the tall grass, driving the lawn mower with my dad, feeding the geese, playing on this old playground, and biking around "the circle" at my grandparents’ place...oh, and exploring my grandpa’s workshop was always exciting! Fun times
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