So we left the capital where we live and took a train to the second biggest city in this country--it's located smack in the middle and is surrounded by snow-covered mountains. The reason we went was for the wedding of our coworker (i'll post about that soon), but we made sure we had a day to explore the city as well. Just before we got on the overnight train to head back home, we stopped at the Nizami Gencevi monument. He is a very, very well known national writer. Aside from poetry, he wrote several epic plays. After we visited his grave [funny story, actually: it was locked up and completely dark and closed. But we sweet-talked some stoic police officers into unlocking it and taking us inside, where we viewed the memorial by flashlight!], the officers gave us permission to look around the rest of the grounds and ran (truly, they RAN) back to their car (it was COLD!). We walked for a few minutes and found a series of statues depicting the characters in Nizami's epic plays, some of which you can see behind us in this picture:
One of the pictures was of a woman carrying a small cow on her shoulders up some stairs. It's based on one of Nizami's most famous pieces, and is really an interesting story to read:
One of my teammates said, "wait, is that a WOMAN carrying that cow?!" ...and so it began. I, of course, being a woman, said, "so you think she can't carry a cow just because she's a woman?! I could carry a cow. No problem." Naturally, they doubted me and my brute strength and my sheer determination. And so this is how we settled things:
Clearly, I won.
And yes, I could carry a cow.
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