WHY DID THEY DO THIS??? 

In the Pirc Defence there is actually two reasons why Black initiates a Queen trade. The obvious one is to remove White's Castling rights, but the more relevant one is that when an E5 Pawn is threatening the Knight, the Queen trade makes that White diagonal (g4 & h5) safe to put the f6 Knight on.

Absolutely love your games... would like to play you some day! :)

Knight A6 to protect the early king/rook fork.

Your during game comentary is so relatable to me as a newish chess player.

8:16 let them take your pawn. You take their rook. They take your rook. You take their knight. You will be up the exchange.

On the road to GM !

You never even considered that Kh5 move during the game but it was obvious it was the best move and it was even forced on you. I yelled but alas, you did not hear.