The Tangerine Dream: Week 3: Stories of language, host families, and food.

Here is another installment of what has been happening in my Mongolian life. I am becoming quite good at acting things out, or maybe my host mom has just perfected her 'i understand' face as well. It has been about 3 weeks since I first arrived here, and it seems like the time is just flying by.

1. Spiders
my host sister was picking some vegetables out in our garden, and she suddenly sprang up and started yelling in Mongolian. My host brother ran over, and then they started describing the size of something...which i thought to be a snake, given the wideness of their hands. The told me to hurry and come see it, so I ran over, and saw that it was in fact not a snake, but the biggest spider I have seen. You could see the fangs on this thing- they were almost as big as its legs. My host parents soon came over and were also astounded. They got a rusty bucket and a rake, and got the spider in the bucket...I thought they were just going to move the spider outside of the garden, but instead we just filled the bucket with water and all watched as it drowned. Given the size of the spider, and the intent of my family to kill it, I wondered if the spider was poisonous...but given the lack of interwebs, and me not knowing the Mongol word for poisonous, I can only assume that it was very poisonous and that is why everyone was so scared of it. After dunking the spider under the water a couple times with the end of a rake to insure its death, everyone went back to their normal business, and my sister continued to pick vegetables, but on the other side of the garden.

2. My time to shine
So I have written before about the cows that come in to eat the yard when the gate is left open. I have been secretly waiting for my chance to see the cows first so I can chase them out and be apart of this family past time. Well, I finally got my chance. It was a herd of 8 cows and I went out with my best Mongol tone and my arms spread wide to get them out...However two of the cows ran straight into the fenced garden area trampling the veggies. So host mother ran into the garden to chase those cows out, while I got the other 6 cows out. Family bonding fail. Although this story was later told the next morning at the breakfast table to my siblings, and so we all got to laugh together about how much I failed. Ha?

the garden where the cows ran.

3. There'll be days like this... There'll be days like this, my mother said.
on my very first day in Mongolia, the country Director, Darlene, spoke to the M24 volunteers. I cannot describe how much I admire our country director- she has a great attitude and some funny stories... but if I had to choose one word to describe her, I think I would choose inspiring. She said many a thing that stands out in my mind, but one thing in particular was that we have to celebrate the little victories. Sometimes things are just overwhelming and it is easy to get caught up in, but you have to be able to be happy at the little things you do accomplish.

Living with a host family, is frustrating...I cannot communicate, I get laughed at a lot (but I laugh with, so it's not that bad), I have to ask to go out, I cannot cook for myself... it is like being a teenager and knowing I can do things, but just am not allowed. On top of it all, since I moved in with this family, I have had dreams about my own mom...every single night...which is a little saddening when I wake. Dont get me wrong, I really like my host family, it just gets frustrating sometimes.

but right now (sunday night) I am celebrating the little things...I am celebrating the fact that I warmed up my own bath bucket tonight. Thats right. I heated two tea kettles right up and mixed it in with 4 saucepans full of cold water to make the perfect temperature bath bucket, and then I took the most refreshing tupin baths of tupin baths...it was so refreshing because I did it all by myself...or maybe it was because I havent tupin-ed since Thursday?

4. Unfortunately
There is no better feeling that clean feet right out of the tupin..that is until you are walking through the garden with your newly clean feet and accidentally walk into a huge pile of dirt that you didnt see when you were busy admiring the landscape. At least I heated up that bath bucket tonight all by myself!!

5. I ate five boats.
boats are these delicious steamed dumplings, that are typically filled with, of course, meat and fat. Need I say again, they are delicious. To make a boat:

step 1- mix up some dough, and a meat mixture that is roughly 1 part meat to 1 part fat with some green onions thrown in for fun.

step 2- roll out the dough into small thin patty form

step 3- put a spoonful of meat mixture onto dough

step 4- carefully watch host mother form a dumpling by pinching sides of dough together within 5 seconds time

step 5- spend 5 minutes on your one dumpling trying to replicate, while your host mom makes roughly 20
more dumplings.

step 6- proudly show your host mom what you think to be a decent dumpling for your first time, have host mom call host sister to help translate her thoughts, 'very bad,' as if the host mom's face could not explain her feelings enough

step 7- watch host mom again for better dough pinching technique

step 8- try again

step 9- laugh along with your host mom and sister at your boat for quality family bonding time.

step 10- watch again

step 11- carefully try to make this the best boat ever, as your host mom is now folding dumplings in such a
way to make designs, such as flowers and rings

step 12- defend the kinda decent dumpling you just made

step 13- try again (repeat as necessary) until you make a 'passable' dumpling, or until all meat is safely inside the dough patties, whichever comes first.

step 14- put boats in kettle to steam.

step 15- wait 25 minutes until the boats are fully deliciously cooked

step 16- immediately shove into mouth while making a slurping sound, and enjoy!

6. goy banhn (awesome)

So my host dad built a shower this week. If you want to talk about awesome, let me tell you...The shower is outside, and it made of random wood, and the entrance is covered by a blanket. There is a plank of wood on the inside that you can stand on if you dont want to stand in the dirt, and there is a little channel dug that is leading away from the shower for the water to go. On the top of the structure are two half logs that holds up this large metal barrel, that has a spigot. During the day the sun warms up the water, and voila. warm shower. I was heating up a tea kettle for a bath when my host sister came home. I told her I was going to bathe, and she showed me the shower. I took full advantage of this new discovery, and hopped right in. The water wasn't the warmest, but I got to shower by the Mongolian sunset with the sounds of pigs grunting in the background. I would say it was a fair trade.

7. Table Manners

Mongols do not mind one bit if you talk with your mouth full...From what I gather, the fuller your mouth is, the better of time it is to talk. Also, it seems like they always wait to ask me questions at the dinner table until I have taken a large bite of food. Just to add to the awkwardness, I wait to answer until I am done chewing.

Mongols also slurp their food. We eat soup frequently, and yeah, I can see how slurping comes into play because it is hot-like right off the fire hot (In Mongolia, when you get a plate of food put in front of you, you eat right away...you dont wait until everyone is served because then your food gets cold.) But they slurp with any meal. It is almost as if your mouth is this vacuum, and the game is too see how much food your can suck up into your mouth at a time. I consider myself a pretty fast eater, but I still take about twice as long to finish eating...I blame the chewing.

Side note: Noodles or rice are pretty much a staple at every meal. The noodles are the weirdest noodles that I have seen. I have had some that look like dinosaur heads, but more fun were the hollow spaghetti noodles. They were impossible to slurp because the air just went right through! Really, it was like a pasta straw.

8. "cheeee"

So the language is tough. Each day I learn a little more and my ear is getting more adapt to listening to Mongolian. Probably my favorite thing so far about the language is that the Mongols have words for agreeing/disagreeing or saying yes/no...but they also have just sounds that mean the same. a 'ch' sound said like a feminine vowel (in the front of the mouth) is agreeing, and the same sound said in the manner of a masculine vowel (more from the back of the throat) is a way of saying no or disagreeing. It is awesome. It sounds very snake like and intimidating even when someone is agreeing with you, but now that my ear is accustom to it, it is still intimidating but at least it makes me smile.

Also, what I am finding most difficult about the language is that the Mongolian language is similar to eating. It is the fun game of how many consonants can I fit into my mouth at once and still talk. No matter how long the word, it is split into two syllables and almost all vowels are omitted if they are in the middle of the words. So you are just left with this huge amount of consonants in your mouth.

9. the merik cooks

my host mom wanted me to make an american dinner for the family one evening...there are no ovens really so I didnt know what to make, but then it hit me, that I should take this opportunity to show them how to use the bbq sauce properly. Originally I thought I could cook bbq chicken, potato salad and salad. There is not really mayo or mustard here, so potato salad was thrown out and replaced with mashed potatoes, and the only vegetable that was available in the soum, was onions...so I attempted to make onion rings without ever having made them before. While i was making the mashed potatoes I threw in some salt and what I was told was pepper...but really it was dill. Despite the potatoes being overly dill-y, they were delicious- as was the chicken. My host mom thought I was nuts while making the onion rings, but overall she liked them. Success!

10.

We have learned in our technically training sessions that in the classroom, students cheat, and normally the teachers just look the other way and dont say anything about it. Well, I have not yet witnessed this first hand, but what I have witnessed is my host mother 'having different standards' for shagai - the ankle bone game (its awesome). So there are these ankle bones collected over the years from eating the meat off of the bones...and each side represents a different animal...it is hard to explain, but if you are interested, you readers with the internet can google it. Basically, you roll these ankle bones, and if two land with the same side up, it is sort of like marbles and you can knock two together and keep one...but if you miss or knock more than one, you lose you turn. Point of the story: If the host mom misses/ knocks more than one that means she can shoot again. If the novice merik makes a mistake...those ankle bones are scooped up faster than you can blink.

11. meat

I think i have eaten more meat...mostly mutton... in the last two weeks than I have in the past 5 years. No need to worry about my iron levels here.

12. Ms. Hapaa

I have taught my first class here in the Suhkbaator 6 school as part of my technical training. It was really a lot of fun. Since it is a summer class sort of thing, it is a varying range of students with different english abilities. It makes it a little tough to plan a lesson, but it was really neat to see some of the lower english level students catch onto the lesson.

13. Breakfast - my (former) favorite meal

Whats not to love about breakfast? Eggs, toast, cereal, hashbrowns, maybe even occasionally pancakes...delicious. well formally delicious. Mongols do not eat breakfast, but Peace Corps has alerted our families that us americans need to eat it. It used to be my favorite meal...but here, it is questionable. Usually for breakfast my host mom serves the leftovers from the night before...that just sits out in the pan. But sometimes she makes stuff. like eggs, with barbecue sauce...or kimbap (aka hot dog sushi)...when we were in Darkhan for orientation, the hotel even served us meriks cheeseburgers. But for the last two days, I have had bow cereal. yes the hard pastry bread things. my mom throws some in a bowl and then pours cold tea over the top of them, to make a delicious mongolian cereal that I eat with a fork. why didnt I think to pack a box of grape nuts?

Some sights from Mongolia: