How to jump start a car...in Mongolia.

After a long cold day at an ice  party, my teacher was going to give me a ride back to my home, and her car was broken.  I watched from the passenger seat and I tried to document this jump starting with some photos through the small space between the roof and the car...since it was so cold and windy outside, it didn't even occur to me to GET OUT and take photos.  Clearly, I am just a moron... or maybe sometimes when you have actual 'brain freeze' it just takes time to assess your situation.  My apologies for the horrible photos...

So...

When you find yourself in a car that wont start in Mongolia, here is a 'how to' on getting it started again.

Step one: Call a man.

Step 2: Have that man take out a battery from a working automobile.

Step 3:  While holding the battery, turn it upside-down to touch the metal points together.  And try to start the car.

If that doesn't work, continue to...

Step 4: Go put the battery back into the other car, and bring that car closer to yours.

Step 5:  Grab your jumper cables...errr...I mean...Grab a random wire from who knows where, and strip the ends.

see that random white wire?

Step 6:  Find another guy to hold the wires against one car battery while you hold the other ends against your battery...And try to start the car.

If that doesn't work, continue to...

Step 7. Again, take the car battery completely out of the working vehicle

Step 8:  Find 2 wrenches.

Step 9:  While holding the one battery, connect the metal studs of batteries together using the two wrenches...and try to start the car.

You can see so much from this horrible angle.

Step 10:  Put the battery back into the other car...and get on your way with your now fully functioning automobile.

I remember when I was 16 and had to jump start my car for the first time...with actual jumper cables.  I was terrified of getting electrocuted, and also of my car just exploding...So witnessing this account just proves that none of that will probably happen...ever.

Also, a noteworthy observation of this experience was that when they pulled the other car up to connect 'jumper cables' they had to remove the blanket covering the engine of the other car.  Silly me asked why there was a blanket under the hood...to which I got a puzzled look and a straight-forward answer, 'to keep it warm!'

Like a phoenix

Burning coal produces a lot of dirtiness.  Things just become black and dirty.  I have a special black jacket that I only put on when making fires, or busting up coal, because I know whatever I wear will be filthy after even thinking about coal.

Something else that you have to deal with when fire making is the ash.  You constantly have to empty the ashes out of your stove, which is also quite uncleanly.  The process goes as follows...

Step one: put on the black jacket

Step two: open the stove, and rake all the ashes into the tray

Step three: take the tray out, and walk outside to the trashcans on the other side of the yard, while hoping it isn't windy outside so the ash wont blow all up in your face.

Step four: Hold your breathe as you walk across the yard, because it is always windy.

Step five: Dump the ash.

Overall, pretty simple process.

On one fine Friday evening, I proceeded in my evening fire making routine.  I put on my black jacket, and went outside to dump my ash.  It was windy, so I had ash in my face the whole way, and quickly dumped the ash into the trash barrels upon my arrival.  What I didn't know, was that there were about 5 tiny birds foraging some thrown away noodles from my neighbor in the trash barrel.  So when I mistakenly dumped the ash on top of them, they all flew up creating the most horrid ash cloud all around me, leaving me coughing and covered with grey ash.

They never really tell you, but the whole process of 'a phoenix rising from the ashes' must be a pretty messy process.  Even the birds have to dust themselves off once in a while.

New Years

New Years in Mongolia is celebrated a bit like Christmas...there are parties, and secret santas, recordings of 'last christmas' played on a loop, and a santa like figure, who is always accompanied by two jesters rather than 9 reindeer...

At my school we had a holiday concert that was put on by the students.  The santa called me out in the middle of the concert to give me a gift...which apparently translates into me having good luck for this next year!

 I also snuck in on a secret santa exchange with an 11th grade homeroom, and got to celebrate with them at a party in school.  There were many games made up on the spot to play, which included a push-up competition, a who can eat 6 buuz faster competition, and a girl and boy clothing swap drag competition.

My school also had a new years party for teachers and workers, that I reluctantly attended.  From what I remember, it was great fun and dancing...with some weird competitions that took place.  I was supposed to participate in one competition that involved putting a ping pong ball up the cuff of a mans pants, and then racing other competitors to see who could get it out the waist of the man's pants first.  But thanks to some quick thinking and quick feet...I told FC I needed the instructions translated before pushing her into the spotlight and running away.  Probably my best decision of the evening.

What were not my best decisions of that evening?  Let me tell you...
1. vodka
2. performing in a skit as a chicken and singing a Mongolian song.
3.  Peeing in an alley while being harrassed by a puppy

4. Opening a car door while the car was in transit

5. pretty much anything that happened after 11pm- details are limited.

glitz galore

I didn't want to eat my cake, so I fed it to my table friends.

This picture was taken after 11, so I can't explain the tie.

The best part, was that the English Supervisor actually scheduled a student's test competition for the next day after our school's New Year's Party...It started two hours after the specified time...and while I was on time... I spent a significant portion of the day napping it out on some chairs...

For actual New Year's, I hung out with Firecracker, and my sitemate Fuji. FC made a terrific spread of buuz, potato salad, sausage, milk tea, and my favorite candy...the food was seemingly endless.  In the early evening, we gathered on the town square with other government workers and teachers for a small concert and socializing.  There was an ice slide that was built for children, and I spent a good portion of my time at the square convincing other adults to go down it with me. I convinced 4, but one got to the top, and decided she was too afraid to slide down, and went back down the more terrifying ice stairs...







For some reason, sometimes when Mongolians see me, they always want to take their picture with me.  I usually oblige, surely making it into countless photo albums across the country.  On this night, you could have assumed that I was wearing a giant animal costume or something, because there were many people wanting me to be in their awkward family photos...so much that my teachers around me started yelling out prices.  1 picture for 500 tugriks (or about 20 cents)!

It was, literally, a freezing evening, and mongolian tradition dictates that one must remove your glove or mitten to shake hands to wish someone a happy new year. So after about and hour and a half of just wearing one mitten, we had to leave the square because my hand was in such pain from the cold.  Also it is Mongolian tradition that one has to be in their own home at midnight, and not anywhere else...so it was time to go anyway.  We went back to FC's ger for the countdown.

We spent our remaining time of the 2014 writing up our goals for the new year, and the bad personal traits that we didn't want to carry over into the New Year.  At the stroke of midnight, we quickly lit a match and burned what we wrote, right on top of the table.  For some reason, I wasn't expecting there to be so much smoke.

My resolution?
Have more moments like the ice slide...put your hands up and experience the thrill of it all.

a mongolian firecracker

I have a good friend here in Mongolia, who I like to call Firecracker because of her bright and quick personality.  She is also an English teacher at my school.  We hang out often and she is always willing to answer all my silly questions and more than occasionally make me milk tea.

Mongolian Traditions

Now, there are a lot of traditions in Mongolia that a foreigner might not necessarily know...and Firecracker is well aware of this and likes to alert me to the fact that something is Mongolian tradition so I don't embarrass myself in public.  It's very helpful.

However, it wasn't until a trip in the countryside (a few months after I met FC) that I finally realized that she was making up some of these 'Mongolian traditions' just to get me to do some things... 'It's Mongolian tradition for the foreigner to sing a song' or 'it's Mongolian tradition for the foreigner to get me more tea' are traditions that no longer fool me.

Now, with saying this, she has never steered me wrong when something is actually Mongolian tradition... but once, she told me a little after the fact...

When I was visiting her family in the countryside, her mother offered me a shot of Mongolian vodka that they had made, to which of course, as Mongolian tradition dictates, I accepted with my right arm, with my elbow supported by my left hand, and my sleeves rolled down.  I took the traditional sip, and handed it back the same way I accepted the glass.  However, I was standing up while doing so...

The next day, when there was a man visiting the ger, another vodka shot was offered to me.  I was busy making some dried cheese curd, so with my sleeves rolled down, and with my right arm supported by my left, I accepted the shot, while standing.  FC quickly alerted me that it's Mongolian tradition to sit down when accepting shots of vodka.  So, of course, I sat down, enjoyed my shot sized beverage with the visitor, and made small talk of my silly little mistake.

In the end, I apologized to FC's mother for how I accepted the previous day's beverage, with FC chuckling in the background...I might never live it down.

Ger Life

When I first moved into my ger, I of course had many questions.  FC also lives in a ger, so she was my go to person for ger related inquires.  One of my first questions to her was how often she cleans her stove pipe.  I knew from my training that I had to scrape out the coal remains from the inside of the pipe, but I just didn't know how often I should. She proclaimed that she never cleans her stove pipe, and we left it at that for a 7 months.

7 months later, VERY unprompted one day, FC starts laughing in her ger...(per Mongolian tradition) I asked her why she was laughing, and she apologized to me.  She said that when I asked her that question 7 months ago, she thought I meant how often she washed the outside of the stove pipe, which she has never done, but that she cleans the inside of her pipe once a week.

Dictionary Use

Firecracker's English is very good, but sometimes of course words come up that she doesn't know and that I catch her secretly looking up on her phone dictionary...

Like the one time, while playing scrabble, I made the word fart...she accepted the validity of the word, but then looked it up on her phone, and I just thought she was texting.  A minute later she busts out laughing, and when I asked why, she showed me her phone with the translation pulled up...

or the time we were watching a movie, with a crabs reference...but not the crabs that you eat.  after looking it up she still didn't understand, to which I had to explain what crabs were...

Another time, when FC was busy, and told me she couldn't hang out, I then saw her on facebook chat...I sent a quick silly message, just saying 'lame.'  A few minutes later I went to find her in her room at school...with her phone sitting next to her, with the dictionary translation of 'lame' displayed on the screen.