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.

Change

There are some things that I quite enjoy about Mongolia. Practices involving money are some of them.  There are no tills at shops per say...it is always just a wad of money in a pocket that is worked with.

The veggie lady

In BX there is a lady who I always go to, to buy vegetables and other food items.  We are pals, and she is easily one of my favorite people in Mongolia.  She never fails to tell me when she will get new vegetables in, or make chit chat when I come in.

One day I went in to buy a bunch of carrots, but I only had a larger bill that I could pay with.  She inevitably did not have the 200 tugriks in change that she owed me.  I told her that it was really no big deal, but she would not have it.  She then asked to borrow the 200 tugs from another woman who was visiting her, but her friend only had 100.  Again, I insisted that it was no big deal, and as I was walking out she handed me the biggest carrot in the bin insisting that I leave with my change (and then some) in produce.

Gum

Something that I always extremely enjoy, is that in stores, you can literally go in, and just buy one stick of gum, or like 5 m&ms... you simply say how much you want, and they open the package, and give you just that.  It's great.

Now, in stores, it is extremely common that when they don't have change, that instead they give you a piece of gum or candy or something. One evening some friends and I were dining at a restaurant, and when we went to pay our tab, the restaurant didn't have enough change to give us.  The server, without a second thought, dug through her purse until she found a pack of gum, and gave a piece to the person paying in exchange for the change missing.  but then she saw all the rest of us, who were now without gum, and due to Mongolian's view on candy sharing, she offered gum to all of us in politeness.  

A mixing of summer and fall photos

shish kabobs roasted over a dung fire

fermented horse milk stirring

making vodka!

working in the gobi

where the cows at?

thats a skeleton

my paper bird

tiny gate door

a gobi frog

Preparing for the New Years Party

So I was told that this year, the social science teachers (which includes all the english teachers) are in charge of preparing the performances for the evening...So all the english teacheres are doing a dance/ song including 'snow girls' and the 12 zodiac animals.  Yes, all the english teachers also means I am included...and I was cast for the tenth zodiac animal...the chicken.

So when my teachers alert me of my role, they so proudly exclaimed to me, "You're a cock!"

Kid tales

Kissing and telling

The 5th graders are currently learning a few body parts in class, and to help them practice we played a fun game...The game includes the teacher saying two body parts, and then 2 students combining those two things together...such as 'head, shoulder' would include me putting my head on someones shoulder.

So as we were playing this game, my counterpart yelled out 'mouth, mouth' and the students were absolutely mortified, and did not want to kiss each other...perfectly understandable.  I told my teacher she was being so mean.

The next week, I was playing the same game with the same students by with a different teacher.  When this teacher announced the game we were going to play, all the students yelled, "nooo, we dont want to play that game because the other teacher made us do 'mouth, mouth.'.  They said this as others pretended to spit and wipe their mouths.  I guess cooties are also prevalent throughout Mongolia.

Multiplication

One of the newest Peace Corps Volunteers in Bayankhongor, Raaj, was in the aimag center visiting one day, and she came to my school to help out.  She looks similar to me in that she also has blonde hair.

As we were exiting the school, there were two small second graders walking together.   While looking at us, the one kid very quietly said to his friend, 'There's two of them now!'

How to make pepper jack cheese

I am just approximating here, but about a third of the Mongolian diet is meat, another third is flour, with the last third being dairy products.  During my 20 months here, it has crossed my mind a time or two that with all the dairy, how is it possible for the mongolians to not produce amazing cheeses.  They have invented so many other dairy products, but when it comes to cheese...NOPE.

So here is a 'how to' on how to make pepper jack cheese in Mongolia.

Step 1.  Buy a packet of processed cheese slices, probably imported from China.

Step 2.  Open a cheese slice.

Step 3. Put pepper on to said cheese slice.

Step 4. Put it in your mouth.

Step 5. Debate whether the moment of euphoria you are experiencing is ultimately one of winning, or losing...