Naadam!

This past week was a major Mongolian holiday called Naadam.  It is their Independence celebration, and is basically a big festival honoring three Mongolian traditional sports: long distance horse racing, archery, and Mongolian wrestling.  Each town and province has their own 2-day celebration, culminating in the national celebration near the capital.

My Naadam was really great, and I had a lot of fun!  It would take ages to write about everything that happened, so I will try to give a good overview.

The first morning of Naadam, I woke up excited for a full day of Naadam festivities (and class in the afternoon which was pretty unfortunate).  I put on my Mongolian Deel (pronounced like "dell" in Wisconsin Dells) and my sister and brother and I took a taxi to our town's Naadam Stadium. 

Me in my deel in front of the stadium.  My deel is a more traditional deel, some of my friends have the shorter version of the deel dress, which you can see in later pictures.  

We walked around for a bit, going past the stadium to where there were Mongol tents (gers) set up.  We walked past 40 or 50 gers and stopped at my mom's family's ger. My mom and her two sisters were making and selling hoosher from their ger.  

My mom bringing out hoosher for some customers.  Hoosher is basically like a homemade hot pocket:  flour wrapped meat that is fried.  They are very delicious, and I ate pretty much only hoosher for two days straight during Naadam.

My sister selling hoosher! 

After staying at my family's ger for a while, my sister and I went to the stadium to watch the Naadam opening ceremonies.

A super cute kid in a wrestling costume (they look exactly like this, except on really big, fat Mongolian men) was sitting right in front of me!

Wrestlers and former wrestling champions walked around the stadium in men's traditional Deels.

These children are all carrying horse head fiddles, one of the unique Mongolian instruments.  It sounds really neat, and can make sounds like horses galloping and neighing.  These children all played together for a few songs in the opening ceremonies.

After the opening ceremonies, we walked around again for a bit.

I ran into one of my Mongolian language teachers!  Her name is Aagii, and she is super funny and a great teacher. 

After a full morning of Naadam festivities, the health group met up to go to our afternoon lesson.  We are grumbled about having to leave, but it gave us a reason to get a photo looking all snazzy together!

The health group from left to right: Cedell, Me, Ryan, Brittany, Jerome, Kelbe, Laura, and Sarah!

Class wasn't too bad, and I went to Naadam for a bit afterwards.  After a while, my sister and I went home, where my cousin (who is about the same age as my sister) was babysitting her three young siblings.  We had fun hanging out for a while, and my sister and I washed our hair.  At some point a drunk man I didn't know came over and was talking to my cousin.  Then he went outside and was lifting a weight bar that was in my yard for some reason.  My sister and cousin were telling him to stop because it looked like he might hurt himself, and so I think he got mad at them and started yelling to them in Mongolian.  I went to my room to stay out of it, but a few minutes later I heard him pick up the weight bar and use it to smash out two of the windows in my room, which were right in front of where the weight bar was laying.  

The aftermath.

This brings up a serious issue in Mongolia: alcoholism.  There are many belligerent drunk men at any time of the day, and from what I have seen this is even worse during holidays.  It is an issue that Mongolians are aware of and trying to deal with, but it is really unfortunate to see so many men here who do nothing much besides drink all the time.  

Having our windows smashed was of course traumatic for me and my family, and it definitely put a damper on the fun we had had at Naadam.  However, we cleaned up the broken glass, patched up the windows for the night, and the next morning we all headed back to the Naadam stadium. 

My second day of hoosher eating, plus today I had some carrot salad! Yay for vegetables!

This is the stove in the ger that my mother was cooking hoosher on.  It gets really hot, since it is right over the fire that keeps the whole ger warm in the winter!

The second morning, I got to 'ride' a horse.  Basically I sat on one of my family friend's horses and he led me around for a while, and everyone stared at the silly American on the horse.  It was still lots of fun though!

Then, I went to watch the end of a horse race.  Mongolian horse racing is long distance, so the races last for maybe an hour or so, and everyone gets ready at the finish line.  It is thought that the sweat from the winning horse will bring luck, so after the first horses arrived everyone rushed to the corral set up for the winners and tried to grab a sweaty cloth to wipe on their face.  Fortunately for me, my family that was with me wasn't into that, so I remained horse-sweat free!  The end of the race was really cool though, and there were lots of little kids who were competing.  Many boys spent all of their time at Naadam on horses, since almost everything was accessible from horseback.

I was back at our ger for a while.  My mom was really proud because I took a nap in the ger, she tells everyone that I slept in a ger now!

I went to the stadium to watch some wrestling.  It is really intense, but harder to see from farther away.  I think I like watching it on TV better, where you can see what is happening more up close.  

Hoosher being prepared.  It is so tasty!

My uncle or family friend (I'm not sure how he is related to me!) brought over some fruit called Cow's Eyes, and I ate a whole bunch of them.  They kind of taste like blueberries, and the trees they grow on are native to Mongolia.

My family dressed me up and had me shout in Mongolian, "come get hoosher!"  On accident, I kept saying, "Save the hoosher!" because the verbs sound really similar, and my family laughed at me a whole bunch.

My uncle/family friend/my new best friend.  He insisted we take this picture together.  He is super funny though, and put up with my broken Mongolian well.

The next day was Friday, the second day of national Naadam, which is a national holiday so everyone was off work and hanging out with their families.  My mom's sister's family before they headed back to Ulaanbaatar, where they live.  It was really great to meet them, and it was the first time in a while that I have lived with little kids.  That made me really grateful that my brother and sister are older!!

Shortly after this last photo was taken, I got violently sick. I was puking all over the place, and other unpleasant things I would rather not report in detail.  I was really sick until about 24 hours later, and didn't eat much for the whole weekend.  My family is now convinced that I lost all my fat (which makes no sense to me, I have shown them my pudgy parts but they are still not convinced), and so they have been feeding me extra to help me gain back my lost fat.  I appreciated the candy for breakfast, but I have to turn down large portions even more than before.  They are just watching out for me though, and its nice to know that if something happens they will be there for me!  In another post, I will tell you all about some of the Mongolian home medicine techniques I learned while I was sick!

For now, Баяртай! Дараа ульций! Goodbye!  See you later!

Tradition Edition: Mongol Travel

Besides recounting some of my activities in Mongolia, I want to have regular blog updates about different Mongolian traditions, superstitions, and cultural norms.  I am going to start with the travel traditions that I have experienced so far.

Let me backtrack a bit and share a little more about travel in Mongolia.  I have mainly spent my time in Selenge Aimag, or Selenge Province, which is where Darkhan and Sukhbaatar are located.  Darkhan is the second largest city in Mongolia, and Sukhbaatar is the provincial headquarters of Selenge Aimag, so the roads going to both were paved and pretty nice.  Darkhan is about a 4 hour drive from the capital, UB, and Sukhbaatar is about 6 hours away (so, about 2 hours from Darkhan). 

When we came to Sukhbaatar for the first time, we traveled in large Russian-style minivans, called meekers, from Darkhan to Sukhbaatar.  They can comfortably fit ten passengers, but are often filled beyond this capacity.  I have learned since this trip that there is a superstition in Mongolia where you need to stop at every shrine along the road, or otherwise you will have bad luck.  I was confused when we kept stopping along the way, but now I understand that the drivers were showing us the Mongolian cultural way to travel.  Some of the shrines were small Ovoo’s (this word translates as grandfather, but is also the word for the Buddhist shrines throughout the country.  I have lost count of how many I have seen, they are really common); other shrines were large structures.  When you are at a shrine, you are supposed to walk clockwise three times around the shrine.  If it is a rock mound shrine, you should throw 3 rocks onto the shrine as you are walking around. 

Visiting a shrine on the side of the road.

Walking three times around the shrine, plus some Buddhist prayer wheels.

An Ovoo close to the large shrine: the blue cloth wrapped around the shrine are pieces of cloth called a halbock, which is a Buddhist cloth used to honor shrines, give gifts, or place on a religious shrine in a ger.

There are also signs along the road marking the entrance into certain cities; this sign is for Darkhan, where we left to go to Sukhbaatar.

A larger picture of the shrine, Ovoo, and a nearby tree that is also adorned with more Halbocks.

A mixed herd of sheep and goats, these herds are very common around this area of Mongolia.

Driving through the Mongol countryside is extremely beautiful.  In this region of Mongolia, there are rolling hills, mountains, prairies, and the occasional river.  It is common to see herds of sheep, goats, cows, and horses grazing near the road, and you can often see one or two gers, or Mongol tents, in the distance, where the herders live during the summer. 

This past weekend, my mom told me to get ready; we were going to go somewhere.  This often happens, and I usually don’t have a clue where we are headed.  It makes every day exciting, because I never know what adventures I might get to have!  This particular day, we got into my mom’s friend’s big Land Cruiser, which I am convinced has no shocks.  We ended up going up to the Russian border (its about a 20-30 minute drive from Sukhbaatar), then continued east for a while to visit the summer camp that my brother has been at for a week.  It was my first experience driving through the countryside on unpaved “roads.”  The path was basically where multiple cars driving over have worn the grass away. In some parts the path would split into three or four different ways, depending on the quality of the available path. 

My mom's friend's Land Cruiser, the height of Mongolian car fashion!

The dirt road to my brother's summer camp, it was a pretty wild ride!

When in doubt, you can always saddle a horse and head to work that way!  This isn't too common but I see it pretty often. 

My Mongol House and Host Family Excursions

Here is a picture representation to catch up my life from the tales in my last post until this week in Darkhan!  I miss my host family, and I am excited to go back tomorrow after my mid-training language assessment.  Happy Fourth of July to all of my American friends and readers!

The 'garbage dumpster' by my house, and some of the dogs that hang out around it.  The dogs that I have met in Mongolia are almost always afraid of people, and will not approach you, but rather stay away.  The Peace Corps Mongolia Medical Office gave the trainees a round of preventative rabies vaccine, since most likely some of us will be bit by dogs at some point during our service.  I can't wait to get my own puppy at the end of the summer when I go to my final site!

My brother, in the middle of this picture, loves to jump rope and play volleyball.  Almost every day, he asks me if I want to go visit Lorre and play with her and her two little host sisters.  I have gotten better at jump rope since I have been in Mongolia, but I am still at a pretty mediocre level!

Lorre, on the other hand, is a great jump-roper.  Way to go Lorre!  Also, the man on the right of this picture randomly stopped by with Lorre's neighbor (on the left).  He spoke a little English and a little Russian, and with my little Mongolian I found out that he is a large animal veterinarian.  He told me that Sukhbaatar has around 6 or 7 vets for the entire area, and that the only place where there are any small animal vets are in the capital.  

I snapped this picture of my brother taking a nap--this wasn't difficult, since I am convinced he spends about 15 hours a day sleeping.  I am pretty jealous!  This usually means that when I get home after a full day of language and technical training, he is pumped and ready to play games, walk around town, or just talk a whole bunch.  He is a lot of fun, and keeps me busy!

This is a great picture describing my sister's personality.  Bilgunyam loves talking on the phone with her friends, straightening her hair and fixing up other people's hair, and she loves being a jokester and sticks her tongue out at me all the time!  She quizzes me all the time on mongolian vocabulary, which has really helped me to learn new words.  She is spending this week in Erdenet, the third largest city in Mongolia.  I hope she is having fun and has a safe trip back to Sukhbaatar this weekend.

This is a shot of my room from the doorway, although since I took this picture, my family got a whole bunch of furniture that fills up most of the wall space.  It is a big room, and it is nice when the sunlight comes in the windows and lights up the space.

The kitchen/den-type area of the house.  My mom is making milk tea, a very popular Mongolian drink. It is a savory tea with milk, special tea from Huvsgol aimag in the northwest region of Mongolia, salt, and possibly other things I don't know about.  It is customary to make milk tea when people come to visit your home.  My family mostly uses two large electric pots and a rice cooker (not pictured) to make all of our food, and it works surprisingly well for everything we have made!  

One of my favorite Mongolian foods besides Suutai Bodaa (this sweet rice and milk soup that is kind of like an Asian version of oatmeal) is this fried bread call Gamber.  My mother makes it every few days, so we almost always have some to eat with our meals and for snacks.  My mom makes some with onions and some without because my brother hates onions.  I love the onion gamber though, it is sort of like a savory elephant ear.  I have seen my mother make gamber several times, and I hope to photo document it and try myself so I can make it after this summer!

This is my house from the outside.  It is a one story wooden frame house, very common in Mongolia.  The main part of the house, where everyone sleeps, is very well insulated and it does a good job of staying cool even when it gets hot outside.  I am sure this house is warm in the winter as well.  Our outhouse is around the corner behind the house.  It is a squat outhouse, so there are no seat but rather a hole in the floor.  Once you get used to it, it is not bad at all!  I accidentally dropped my sandal down the hole a few weeks ago, and that was sad, but I practiced my Mongolian language skills by buying a new pair at the market!

My brother took a picture of me in front of the house, it shows my fashion choices to de-emphasize how much I really need to wash my hair!  We have no running water in our house, and use tubs like the yellow one by my leg to carry water from a nearby water supply building, which we do about twice a week.  Each time, we probably fetch about 80 or 90 gallons by my rough estimation.  

My family invites Lorre over a lot, and then they give her lots of food.  I like this, because then I usually get slightly smaller portions, which is good because my family always gives me lots and lots of food.  She is eating my favorite Mongolian food, Suutai bodaa, or a sweet milk-rice soup.  My family knows I like it, and we eat it often.  Yumm!

A view of some of the neighborhood near my house.  Lots of wooden houses with dirt roads.  Might not look like much, but it has grown on me.  

My sister, brother, Lorre, and I went for a walk one evening.  We do this often, and my sister always links arms or holds hands with us.  It is very common for young women in Mongolia to hold hands while walking, and young men will also throw their arms over each others' shoulders while walking as well.  Mongolians have a very communal culture, and it shows in how close they are comfortable being with each other.  

My brother and sister decided to walk Lorre and I to a big shrine on the other side of Sukhbaatar.  There is a large statue of Borte, Chinggis Khaan's first and main wife, who was an important advisor during his rise to power.  

There were lots and lots of people that came to the shrine at night, and it was very pretty with all of the lamps lighting the way.

Lorre and I with our tourist picture with Borte!

Borte again, looking very stoic.  After my family got a bunch of new furniture and put a lot of it in my room, they started joking that I was getting married.  I asked who my husband was, and after a lot of laughs we decided I am married to Chinggis Khaan.  So, I guess it is just a matter of time before Borte is my new nickname! (just kidding, please don't start calling me Borte.)

A view of Sukhbaatar at night!  Not the greatest picture, but it sort of gives an idea of the size of town Sukhbaatar is.

About a week later, Lorre and I went on another adventure.  My mom and my aunt (at least I think that is how she is related to me, I am really not sure about some of my extended relatives) told us to get ready, that we were going to go to the market.  Then we got a taxi, walked around a few houses, and eventually found my mom's friend who has a big SUV.  We got in, and then Lorre and I realized that we weren't going to the market, but we had no idea where we were headed.  After basically driving straight up a small mountain, we arrived at this beautiful place.  It kind of reminded me a little of Pittsburgh, since it is where two of the rivers in my aimag (or province) join to form another river that flows into Russia, and I am assuming pours into Lake Baikal, a large lake in Siberia that holds about 1/7 of the world's fresh water.  

My mom brought binoculars, and when she lent them to me, I could see houses and gers, or Mongolian tents, that were probably several miles away.  I don't think pictures can really do justice for how beautiful the landscape is here, and how far visibility can be on a clear day (which is basically 6 days out of the week)!

A view of the river valley.  

My mom and I enjoying the scenery!  This was another day where I was in need of a good hair washing, which happened that evening.  Every opportunity to wash is sacred to all of the Peace Corps trainees, and we talked about how excited we were to come to Darkhan to have showers for at least two weeks.  Now that we are here, we have running water....but not hot water.  Still, washing every day and not needing to prioritize body parts or hair washing is still amazing, even in freezing cold water!

My mom and I had walked down the slope a ways.  My aunt and my mom's friend stayed near the top, where there was a 'grandfather' shrine, called an Ohvoh.  They are all over the land, and you are supposed to respectfully walk clockwise three times around the shrine, tossing three stones onto the shrine whenever you come near one.   

Such a beautiful landscape!  

A very Mongol picture with my very Mongol family.  Mongolians (for some reason, I don't know yet), try to remain stoic and not smile for any pictures.  My aunt, a very bubble and kind person, can't quite stay serious, which is one think I love about her.  She often comes to our house and eats with us, takes naps, and sits and talks with my mom.  They both love to have fun and laugh, and she is very inquisitive about me and my american habits.  She doesn't speak any English, so hopefully I will be able to communicate more with her over the next few months as my language skills improve!

After a great afternoon with amazing sights, we headed back to Sukhbaatar.  This happened on Sunday, so I am basically caught up to my current activities.  This week, I have been at Mid-Center Days, which is basically a workshop that Peace Corps Mongolia holds for trainees about halfway through our pre-service training.  We have had many sessions on different topics to prepare us for our service, and we have assessments tomorrow to give us a chance to better understand our language level to prepare for our final language exam at the end of training, and reflect about our technical training and preparedness for volunteer service with the service coordinators.  I am nervous, but also excited to learn more about how I am doing after about a month of intensive language, cultural, and health volunteer training!

Сайхан Амраарай, or Goodnight!

Sukhbaatar Adventures

7/1/13

It is currently almost midnight in Darkhan, Mongolia, and I have some time to work on a blog post after our first full day of Mid-Center Days, which is a Peace Corps training workshop halfway through Pre-Service Training (PST).  I spent most of my evening after our sessions were over looking for nice black shoes or flats in my size (US women’s 10, or Mongolian 42), and was unsuccessful so far.  I underestimated how many shoes I would need during PST, and I don’t want to wear out my one pair of nice tan boots so quickly by wearing them every single day.  Mongolians all have small feet, and several of the shop ladies told me that Mongolians don’t wear my size, looking at my feet like they were deformed.  Hopefully I will have some more luck tomorrow, when I plan on going to the State Department Store, which is a more expensive place but seems to have more variety. 

It is pretty crazy to think that I have already been in Mongolia for an entire month.  One current volunteer summarized how time passes in Mongolia:  the days are long and the weeks are fast.  Training is going well so far, and my host family is great.  My host mom called me this afternoon to check up on me—she is feeling pretty sad today, since my host brother left for a few weeks in the countryside yesterday, and my host sister left tonight to go to summer camp near Erdenet, the third largest city in Mongolia. 

It has been a while since my last post, and I want to talk about some things that happened a few weeks ago.  On our second weekend in Sukhbaatar, a group of the Health and TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) volunteers went for a hike up the mountain range just north of the town.  The mountains of Mongolia are very old mountains, leveled by time and the elements, and so they are not high peaks that are difficult to climb.  It was a great time, and although I was really tired by the end, but the views were completely worth it.

Cute puppies like this are all over Sukhbaatar.  I just want to grab them all up and take them with me!!

Cute puppies are not the only animals around town.  I always walk by pigs or cows on my way back and forth from school as well.  They eat all of the grass around town, so no one has to mow.

There are beautiful sculptures and shrines all over the area, and it is fun to go to new areas, because you never know what unexpected surprise awaits.  

Up the first mountain with a great view of Sukhbaatar Soum, or Sukhbaatar town.

Farther north, the mountains get a bit more rockier.  The mountains themselves were beautiful, and the Mongolian sky is always so perfectly blue.

A panaramic view from the top of the highest mountain I climbed (not the highest one around, but I got tired).

Sukhbaatar was pretty far away at this point!

At some point after the mountain adventure, Sukhbaatar had a few rainy afternoons that led to some amazing rainbows and beautiful sunsets.  My family and I often walk around in the evenings, either going to the store or visiting friends.  My mother doesn’t have a car or a license, and says walking is good for your health.  It is really great to see more of Sukhbaatar, and see family friends around as well. 

After a rainy afternoon, a huge rainbow appeared in my back yard!

The rainbow was so intense, you could see all of the colors, as well as multiple rainbows close together.  I have never seen such a bright and long-lasting rainbow before.

After seeing the rainbow, we took a walk around town with another volunteer (Lorre) and her family.

On our walk, I took a shot of this sign in front of a school in Sukhbaatar: it shows the current Cyrillic alphabet used in Mongolia, and the previous writing form, the Mongolian script on the left.  I think the script is beautiful, and it is still used in many different situations.  Mongolian children learn how to read and write the script in school, but for most people it is much more difficult to use than the standard Cyrillic.

On the walk home, the sky was full of pretty blues and pinks.  I am convinced that the Mongolian sky is always beautiful!

I will try to sneak online again during my next few days in Darkhan if I can use internet during off-times.  When all of the Peace Corps Trainees are trying to access the internet at once, no one can get anything done.  I will try to get up to my current times before the exciting events of the next few weeks: American Independence Day on July 4; and Naadam, Mongolian Independence Celebration on July 11-12!