Tsagaan Sar Part II

In the years I lived in Mongolia, I only experienced Tsagaan Sar a couple of times since it often coincided with an annual conference I had to attend in Thailand. Thus, I'm not an authority on the holiday, merely an observer.

Tsagaan Sar is technically a three day holiday plus a "Tsagaan Sar" eve of sorts. From what I have heard the length of actual celebration is directly proportional to how urban/rural your location is. Thus, in UB your holiday might only last a couple days, in the deep countryside you might receive visitors for a week or a month. The official date for Tsagaan Sar is often chosen by the lamas based upon the lunar calendar. Some years they agree, and some years they don't and the President tries to resolve the issue. At any rate, it is hard to be certain of the correct dates until as little as a month beforehand.

Tsagaan Sar is the start of a new year and a special importance is placed on new things. One of my students once told me that it is common for families to try and purchase something new for their home. Also, if time and finances permit, new dels (traditional Mongolian clothing) will be sewn and worn for the celebration of Tsagaan Sar.



The grandpa in this picture is wearing an everyday sort of del. Some fancier ones are made of silk, or sometimes leather.

It seems that a large percentage of Mongolian women dislike this holiday because of the insane amount of preparation it requires. Because this holiday revolves around visiting and greeting friends and family, and because lots and lots of buuz (and salad) will be served, each family must be prepared.



Some families must make as many as 3000 buuz (which they prepare ahead of time and keep frozen on their balcony if the weather stays cold enough). The norm is probably between 500-1000 buuz per family. Also, when visitors come to your home, you give them small gifts: shampoo, socks, money, etc; this also requires advanced preparation. At each and every house you visit, you are expected to eat.



In addition to buuz and various salads, some families have a sheep back (boiled?) on the table for you to nibble on.



Also on the table is usually a carefully stacked pile of special "bread" as well as sugar cubes and candy. I have been told that the sweets place on it should be white. As evidenced by the two thermoses on the table, there is always plenty of milk tea to drink.

Амар байна уу?

Тодаи ис а биг Монголиан холидаи.

I thought about writing the whole (short) post phonetically in English using the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet, but I'll spare you. Although, on a side note, I think doing that would be great fun since usually I have to write Mongolian using English letters...

Anyway, Mongolians are currently celebrating their lunar new year called "Tsagaan Sar" which means White Moon/Month. It's a holiday that involves greeting others, particularly your elders, eating lots and lots of steamed meat dumplings, and asking if people are well and if their animals are fattening nicely. If you want to read more about it you can check out the wikipedia article Tsagaan Sar or my previous post on the topic... Er, maybe not. It seems I've never brought myself to blog about the wonderful and painful Tsagaan Sar holiday before. Hmm. I have thoughts to share on the topic, but no time at present. For now I'll simply tell you that the Wikipedia article is mostly correct. Maybe 92% right.

Other pictures to come later... when I find them... They seem to have not been put back on my computer after the Catastrophe of Christmas 2006. I'm a little behind here.

Halloween

Well, I didn't dress up this year--there is something about working a regular office job in the States that didn't inspire me to want to wear a costume all day. But I realized that I'd never posted pictures from one of the best Halloweens ever: two years ago when we had to dress up for our culture-teaching party at the college. K and I decided to be something along the lines of Russian Hip-hop Choreographers. The costumes were inspired by a chance viewing of the Russian version of "So You Think You Can Dance" and were great fun to pull together. Plus, after all the years of being called Russian, it was entertaining to try and intentionally look like an "Oros khun".

Three things learned at Thanksgiving:

1. There are cows with windows (or portholes, if you prefer) in their sides. Really. The rumor is that they are for veterinary students—not only can they see the insides of the cow, but they can also reach in a touch them. Just imagine if they did the same thing for medical students!



2. “Women are the downfall of men,” stated one of our adolescent friends who was out for the weekend. By way of further clarifying the issue, he added, “Seriously!” So young, and already he’s got it all figured out.

3. Is it tryptophan or tryptopan? When you gather people for Thanksgiving that come from different families, backgrounds, and parts of the country, you are bound to have this discussion. We formed a truce by renaming it: Tryptofizzle (or tryptophizzle, if you prefer). It’s kind of catchy, and it describes exactly what you do after eating turkey—fizzle out and take a nap. (For those of you who really want to know—it’s tryptophan)

Happy Thanksgiving

I decided that Thanksgiving was the perfect time to start posting again, and since Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday (those of you needing a little practice with “th” pronunciation and those of you who can never remember when Thanksgiving really is, repeat after me: Thanksgiving is always on the fourth Thursday of the eleventh month.) I thought a Thursday Thirteen would also be appropriate. So here you go—Thirteen things that I’m thankful for here in Mongolia…
1. Snow on Monday and Wednesday this week, but not Tuesday. If it had snowed Tuesday I wouldn’t have been able to fly home from the aimag where I’d been teaching a seminar. This way I get the beauty of the snow without the messed up travel plans.
2. I’m thankful that I just had the opportunity to visit my friends and students in the town I used to live in.
3. My apartment, in spite of the over abundance of carpets (more than seven in the living room alone—on the walls, on the furniture, on the floor…) and despite the fact that the only thing coming out of the taps this time of year is liquid ice…which brings me to point number three.
4. I’m thankful for boil-coils and for hot water in the radiators. For those of you residing in countries and cities with hot tap water, I’d better acquaint you with boil-coils. They look like this and are basically an exposed heating coil. Not only do they heat your bath water to an acceptable temperature, but they also can give you an adrenaline rush as you flirt with electrocution (should you forget to unplug it before testing the water temperature).
5. The jar of peanut butter in my fridge and the Girl Scout cookies on my table. Yum! Plus, one can justify eating lots of foods like this in the winter in the name of “keeping warm”!
6. Layers of clothing and my cozy down coat… Even though the layers and coat make me feel decidedly unglamorous, they do keep me comfortably warm.
7. As much as I dislike the cold and the winter, I’m thankful for it because it makes things like spotting the first green blade of grass in May so very exciting.
8. I know I’ve talked about scotch tape before, but I just want to say again how much I use it! It works as an art supply, it works for fixing things, it works for putting up stuff in the classroom, it works for taping things to students foreheads, it works for picking up cat fur off the carpet… Yes, I am thankful for the abundance and cheapness of scotch in this country.
9. Students who are eager to learn are another thing I’m thankful for. I’ve had classes with people who didn’t really want to be there, and so I know how special it is that my students this year want to learn and are eager to participate.
10. Teammates and co-workers who have welcomed me and accepted me here in my new town. Not only that, but they like to have fun and can be silly. Case in point: the “occasion elephants”.
These lovely candle holders were given to two of my coworkers as gifts last year…and now we make sure that they show up at all of our special team occasions. Isn’t tradition great?
11. A playmate for Tom my cat: For five years, Tom was only ever in contact with people, and as a result developed a rather skewed view of himself. Here in our new place, he has two cats in close proximity that he can hang out with. He pretends that he hates playing with others, but then I see him get a gleam in his eye as he eggs his fellow felines on.
12. Good nights of sleep—with my down comforter. Self-explanatory.
13. Fun Thanksgiving celebrations with students, that of course includes the Thanksgiving tradition of gift giving. Our festivities were complete with the reading of Thanksgiving essays, a play, and lots and lots of yummy food.
13.5 Mongolian potato salad. Yum! (available in abundant quantities at the festivities mentioned in point 13.)

Traveling...

Some of you are awaiting eagerly the story of my rather insane exit from the countryside and, unfortunately, you'll just have to wait a little longer. Tonight I head to the States for a summer of family, Disneyland, and Danielle's wedding. Yesterday was my birthday (Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday Mongol Mama, happy birthday to me) and my family called (of course while I was out and about in UB which gave the general public some entertainment, I guess) and my friend Heather cooked me some yummy Mexican food, so all in all, it was a good birthday. The past week, I've been running around UB trying to get stuff done so I haven't had time to sit down and write the whole crazy exit story--I promise I'll post it at some point!

Sain suuj baigaarai!

Thankful for food...

There are some areas in which I’ve become a stickler for tradition—one of them is Thanksgiving food. Thanksgiving, in my mind, is embodied by family and food; I can’t have the family since the Pacific Ocean and a lot of land separate us, so I better have the food! Since Thanksgiving is this week I thought I'd tell you about our menu--which we'll be enjoying Saturday since Thursday is a normal work day in this part of the world...

Chicken Legs: It would be near impossible to find a turkey here so we settle for the nearly equally rare chicken legs. This is my first year to have to cook them; I’m a bit nervous!

Cranberry Sauce: Sent across the Pacific by special request, it helps complete the holiday.

Fruit Salad: When I was a kid we always had a fruit salad that included coconut and baby marshmallows; over the past few years here I’ve stumbled upon a canned fruit mix that, when mixed with yogurt, marshmallows, and coconut (the latter two being from the States) makes quite a good substitute for the salad of my childhood.

Green Bean Casserole: For some bizarre reason, the past few years we’ve been able to buy canned green beans in one of the stores here in town. Cream of mushroom “whatever you happen to have on hand” soup is really easy to make from scratch, and my parents have been so kind as to send the necessary fried onions for the top. Yum! This year, although we’ve already got the onions, we haven’t yet been able to find green beans. There is one other place in town I can check—otherwise we’ll have to fill the casserole with something else!

Green Salad: This one is a bit less normal—the only green leafy thing here is cabbage, so sometimes we settle for a tray of veggies (cucumber, bell peppers—if they are being sold at the market, carrots)

Jello Salad: A nod to the mid-westerners in our crew; it’s a tasty mix of jello and fruit.

Mashed potatoes: not a problem since potatoes are so abundant here.

Rolls: Of course they have to be made from scratch here, but when you live in a place like Mongolia, you learn how to do things like that…

Stuffing: It could be made from scratch but the lovely mix my parents sent tastes so good!

And for dessert we’ll have Pumpkin and Apple pies. Yum!

So you see, we manage to be fairly traditional even out in the middle of Mongolia.

P.S. You'll all be relieved, I'm sure, to hear that the trial run for cooking chicken went smoothly and was delicious! (Okay, so it really was just another excuse to eat valuable chicken...but it was still good!) AND, drum roll please, on my hundredth lap around town I finally found green beans; so we get to have our lovely casserole tomorrow after all.

Altargana

Welcome to Altargana, the Buriat version of Naadam (a Mongolian festival held every July). As for Altargana, the story goes that about 12 years ago, some Buriats from Mongolia, Russian, and China got together and, seeing a need for more interaction and celebration between the Buriats scattered across the region, it was decided that they should have a festival every two years. And, because the Nadaam festival of Mongolia is such a smashing success, and because Buriats and Mongolians are very closely related and so presumably have very similar athletic traditons, it was decided that Altargana would consist of the same three "Manly Sports" as Nadaam: Archery, wrestling, and horse-racing. It should be pointed out that women or girls may participate in two of the three "Manly Sports". These archers were marching in the opening parade of Altargana. They are wearing traditional Buriat clothing, which has some distinct differences from the traditional clothing of most other Mongolian tribes.