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".

The PET Journal

For fun I thought I'd put a copy of the Practical English Teaching (PET) Journal up on my blog. It's a journal that is put out for Mongolian English teachers. I spent much of the last two years working on the design, layout, and editing of the PET. This edition here is supposed to be published early this fall.

There are a few issues with this online edition, the most noticeable being that shadows were made quite dark. If you wish to see this full-sized, please select "open publication" beneath the picture.

Enjoy!

Get your own - Open publication

A Bit of Culture Shock...

The chances are that this year will be fraught with episodes, small and large, of reverse culture shock. It's pretty much a given when you've spent seven years living and working in a foreign, very foreign, country. It's unpredictable and wily and likely to sneak up on you in the middle of a conversation or in the aisles of your local grocery store. In fact, it's such a devious and insidious thing that you usually don't realize what is causing your confusion/watering eyes/sharp response/fill in the blank...

Case in point: Yesterday I was at the store. Exciting, eh? I wanted to find some seasonings for cooking, particularly for making Thai food. I have to tell you something shocking: it was easier to do this in MONGOLIA. That's right; here, in the USA (the "land of plenty" as people sometimes say) the only thing I found was "Thai seasoning" which, when I turned it over to read the ingredients, claimed to be made mostly of "chili peppers & other seasonings". How is one to know if it contains the Thai staples of Kaffir lime, lemon grass, or galangal? What exactly is Thai about "& other seasonings", and why do I have to pay $5 to find out? I just wanted some comfort food in the form of Tom Ka Gai (chicken and coconut soup). Anyway... it wasn't exactly rational of me to be upset at the seasonings aisle, but I was. Blame it on culture shock.

Maybe I should try to make some Mongolian tsuivan instead. Fewer seasonings involved. Now I'll cheer up and post some wedding pictures.

Reliving my past

In the past I've blogged about how living in Mongolia changed my music tastes. One of my favorite groups was a Russian duo, now split, called Smash. I was looking around on You Tube and found some of their songs. To liven up your day, I'm posting them for you.


"Belle" is the first song of theirs that I heard.


Classic Smash

Thing #7

What's not to love about these fruit and food posters you find in most kitchens?

A word from the cat:

Tom said he wanted in on the posting action--especially since I hadn't done a new post in at least a week... I was out of commission for a couple days because of my back, and then after that I was packing up and moving, and now I'm in a state of living limbo for the next month or so.

Tom says: I'm going to miss my Russian cat grass--a plant all my own that I'm supposed to eat. Right now I'm missing Sarah. Since I was unable to get along with her friend's cat, I've been sent to live with Phil for a while. It's cool to have the male bonding time and all (we watch TV shows that Sarah would never let me watch), but I worry that Sarah isn't keeping her face as clean as when I wash it for her.

Thing # 6

For graduation, the girls decided that they wanted to go to a photo studio where you dress up. It was actually fun. I am disappointed though, that I didn't get any fake hair like the other two teachers. Anyway, I'll miss crazy schemes like this...

Thing #5

I'll miss being invited to friends' homes for birthday parties where I (or my teammates and I) are the party... This is from our friends' one-year old daughter's birthday. Isn't she adorable!

Thing #4

I'll miss the sense of accomplishment I get from fixing the toilet with nothing but a (green) paper clip...

Thing #3

It's fun to buy butter by the kilo in a plastic bag... but what's even more fun is asking to taste it first. Rancid butter is a no-no!

The Shop

In case you haven't checked it out lately, there are a couple new designs over at the Mongol Mama Shop. Stop by and have a look.

Thing #2

I'll miss having a hot bath be such an event! Really, when the water comes out of the tap icy cold, and you have to heat the tub overnight, a hot bath is truly something special.

Things I'll miss...

Since my time here in Mongolia is winding down, I thought I'd start posting again--mostly about things I'll miss.

Thing #1: Padded doors. Rather insane assylum-esque, don't you think?

Time fillers

There are many ways to fill one’s time here in Mongolia. (If you recall, last year I was accused of spending my time filling my radiator with sand and sludge…) One of the more recent ways I’ve spent time is by dissecting my stove. I was having problems with the breakers for my apartment (ie, they would trip five million time when I was cooking which would require me to turn off the stove go out into the stairway, undo the zipper that was tying the electrical box shut, and flip the circuit back on). Turns out the breaker wasn’t the only problem with cooking. After asking a few people about my situation, one of them concluded that part of the problem was the stove—it was having mini-fires and melting a key part. Ugh! So, since my stove vocabulary isn’t so hot, I removed the two problem parts and took them to UB to try and find replacements. Turns out no one has the one I really need… So I called my director, since the stove actually belongs to the organization, and he said he’d send someone out to have a look. The would-be repair person requested that I send some pictures so that he could fully understand the problem. For your entertainment, here they are:








All that was a couple weeks ago. In the meantime, the repairman had to go into the hospital and required surgery, and so I’m reliving my life of four years ago when I cooked on a little two-burner hot-plate on my living room floor. This time though, it is a two-burner graciously loaned to me by my fiancé, and it’s on my kitchen table. I’m moving up in the world! Really though, after a period of not being able to cook anything, I feel like I’m living the high life right now. Warm food is an amazing thing!

Patterns, patterns everywhere...

Here is just a sampling of the patterns from my one-bedroom apartment here in Mongolia. The question is: Will they drive me crazy in the nine months til I get married, or will I cave and spend money covering them up?

To fix it or not to fix it, that is the question

Every so often something will happen that will make me realize exactly how living in Mongolia has changed me. One such event happened about a week ago when my boyfriend came to visit for the day. (Yes, we are now not only living on the same continent, but are living less than an hour apart!) After offering to help with the dishes it dawned on him that I don’t actually have a working faucet in my kitchen (nor do I have running hot water). Of course he asked how long it had been like that and why something hadn’t been done about it. The first answer is easy—it’s been like that since September. The second question took a little more thought… I realized that nothing had been done about it because, quite honestly, it is less of a hassle to carry water in buckets from the bathroom than it would be to get it “fixed”. Besides, since I no longer have to carry buckets of water from my radiator to my bathroom, I need some form of weight lifting. The problem with my kitchen faucet is that both it and the pipe running to it leak continually, and if the faucet gets used, the leaks become downright torrential. I know that not only would I have to wait several days for a plumber to come (should I decide to call one) but when he showed up he wouldn’t have the right tools, which would require another several days of sitting at home waiting, and then when he finally showed up again, with the tools, he would discover that we didn’t have the right faucet and pipe parts (i.e., we were lacking the proper horsehair to tie things up), and, after another long wait, he would come and fix one of the problems, but definitely not both.

Now the light in my toilet room has ceased working (but the light bulb is just fine—I checked) and I find myself having the same quandary—wondering which is less trouble: using candles the rest of the year or waiting for an electrician to come. I’ll give you a progress report in a couple months.

I don't think I used to be this content to just let things be...

A Catastrophe!

You may have noticed the lack of posts in December. Up until the 24th, my excuse was that it was a busy month. I prepped and taught a long seminar in UB, and when I got back home I leapt right into the madness of Christmas and New Year's parties. Now my excuse is that my friend's cat, as a sort of Christmas Eve present to me, decided to leap over my computer in a effort to tackle my cat, misjudged, and ended up sliding--with my computer--to the floor. Now my computer is awaiting a new hard drive that my boyfriend, awesome guy that he is, will bring to me in Thailand in a couple weeks. Where, as I soak in the warmth and devour fresh fruit, I'll put my little Mac back together. Until then I won't be doing anything interesting (besides tons and tons of grading) so it's not like I'd be posting anyway. Check back after mid February!

Who needs workout videos?

I’ve discovered a new form of exercise that incorporates both weight lifting and aerobic exercise. It’s called “attempting to get air out of the radiator by draining water from it” and it lets you feel like you are actually doing something important as you work out. There are ten bars on the radiator in my bedroom, and the bottom 2/3rds of five of them have gone cold. A student told me that if I drained out several bucket fulls of water (or is it buckets full?) that the problem would be solved because the air that is stuck in there would be released. If only! So, three days in a row I tried this. The beauty of it is that I’m always warm afterwards, and my bedroom ends up about one degree warmer for the next hour. Plus, running a relay with yourself, hauling buckets of water to the bathroom to dump out builds both arm muscle and endurance. They are supposed to send a repairman today, who hopefully will fix the problem once and for all, but I’ve taken such a liking to my new exercise that I may just keep doing it…