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.

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!

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...

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…

Old Favorites

It’s snowing again and the grey weather is interfering with my ability to write, so I thought we could do a look back at some of my earlier posts.

You might be in Mongolia if…1-10: and 11-20: Self-explanatory.

Scotch: Not the drink. The tape. It even includes a song!

I’m Not Russian: Living here I often get mistaken for a Russian—which wouldn’t be so bad if I actually spoke Russian!

Concerning an Outhouse and a Pig: A traumatic event—but I survived so at least you know there is a happy ending.

Mr. Dogs & Me: Brushing shoulders with the Mongolian stars—or, rather, dancing foolishly in front of them.

The Rules of Hello

You live here long enough and the constant hellos of little children, teenagers, and the occasional random adult cease to be cute and, to be perfectly honest, become a source of annoyance. That’s rather harsh, you are thinking to yourself, they only are saying hello… aren’t you glad to hear an English word every once in a while? Yes, they are only saying hello, but you begin to feel as though you’ve got a flashing sign above your head that says, “I’m foreign, talk to me.” Since, there seem to be a lot of misconceptions about proper helloing etiquette, and since, if we responded to every hello uttered in our general direction, that is what we’d spend all day, every day, doing, Danielle (my trusty roommate) and I have come up with some rules:

1. Hellos screamed at the top of ones lungs, especially those hellos that sound angry, will not be responded to—particularly if they are screamed from a balcony.
2. Hellos said after we have already walked past (in other words, those hellos that are said to our backs) will not be responded to.
3. If every child in a group says hello, they will only receive one collective hello in response. Individual hellos in response are not necessary.
4. Hellos said while making fun of us (in Mongolian, which we happen to understand) will be ignored.
5. Polite hellos, especially from cute kids will gladly be responded to with a smile and a hello.
6. Hellos in foreign languages, particularly Russian, German, and Chinese, will be responded to at our discretion.

Note: we did consider broadcasting these guidelines on local TV, but decided not to since we’ll both be moving soon–Danielle to the states, and me to another part of Mongolia.

You might be in Mongolia if...11-20

(1-10 can be found in a previous post)

11. You associate the word “Olympics” with academic test giving.
12. You think bell peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes are exotic vegetables. (And just in case anyone out there is feeling persnickety—I am well aware that the tomato is technically a fruit.)
13. You know that the difference between “beefshteak” and “cutlet” is the presence or absence of a fried egg on top.
14. Spring is now your least favorite season.
15. You had a choice of watching the 2006 Olympics in Russian, Chinese, or Mongolian.
16. You are well acquainted with the “Numa Numa” song. (Of course, I’ve heard that it was #1 in 27 other countries, too…I think it is actually by a Romanian group.)
17. You can buy music in the food section of your market—perhaps even from the same counter that sells “sausage”.
18. All big events in your town take place at the Wrestling Palace… Or, for that matter, if your town even has a Wrestling Palace.
19. You don’t live in Japan yet, on a regular basis, you can watch sumo wrestling on TV.
20. When reading and writing in English you mix g’s and d’s, p’s and r’s, y’s and u’s, H’s and n’s, B’s and v’s.

I'll never be the same...

Mongolia has irrevocably changed my fashion tastes. It’s not just me though--I’ve noticed this occurring in my foreign friends too.

Case in point: Three of us were shopping at a large indoor market in UB (Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia) the other day. The item that all three of us were eyeing was, sadly enough, a fake fur/knit vest. It had a zipper up the front, black and grey faux fur, a purple knit waist band, and a band of fur below that. It was spectacular! (We restrained ourselves though, after concluding that it wasn't worth the price the saleswoman was asking.)

Other items that are now “eye-catching” to us were high-heeled boots, boots with fur trim, clothes with sequins, and leather coats.

The moment you've all been waiting for...

Although there were some excellent guesses, no one really got the right meaning of "Winter's person's one eye is blind." I guess the most similar idiom we have in English is "to turn a blind eye." I actually encountered this saying twice in one day and both people explained it to me in the context of clothing or footwear. As a general rule, Mongolians are more fashion conscious than your average American (I can't speak for the rest of the world), but, as I was talking to one friend about how dirty and scratched my lined winter boots are, she responded with this phrase and told me that it meant it was okay to wear stuff that wasn't as fashionable but was warm or more functional in winter because people don't notice, or they turn a blind eye. Nice that for a few months of the year I can "dress down"!

You might be in Mongolia if...

1. You have a picture of Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan) on your wall.
2. You slip up and call your cell phone a “hand phone” when speaking in English.
3. You guard your peanut butter with your life.
4. It got dark today before 5pm.
5. You’ve seen a camel cart on the street in the last two days.
6. You consider 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) to be warm for this time of year.
7. You think that pink, blue, or green walls and orange floors are normal.
8. The appearance of or lack of hot water determines when you bathe.
9. You have a collection of graph-paper notebooks, used for a wide range of things, that sport covers ranging from Harry Potter to Korean stars to cars to wildlife.
10. You are disappointed at the warm winter weather because it means you can’t use your balcony as a walk-in freezer.

Mr. Dogs & Me

A friend asked if Danielle and I wanted to go to a concert and we surprised her by actually saying yes. So the next night found us rushing to get to there on time. Silly us. We are in Mongolia. When we arrived, the doors were still closed, and closed they remained for another 30 minutes. When they finally were broken down opened, a ruckus ensued—never mind that the seats were assigned. Everyone wanted to enter at once, and Danielle and I foolishly forgot that we had the option of waiting for everyone else to push and shove through… There is nothing quite equal to being packed like cattle, on steps, in heels, while trying to avoid stepping on people (an offensive thing to do in Mongolian culture). We made it to our seats without any major blood loss and waited for the show to begin.

The concert was T. Delgermurun and the group Mr. Dogs. T. Delgermurun is famous for being a member of Nomin Talst (a well known Mongolian group) and Mr. Dogs is made up of some of his childhood friends. The hip-hop/rap music wasn’t bad but it was very loud. It was my first real concert in Mongolia (I know, I know, I’ve been here how many years?!) and I was surprised to notice that the other people in the audience, while they knew and enjoyed the music, didn’t even bob their heads. In fact, I’m not sure they were even blinking. Since there were only a couple hundred people there, I’m sure Danielle and I entertained the people around us entire audience as well as the singers, with our inability to sit still with the music going. They kept encouraging people in the audience, especially the kids, to get up and dance, but no one moved. Then they resorted to bribery and coercion. They offered a signed hat (that both Danielle and I secretly wanted) to the first person up dancing (but we didn’t want it that badly…) and their back-up dancers started pulling people up from the audience. Of course, since Danielle and I sort of totally stand out in any crowd here, and since our seats were next to the aisle, they made us dance—with all the kids—who came up to our waists. (Did I mention that we are tall compared to most Mongolian women?) Of about 20 people dancing, only four were adults... Both Danielle and I had adult students in the audience and were somewhat embarrassed for them to see us; however, most of our students are under the misconception that we dance well, so perhaps this “dancing at the concert” experience just made them think we were a little cooler. After one song we slipped back into our seats to continue our simple head bobbing and foot tapping for the rest of the show.

On the way home we decided that we should go to concerts every week more often.

Warning: semi-graphic content do not read if you love horses!

Horse intestines have a variety of textures--chewy, squishy, tough, tender...it all depends upon what part of the intestine you are eating and how it was prepared. The flavor is a little gamey but not bad

As for the white blood sausage...I was so puzzled when my student told me what they were that I asked her repeatedly to explain how they were made. What she told me is that when left for a certain amount of time, horse blood separates: red and white. The white portion is then put into a cleaned out portion of the intestines and boiled or steamed (I'm unsure which she meant). It has a smooth, gelatinous texture and a mild flavor. The most difficult thing about eating WB sausage is the fact that it is what it is.

Eating unusual foods is part of life when you live in a foreign country. At home I can cook what I want (provided I can come up with the ingredients) when I go to someone's home I need to eat what they serve me or risk offending them.

I haven't come across any desserts here that are genuinely Mongolian, however they have adopted some things from other countries. There is now an abundance of hard candy in Mongolia, and people here will often serve store-bought cakes (perhaps brought from the capital or Russia a week before) for special occasions. I am dreaming of the day that someone learns to make a moist chocolate cake with good frosting. In the meantime, cake, for me, is something that nightmares are made of.

Proposals & Marriage

Someone asked me if I ever was proposed to, and the answer is yes...in ninth grade, but I'm guessing that the intention of the asker was to know if anyone ever proposed to me in Mongolia, to which my answer is no. However...by Mongolian standards I'm getting a little old to not be married or at least have a kid or two; as a result I often get scolded by coworkers and taxi drivers alike. This is a subject that people in Mongolia feel very free to comment on. I've been told by a taxi driver that I should have Mongolian children (why this was so important, I'm not sure); I've had people tell me that I should marry a Mongolian so that my language skills would improve (since we all know that is the only reason people get married); One individual, who takes great delight in asking me if I've gotten married yet, likes to tell me that I should get married because I need someone to fix things in my apartment. The list goes on... What I've tried explaining is that people from the USA tend to get married later in life than Mongolians; what I lack the Mongolian vocabulary to explain is that I'd rather be single than be married to the wrong person, and getting married just for the sake of being married is lame.