Lunar New Year Celebration

2/23/2015

Tsaagan Sar. The white month holiday, which celebrates the Lunar New Year, is Mongolia’s largest holiday. Families prepare for weeks, making 1000s of buuz (Mongolian dumplings), ariag, potato and kimchee salads and buying gifts for every family member. It is the costliest holiday, families often take out loans in order to afford all the food and gifts they need. Tsaagan Sar lasts 8 days, but the first three are the most important. The first is spent with family, starting at 8am when they take a trip to the top of a nearby mountain to offer milk to the gods and watch the sunrise. They then make their way back down the mountain and being to prepare their home for the visitors that will arrive that day. The first day is spent visiting every family member in order of birth. The grandparents are visited first by all the family members in the family. There are special greetings for each member depending on age and the customary 3 shots of vodka before food is served. Once people are done eating and all the gifts are given out, it is time to move to the next house. Where again you take three shots and eat buuz. This last the entire day until every house is visited in the family.

I was supposed to go to the country side with my Mongolian friend to celebrate with her family a few days before Tsagaan Sar began, but unfortunately I came down with a sinus infection and strep throat, so I had to stay in my apartment and nurse myself back to a somewhat better state of health. I am still stick, but at least no longer infectious at this point. When I called to tell her I could not go with her, she kept telling me it was fine, her family would not mind me being sick, they would take care of me in the countryside. After about 30 minutes of talking on the phone, I finally was able to get her to understand what contagious meant and that I could not go. A couple hours later I got a phone call from her telling me she was outside of my apartment with special buuz and airag (fermented mare’s milk). She gave me special instructions on how to eat the food in order to become healthy again. I was to eat the buuz with hot water, then take a nap, when I woke up, I had to boil the airag, then drink it and go back to sleep. I should feel better in the morning she said. I didn’t, it actually gave me an upset stomach, but I told her it worked.

The first day of Tsaagan Sar, I spent with my site mate, Rebecca’s hasha family (volunteers who live in gers have families that live on the property with them for safety). We ate, drank, chatted and played various Shagai (ankle bone) games for most of the afternoon. We then went on to my friend Gerlee’s grandmother’s house for more food and Shagai games. We got to her ger and the minute I saw her parents, I ran up and gave them huge hugs. I missed my Mongolian parents and it was so nice to see there smiling faces. They thanked me numerous times for the photo album I gave them with pictures from all my visits to their ger in the country. I also gave the grandmother a photo frame with a picture of her and me in it, the day she made my deel for me. Mongolians love pictures, and most of them cannot afford cameras, so albums or pictures are always a great gift to give them. It was so much fun celebrating with these two families. Everyone was so happy and energetic. It definitely boosted my spirits.

 After Gerlee’s, we went to Patrick’s hasha family’s home. His hasha father is hilarious; he kept us entertained all night. At one point he brought out his two hunting rifles and strapped them both around his back and paraded around the house pretending to shoot things. He then told us our fortunes. He said this year I would have much success. He told us that he had had 24 shots of vodka that day and at 45 buuz. 24 shots and you become a fortune teller. He then made us each take 4 four shots and eat meat fat. It is a tradition to eat chunks of fat at the celebration. They believe animal fat helps you stay warm in the winter, so they eat a lot of it November-March. I tried hiding the fat in my napkin, but he saw that I did not eat it and made me sit there on his couch and eat the giant chunk of fat. I even tried hiding it when he went to the bathroom in my purse and he caught me. I was hoping he was not offended, luckily he was not. I cannot stand fat, especially baseball size chunks, so I quickly tried swallowing as much of it as  I could before I finally gave up and shoved the rest in the top of my boot, which luckily he did not see and I was able to throw it away while we walked home.

The second day of Tsaagan Sar is for visiting friends. This means going to your coworkers homes. All of my coworkers were in the countryside or different providences visiting their families, so they were not in town to visit. Last year, I went and visited them all during my lunch breaks the week they returned for work. So I had the day off to relax, luckily, because the weather was horrible and it would have been awful having to walk from house to house in it.

The third day is for visiting more friends. Rebecca and I went to one of her teacher’s houses and ate buuz with her and her daughters. The teacher than had to leave and told us to stay and play Shagai with her young daughters. So we did and it was a lot of fun. Since their mother is an English teacher, they know pretty good English and we spent the afternoon joking around and playing Shagai. I absolutely love playing Shagai games and cannot wait to bring them back to America with me.

Today, while I waited at the bank to pay my utility bills I was able to observe all the old men and women in their beautiful deels greeting all the friends in the bank. They all greeted one another with the special Tsgaan Sar arm movements and every man took out his carefully wrapped snuff bottle and exchanged it with the other old men. They each take turns snuffing a little tobacco from each. It was so cool. It is time like that when I realize what a really cool country I live in with such rich culture. Here are these old men in their new deels passing each other snuff bottles and chatting inside the bank. One of those moments that remind me how lucky I am to be experiencing Mongolia and living as one of its people.

After a nice week off from work, I had to go in this morning. But I was ushered into the Health Department by my director’s assistant and up to my director’s office to drink wine and ariag with her at 1030am. Mornings spent drinking wine can only lead to a great rest of the day.

2/24/2015

Last night I went to my directors home to celebrate Tsaagan Sar. We had a girls’ night, me, my director and her daughter. It was a lot of fun. We watch Korean Soap Operas, ate way too many buuz and played cards. My director is one of the most amazing people I have ever known. She is brilliant. It is so great to see strong women running organizations, especially governmental ones; it is usually men with all the power here.

I love spending time with her and learning about her life. Every morning for the past month, Mon-Fri, at 10am we have coffee together and practice speaking English. She travels to France and Korea a lot for work and wants to improve her English so that she no longer has to rely on a translator when she goes out to dinner with foreign doctors on these trips. So I have been just teaching her common statements and conversational English. Today we practiced inviting someone over for dinner and asking different questions like “are you thirsty/hungry? What would you like to eat/drink?”. I always try to make up fake conversations to practice and act out. She really enjoys acting out the scenarios and then we chat about her schedule for the day. It is helpful for me, because now I finally know what goes on each day in the Health Department (finally, after two years I have figured it out).

2/27/2014

Today, my site mates and I visited the local monastery in town. There was a special monk who would be praying over the people who visited the monastery that day. My friend Gerlee took us to show us what to do when we entered the monastery. There were so many people in the monastery on line waiting to see the monks. It was the last day of Tsaagan Sar and the luckiest day to have your yearly fortune read. Based on your birth year, the monk say special prayers for you and then they read from one of their special books, which tells you what type of year you will have and what kind of activities you should do to maximize your happiness and luck in the upcoming year. The line was so long, that Gerlee is going to take us back to the monastery next week to speak with the monks. But while we were in the monastery, we go to participate in the chants, spin the prayer wheels and give offerings to the new god of the year. The monastery is so colorful and filled with beautiful statues and paintings. The monastery smelled of the incense being burned as the monks read the books to the people. They make special symbols with the powdered incense depending on your birth year as well. That evening, we took a trip to Bulgan Mountain to light candles and make wishes for the New Year.

Happy Birthday Ash!!

Ash. It seems like just yesterday we were wearing matching velvet overalls, dancing wildly to the Spice Girls. And here we are now, adults, who still dance wildly to Spice Girls but luckily have developed our own sense of style. I can’t wait to be home, dancing our pants off to 90s songs. Just 5 more months until I can buy you a drink and celebrate with you! Here are 23 wishes I have for you, as you celebrate your 23rd birthday. I miss you so much! Have so much fun celebrating! xoxo

1. The ability to fall in love with yourself first.

2. Many nights spent laughing with friends, so hard that it huts and you can barely catch your breath.

3. A few true friends who will never abandon you or try to change you.

4. Patience to undergo life's setbacks.

5. Determination to turn those setbacks into further motivation to follow your dreams.

6. Long car rides and plane trips to wondrous places that will open your eyes to the fascinating and incredible world we live in!

7. People to hold you when I am not there!

8. The chance to help others, and truly touch the lives of the people in this world who need it most.

9. The chance to branch out and learn from people who are so completely different from you. They will teach you things about yourself that you could have never learned from spending time with people just like you.

10. Concerts and events that bring music into your chest and rattle your senses.

11. Kisses that make your heart stop.

12. Sunsets and sun rises that make you stop and realize how gorgeous the world we live in actually is.

13. A career worth falling in love with.

14. The ability to see how powerful you are.

15. The understanding that you will always have family to fall back on when life seems to get out of control.

16. A place or city that you can be completely enthralled with, where you can spend many of you days living in that magic.

17. A multitude of girls' nights spent out on the town turning heads -- or curled up in pajamas watching movies.

18. Thousands of morning walks with Charlie, breathing in the crisp air and being thankful for having rescued such a special dog.

19. People you can call when you are feeling lost (other than me, of course).

20. Immeasurable moments of pride that you can have in yourself and in your accomplishments.

21. The faith needed to be able to sustain our religious beliefs and that it may give you a sense of purpose and love.

22. A man I can raise my glass to at that reception and give my baby sister away to, knowing that he will be a devoted husband and best friend to the most important thing I have in my life.

23. My lasting love. May you always understand that I will be here forever.  I will be there through life’s rough trying days. I will be there when the world feels like it is crashing down upon you. I will be there celebrating with you when you think that life can not get much better ! I will be there to plan a ridiculous bachelorette party where we are way too loud and think tequila is a good choice. I will be there to toast to your marriage. I will be there sobbing as I hold my little niece or nephew with more love than I can even comprehend. I will be there when our kids are growing and we have to call each other and laugh at the ridiculous things they do. I will be there through job changes. I will be there as we grow old and start to develop smile lines from our years of laughter. I will be there when we have no one in our family left but the two of us. I held you, or tried to hold you, in my arms as a baby, and I will hold you forever.

That is my final wish, and promise, for you, my remarkable sister. You inspire and never cease to amaze me. I am so proud of everything you have accomplished and the woman you are becoming. I love you!

 

"What does sexy mean?"

2/11/15

“Hello friend, what does it mean sexy? Bring your sexy. It is tight suit?” – One of the many hilarious texts I receive from Mongolian friends asking about the meaning of English words.

Last week I was given a 20 page project proposal to translate from English to Mongolian. The Turkish Embassy okayed a project proposal for my Health Department, in order to help maternal and infant mortality rate, which is very high in my province. But since it was from the Turkish Embassy, it was in English and my Health Department director could not read it. The proposal was for 1.2 million USD and would give my Health Department excellent resources and trainings from Turkish doctors. So my director gave me 3 days to translate the 20 pages. She had to give a presentation to the Mongolian Government on the grant in a week, so she needed to be able to read it and create a presentation on the information in the proposal. Translating English into Mongolian is so much harder than Mongolian into English. I can read Mongolian and understand it really well, but thinking in the reverse is difficult for me. My counterpart who is the only one at the HD who knows English, was traveling around to the different soums conducting health surveys, so he was not there to help. Luckily for me, I was able to get my friend Gerlee to help me translate the 5 hardest pages, the rest I was able to do in 5 days. Three days was extended to five when my HD director wanted me to go with her to her friend’s house to make buuz (traditional Mongolian dumplings). When she called me, I told her I could not go because I needed to stay home and do the translation. 2 hours later she told me, she would give me a 2 day extension and that I needed to meet her in 1 hour to go to her friend’s house. In typical Mongolian fashion, making food for holidays comes before work.

I met her at her apartment and we walked over with her daughter to her friend’s house. The house was the nicest house I have seen in Mongolia. It was 2 stories, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and had 5 ( I counted) massive TVs. She also had a cook and housekeeper. After taking in the house, I met all the lady friends who were invited to make buuz for the Mongolian holiday Tsaagan Sar. They were all the top women in the town: my HD director, the governor’s wife, the owner of most of the markets in town and the director of the bank. As they ushered me to the table, I was met with Baileys Irish crème and coffee from America. The woman who owned the house has three children, 2 of which study in America and send her American products all the time. As I drank my Baileys, spicy Korean chicken and potatoes were served for lunch. Delicious. We then took time to chat and she poured endless glasses of white wine from San Francisco. I was in heaven. Next, bowls of almonds and macadamia nuts were places in front of me.. I could not stuffing my face with the almonds. Almonds cost $30 dollars a kilo here. I cannot afford them on my Peace Corps “salary”. I make about $150 USD each month, which has to pay for food, utilities, etc.

After we were finished eating, we went to the kitchen to make buuz. The whole time we were eating, the housekeeper was busy cutting up all the meat and cabbage in the kitchen, for us to use in the dumplings. We walked in and everything was set out for us to use. I am the worst buuz make in the world. I have no idea how they pinch the dough so beautifully. The dumplings look like flowers when they are finished, mine resemble weird raviolis. The women laughed at me and told me to stop making them, they would not be able to serve those to guests at Tsagaan Sar which translates to the White Holiday. It is February 18-20. For Tsagaan Sar, women make 1000-2000 buuz for the celebration, it takes hours, so all of them get together with friends to make them. I would have to eat the ones I made for dinner. I told them that they were American buuz and people should be so happy to eat them. They laughed and told me to go play with the kids. I was happy to do so; I needed a little break from speaking and thinking in Mongolian. I tutor all their children in English and they are all pretty good. Good enough to have simple conversation and plus they are more likely to act out things at me if they don’t know the English word and I don’t know the Mongolian one. We played several Mongolian outdoor games, which involved pretending to be different countries and battling one another. We also played hide and go seek and this game where you tie a blindfold around one person and they have to find/tag another person in the room. It was a lot of fun. At 8pm we took a break to eat dinner and watch a Korean soap opera, which is dubbed over in Mongolian. It was nice to just sit and not talk. My host mother used to watch the same soap opera, so I knew the characters and the story line. As soon as the soap opera was over, I decided to go home. My brain was exhausted. It had been such a fun day. I was so happy that I was able to join them for the day.

On Saturday, January 31, the Peace Corps Volunteers in my city held a creative writing competition. The students who participated were given a choice between two writing prompts and had one hour to write an essay in English. After they were done writing, we all got together for lunch and to read the essays. Some of them were hilarious. In schools Mongolians do not practice free writing, the only writing they do is when they practice their letters. So for many of the students, it was the first time they just sat down and wrote a story. This meant that many of the essays made no sense; many of the students just wrote facts about themselves or any words that they knew in English. The problem with schools here is that English teachers teach English in Mongolian. There is no practice speaking. It is all reading and copying words from books, no speaking or free writing. Most of the teachers themselves cannot speak Mongolian. Also, critical thinking is not taught here, everything rote memorization. Students will say things, but have no idea what they are saying. They do not know simple commands or greetings in English. A few of them that work really hard and ask us for tutoring do know more, and it showed in their essays. This Monday, we had the awards ceremony. The TV station came and recorded the ceremony.

After the competition, the new Chinese volunteers in our town invited us over for Chinese dumplings and soup. The food was delicious and they two girls are so sweet. They both majored in English, so speaking to them is easy and fun. It is so nice to have more English speakers to hang out with. We stayed for hours chatting with them about their experience in Mongolia and saw how similar it is to ours. Whenever we hang out with the Koreans, Japanese or Chinese volunteers it is always so amazing how similar our day to day activities and experiences are.

I have a new project I am working on. It is by far my favorite one yet. I am working with my site mate Rebecca at her school. We made a Health Club at her school. We have two clubs on Wednesdays, the two groups are broken up by age. Each club contains about 20 students. The school social worker had the idea, after she noticed a lot of overweight students. At first she proposed the idea to us as a “chubby kids club”, I quickly shot that down and said I would do a health club, but for all students, no matter what their weight is.

Every Wednesday at 11am and 3pm, the children come to us to do 40 minutes of exercise and 30 minutes of a health lesson and craft. It is so much fun. We start each session with warm up exercises and stretching and then do 20 minutes of dance/zumba. The kids wanted to learn dances, so each week we pick a new dance and practice it over and over until they have it memorized. Then that dance becomes part of the warm up for the next week. After the dancing we do the health lesson. The first week we did nutrition. We then decided February would be designated to Mental Health. We talked about self-confidence and ways to feel better about ourselves no matter what we look like. We then end with a little yoga and meditation for stress relief. Mongolian students, like many Asian cultures, are under high stress in school. Everything is a competition and they are all striving to be number one. Our first club session, some of the students did not want to try the dance because they did not practice it themselves yet and did not want people to see them mess up. So Rebecca and I are really trying to work on just teaching them to have fun and when it comes to dancing and exercises it does not matter how you look. The 1.5 we are together, there is no competition, and we are just having fun. We try to pick songs that are really upbeat and add in goofy moves to get the kids to loosen up and forget about school for the time they are with us. Today, we had our 4^th session and the change in the kids is amazing. Every single one of them was dancing around the room and some even through in their own dance moves to the songs. Today we taught them the Cha Cha slide and made Valentines for each other. They loved it. Wednesdays are now my favorite days and being with the kids is so energizing. It is a great way to break up the week at the Health Department.

This past weekend was Rebecca’s 25^th birthday, the theme was college frat party. We played drinking games and drank jungle juice out of my water filter. We ended the night going to a karaoke bar and singing early 2000 songs (yes, they had English songs). It was a great night!

Summary of January 2015

February 9, 2015

January went by so quickly. Mid January, my site mate Rebecca and I went to UB for a nice break. We had been going through a lot in our community, harassment wise, so Peace Corps thought it would be good for us to come into the city for a break and speak with various staff about the issue. It was so great to just relax for 5 days and walk around a place where we were not constantly yelled at and grabbed. This past year, my province has been really focused on growing their population by getting more people into the capital center, where we all live. The Mongolian government gave my province a lot of money to build new apartments and are giving incentives for people to move from the countryside into the province centers. My province actually received the most money from the government in all of Mongolia to build up the community. New schools, stores and apartments have been built. Not only are they hoping to bring people from the countryside to the central part of the province, but also to have people who are living in Ulaanbaator, the capital, to move out to the smaller cities because of the over crowding in the capital. This has led to a boom in new people living in my town, most of whom do not know me and have never met a foreigner before. Because of this, men from the countryside have been causing a lot of problems with the female volunteers in my town. In the past 7 months we reported almost 20 incidents of physical harassment to Peace Corps, incidents like being spit on, grabbed inappropriately, yelled at, kissed followed in cars and most recently a group of men through a rope around my neck, like a lasso, and tried pulling me to their truck. Luckily, I was able to get the rope off and ran into the closest store.

After that happened, Peace Corps set up a meeting with the local police. All of the volunteers and their counterparts had to attend the meeting, where we brainstormed safety plans, voiced our concerns and a billion pictures were taken of us (the first ten minutes was like a photo op for the police..it was ridiculous but eventually they stopped and got to the actual point). Since the meeting happened, harassment has decreased dramatically. Police are now patrolling the main street and market area where all the incidents happened, and it seems to be making a huge difference. The funny part about all the harassment is, we just assumed that this was part of being an American in Mongolia. We did not report most of the incidents until I was Lasso’d because we just thought hey we signed up to live in hardship and this is part of that. After we reported all the incidents Peace Corps told us that we should never have been putting up with that kind of behavior and that they were so sorry we felt that we had to just accept it and go on about our days. For the past 2 years, I have been stared at, yelled at and grabbed by people on the streets, and that I could ignore, but once someone through a rope around my neck and tried dragging me, I knew had gone too far and something must be done. Peace Corps handled it so well and reacted so quickly and competently. While in UB we spoke to all the head staff and even a staff member from DC about it and they all were so helpful!

Another Peace Corps volunteer recently wrote about her experience in her town, even though it is much larger than mine, I can relate to many of her points. Here are a couple lines from her blog that really sum up the experience of volunteers in Mongolia and probably most other peace corps countries.

“Гадаад хүн (gadaad whoon)….The kindest translation is foreigner, but the literal one is outsider. These two words follow me from place to place whenever I leave my house. Sometimes it is just barely audible to me, whispered among a group of people as I walk by. Sometimes is it shouted from cars that drive by, just a little too fast and a little too close for comfort. Sometimes it means new, novel, exciting… like when I hear it shouted with delight by a small child as me and a group of volunteers walk by. Sometimes it doesn’t… like when a man follows me through the grocery store and stares intimidatingly while I check out.”

“There are rules. We all make them. I’ll say hi back once to each group of children. I’ll reply if they’re boys under 13 or so, girls can be older. I won’t stare back. I won’t make eye contact if they’re a man. I’ll smile if they’re elderly and greet them in Mongolian. I’ll pretend I don’t hear them if they’re drunk. I won’t walk to the black market after dark. These rules allow us to navigate the world outside our doors. They help us avoid the snickering laugher of teenage boys, or the slurring Russian of drunk men who don’t believe that I don’t understand them. Most of the time these rules are enough. Enough to keep me sane.”

“I know there are people who put up with this constant outsider feeling their whole lives. That people spend every day being stared at and having to decide if someone is just curious or has more malevolent intentions.”

“But for now, I move in the world constantly aware that I don’t belong. I’m not from here. I don’t act, look, or sound like I should. For now, for the rest of my time in the country, I will be the гадаад хүн.”

Sticking out is not always negative, sometimes the, yelling, waving and smiling of my community members, turns a bad day into a good one. Knowing that there are people so excited and happy to see me, is a wonderful feeling. But some days the yelling and waving is not so kind, and is accompanied by sexual slurs and intense hatred. The worst feeling in the world is walking down the street and being called an outsider and being told to go back to whatever country I came from. Twice this has happened to me, and both times I was spit on as I walked away from them. I want to shout back, I am here helping your country, for free. But I never engage these people, I continue walking straight ahead and try to zone out their voices. 

But for ever hostile person, there are hundreds of kind souls in my town. On January 24, my town held its annual Ice Festival. I wore my new winter deel that my Mongolian friend’s grandmother made me. It is a beautiful lavender color. (her grandmother also made me a little red baby sized deel for my future child, the cutest piece of clothing ever) For the Ice Festival everyone wears there winter deels and goes to the frozen river for sports competitions. I met my health department coworkers early that morning to drive over together in the Health Department van. They all loved my deel and kept telling me how beautiful I was. I love the people I work with. At the river, each participating organization had made ice sculptures from ice they dug out of the river. Some of the ice sculptures are so elaborate and beautiful. Many were designed to be Mongolian gers, inside each ice ger were seats, tables and sculptures unique to that organization. I ran around at the end of the day with two of my HD doctors’ kids, taking pictures in all of them.

At the festival they had a rope pull competition, target shooting, a sled relay race and curling. Each organization had teams to compete in each competition. In between competitions, we all piled into cars to keep warm and snack on milk tea and bread. I loved skating on the frozen river and enjoying the fresh air. It is so hard to want to be outside in the winter here, but I had such a great time that day and finally mastered the art of layering for the frigid temperatures. For the 5 hours we were outside, I was “comfortable” in my clothing choices: 3 pairs of pants, 4 shirts, 3 socks, winter boots, hat, scarf, gloves and a Mongolian Deel.