Ah, what a weekend.

March 9, 2009

There are a few things that I forgot to write about in my last blog. That’s what happens when I don’t write regularly. I’ll spend a few minutes talking about those things now.

A big part of Mongolian culture is singing, or anything like it. It seems like there is a song for everything. I can understand that, I guess. That is, if it was not for absolutely everything. Is the president making a special holiday speech? Sure, have a song. Is the new kindergarten in town having a special opening ceremony? Sure, have a song. Is it a special holiday and you’re sharing company with a good friend? Sure, have a song. Are you hanging out with your buddies, late at night, doing a little drinking and talking about girls? Sure, by all means, please, have a song. I can’t tell you how many times I would be visiting with someone during Tsagaan Sar – or anytime, really – and someone will just start singing. Everyone stops whatever conversation they were having and joins in. Sometimes, depending on the amount of alcohol that has already been consumed, Mongolians go right into another song – as soon as they finish the first and have another shot.

Springing from this love of all things song, Mongolians sometimes like to go to karaoke. While I was in UB last week, one of my Mongolian friends decided that she really really wanted to go to karaoke. It was never that big of a deal to me in the U.S., but, along with some other friends, I went. I told them that I would not be singing anything, no matter how much of a hard time they gave me. I was expecting something like I’d always seen back home: a bar with some tables and booths, people passing around the song book and selecting their song, then being called up to sing in front of the whole bar. Nope, nothing like that. When we got there, we were directed to a private room downstairs. It was almost creepy down there, but once we were in the room, with the door shut, it was alright. There was a big wrap-around couch along the back wall, with a big coffee table sitting in front of it. In the front of the room was a big entertainment centre with a big-screen TV and all the karaoke, microphone, and speaker equipment. We told the guy we wanted 2 hours, so he punched the appropriate buttons on the machine, took our drink order, then left the room. We were left with drinks, two microphones, a song book, and a huge remote to select our song. The lady who really wanted to go there didn’t even get settled before she flipped through the book, found the first of many of her most favourite song, punched the number into the pad, then got up to sing. It was good practice for me to read the words as I heard them sung. I usually have no idea what songs here are talking about. I could at least figure out the cipher for some of the songs I read. I did end up participating in a couple songs, but as you might imagine, they were American hip-hop. The other American that was with us likes hip-hop almost as much as I do. We got a good laugh out of one song. We’d heard it over a hundred times each, I’m sure. We didn’t know all the words, and we were not ready for the words that actually appeared on the screen. They were the right words, but we weren’t expecting them. That clarified a few points in the song, and had us both laughing so hard that we lost where we were. Oh, and at the end of the song, you get a grade. The very first song that was sung got a 100. After that, the highest score I saw was a 99. Just another cultural award for having sang, no matter how bad of a job you did. Too bad I don’t know any songs.

Last Thursday, Peace Corps PST people came to my town to check it out for a possible training site for the next group that will come in the summer. The training manager, the language director, and the safety and security officer walked into my office around 11 o’ clock. I first took them to talk to a guy that is pretty high up on the governmental totem pole. He was excited about the opportunity and gave them brochures about the town and district, and ensured them that this would be a good place for a training group. The next two people we talked to was the school principle (?) in the other part of town, and the school training manager for both schools. They were as equally excited about the possibility and assured the PC women that this is a good place to fulfill their needs and requirements. We’ll see how it turns out. I think that would be kind of cool to have a group of trainee’s in my town.

While in the other part of town, I got the driver to stop at the store where I buy kimchi. I haven’t been able to go over there and get it in a while, so I was glad to be able to. I asked for one kilogram and decided to take the .34 kilograms that was left. The training manager had went into the store and asked if there was anything I wanted her to buy for me. I wasn’t sure I understood, so I asked her to buy some juice for us to drink. She said she was intending to buy me something just for me, since I was helping them out with meeting and talking to the right people. Guess what I picked. Give up? Tomatoes. They actually had some real tomatoes. I would’ve taken all of them, but the others were bad. The first thing I made with them was the chickpea salad that I wrote about last weekend. It was quite tasty, and colourful. I put the other tomatoes in the freezer, for later.

The night before, I had put on a pound of pinto beans. I knew the PC people were coming, and there wouldn’t be anywhere for them to eat lunch. Before, when PC people came here, they just bought some noodles that I fixed for them. This time, I just felt like cooking and being nice. I cooked some pinto beans, fried some ham pieces that my mom had sent to me to put in there with them, and then put all the spices that I thought I might like to taste. (I wasn’t sure if they’d like it at all, so I figured I should be prepared to eat a whole pound of beans by myself. Haha.) I made some American rice that I put the beans on top of, and then showed them the Ranch and hot sauce. Surprisingly, they all reached for both. Some of them, after stirring around what they had and tasting it, decided that they wanted more Ranch. Yes! One by one, Mongolians are falling under the spell that is Ranch sauce. I’ve found new stores to shop at in UB, but I’ve found Ranch at none of them, so far. I’ll let you know when I’ve finally done my part of Ranch’s international expansion efforts.

Here’s something that I found out while in Sainshand, but forgot until now. The vitamins that we are given is making my nails grow faster. “Why?” you ask? It’s because we are all given pre-natal vitamins for pregnant women, as of several months ago. When I got the first bottle, I asked if it was really okay for a grown man to be taking pre-natal vitamins. I was assured that I should have absolutely no problems. Well, my nails’ growing faster is a problem for me. Haha. I don’t know why, but it’s just one of those grooming things that I don’t like to do. You can guarantee that I do it; I just don’t like doing it. Now, it seems like I have to cut my nails a lot more often than I used to. Every time, I just laugh about the idea of taking pre-natal vitamins.

That’s all of the stories that I can remember, for now. Check back later for updates. Now for one that happened today.

Do you remember me writing about the electrical wiring in the kitchen that is really touchy? The one that is a fire-hazard. It still hasn’t been fixed yet. This last weekend, I saw that they’d left the new, two-spaced outlet. I decided that since I knew just how to change an electrical outlet, I would switch out the two-spaced one with the one-spaced one in the living room. (My dad used to be an electrician and would take me to some of his jobs with him, in the summers.) I got all my tools together (1 Swiss Army knife and 1 multi-tool hammer), then went outside and turned the breaker off to my apartment. I took the face plate off the outlet in the living room, and as I was reaching to pull the outlet from the wall, I had one of those thoughts that goes through your head when it subconsciously knows that this situation presents danger. My particular thought was, “Now, boy, this is where you want to be careful.” I did everything I could to keep from making a connection between the two wires as I separated them from the outlet and replaced them in the new one. I might have even been holding my breath. I am now, writing this. Haha. I had to hammer some of the brick wall away so I could get the bigger two-spaced outlet to fit flush with the wall. I know I could fix the wiring in the walls, too, if I could easily get to it. But I can’t. I would have to tear the whole wall down. As it is, the wires are short and spliced in more than one place. I’ll let you know when things are up to fire code in here.

It was time for some grocery shopping when I left work. By some crazy alignment of the stars, I bought all but two things in one store. I could hardly believe my luck; and the lady seemed to hardly believe hers, too. One thing I finally found was some beef. It was only a couple of hundred tugriks more than mutton, so I asked for two kilograms of beef with no bones in it. She pulled bag after bag after bag out of the freezer and threw them onto the digital scales. I still haven’t gotten those things quite figured out yet, so I just trusted that that was 2 kilograms. If anything, it was a little more, and I had to pay for it, but I didn’t mind that. There were seven bags that filled up my freezer, all for something like $11. In another store, I found some bell peppers, found out the name for them, and bought everyone of them that wasn’t bad. I bought a dozen eggs, too. When I buy eggs, they put however many eggs I want into a bag, loose. As you might imagine, I’m as careful as I can be when I get them. I got all the way to the kitchen before I had a problem. I sat them on something where I thought they were safe, but I was wrong. One fell out and busted onto the kitchen floor. Drat!!

Since I had gotten some tortillas in a previous box from my sister, I started thinking about what I would do with those bell peppers and I could see fajitas in my immediate future. I came home, put some pintos on quick cook (3 hours), and asked Moogie if she wanted to share. I’d often teased her about cooking fajitas before. I would tell her while eating them, or after I’d eaten them. She’s used to me teasing her about anything I can, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect her. I always laugh at her either way. She came over after her work and watched me cook the last little bit. Included in my poor man’s kitchen set was not a lid for my medium-sized pot. As recourse, I’m forced to use a bowl for a lid. When the rice was almost done, Moogie told me how excited she was to finally be eating this. That made me that much more ready to eat, so in an attempt to pull the lid (read: bowl) off the rice, I got a nice little steam burn on the tops of three fingers. Yoi, yoi, yoi, yoi, yoi! I’m okay, though. It is easily aggravated, but I laughed about it mostly. When we were almost finished eating, Moogie told me that her and a group of teachers had been wondering if I would cook “American” food for them. I laughed and told her that I’d have to tease them about it for a while first.

I let her try my chickpea salad while she was here. Because I’m an idiot, I like to call them garbonzo beans. When I told her they were garbonzo beans, she stopped to look at me and ask what I’d said. She laughed. She had heard me say “garbonzil.” And that’s how I learned the word for masturbation.

I think I wrote this up there, but I got a box from my sister, Ann. There were all kinds of goodies in there. I have to say, percentage-wise, bags of Circus Peanuts were high numbers at 6. Other things were hot chocolate, sardines, Jello, pudding, country gravy, peanuts, cough drops, pepperoni, Rice Krispies Treats, Rolaids, rice, beans, bacon, strawberry jam, and Ranch. The first thing I treated myself to was a Rice Krispies Treat. I love those things. When I was a kiddo, it used to be so fun to make those things. I could probably eat a whole pan by myself. Thanks, Ann. I appreciate it.

March 10, 2009

Last week, one of the guys that I see out and about town came into my office with his 7 year old daughter. He said something that I didn’t understand, and then asked me where Densmaa was. He left my office and came back a few minutes later saying, “Back-way.” Not there. He told me he would come back when Densmaa was there. That turned out to be today. He sat in my office with his daughter for about 30 minutes while we waited for Densmaa to finish a meeting. When she came, she translated that the man wanted me to tutor *gasp* not his daughter…but his niece! To hear his story, the little girl’s real dad got a green card and lives in America now, driving a truck between San Francisco and Sacramento. In a few years, the little girl is supposed to go and live with him, and the uncle wants her to get a head start on learning English. The story sounds a little fishy, but whatever. It’s only for 30 minutes, so it shouldn’t be that bad. And she knows absolutely no English (not even “HI”), so I can basically teach how I want and not worry about if it’s correct grammar. You know, like colloquial English. We’ll see if she falls by the wayside like all of my other students.

March 11, 2009

I woke up to a cloudy day this morning. I’ve written before how Mongolia is purported to have 280 days of sun per year. I didn’t realise how used to it I’d gotten. Everything seemed eerily odd out. Before the morning was over, it began snowing. A lot. This must’ve been what yesterday’s wind was presaging. The wind is crazy here. Good thing I like it, for the most part. I’ve been told that springs here are full of dust storms, though. That is something that I’m not looking forward to at all. Oh, and I’ve also been told that the wind is not a factor in Mongolian weather forecasts or recordings. So, even though the temperature might say -7 Celsius, that doesn’t count the 50+ k/h winds that are blowing through.

I am always on YouTube, finding something to watch and waste my time with. Recently, I found a recipe involving Circus Peanuts. I think I might try it out. Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVXBKv-sVrg&feature=related

Tonight, my Mongolian lesson consisted of watching one of the Mongolian movies that I bought. Before I could do that, though, I had to download software to play VCDs. Luckily, it was a simple, small programme that I got from download.com. You can find all kinds of stuff there, and you can be reasonably assured that there are no viruses. The movie was good. The name of it translates to something like “Bondsman’s House.” It’s about a couple of guys who get caught up in the mafia and suffer the consequences. I didn’t really understand most of the words, but I heard many words that I’ve heard before. That’s always good. Also, I heard the word for brotherhood, or fraternity. Everyone always asks me what the brand on my arm is for and when I tell them it’s from my fraternity, they look at me funny. Apparently, that word isn’t very widely used in Mongolia. So it was really cool to understand a word that a lot of Mongolians don’t understand. [Ed. Note: it was later learned that the writer of this blog found out that Windows Media Player plays VCDs. He’s not as bright as he looks.]

March 12, 2009

I remembered a story from way back around Christmas time that I wanted to tell you about. There is a rapper/singer/hip-hop artist from the U.K. called M.I.A that has a song called “Jimmy.” During all the Christmas (read: New Year) plays that were performed, they would have this song and the kids would dance to it. At first, I couldn’t figure out how they even knew that song, let alone why in the world they were using it in their play. When it got to the chorus, I realised what was going on. You see, in their play, they were saying good bye to the old year and hello to the new one. In the song, she says something like “Jimmy, ha-cha!” A Mongolian would hear this and think that she was asking Jimmy where he is going, which would be appropriate when saying good bye to someone, I guess. “Ha-cha” is one of the most contracted phrases in Mongolian. The full question is about five or six words, and they have contracted it down into two syllables. Now, that’s why colloquial Mongolian is so hard to learn.

I uploaded a video to my YouTube account today. It’s from during my PST. It’s the day that we went to the ger camp and had our host family appreciation day. Check it out here, if you like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDtzfpr_cUM

Well, today was the first dust storm. The window from my office looks toward the school, so I always see the kids coming and going. Today, I could see their little bodies bent in the wind, trying not to be blown away. At the same time, there were little eddies of dust forming across the ground. By the time I came home, the dust storm was in full effect. I had to pat and wipe myself off when I got into my building. I took a picture, looking across the square at my office building and I could barely discern what it was. Crazy!

It was brought to my attention that your time has changed again and you are now 13 hours behind me, if you live in the Central Time Zone. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about changing my clock. That is something that I never liked doing, and I never understood it. I’ve read plenty of articles online that talk about how it isn’t necessary anymore, but the U.S. (in most places) continue to do it anyway. Can anyone show me a good article that talks about how this practice is still relevant to the people of 2009?

I watched the other Mongolian movie that I got. It, like the other, is on two different discs. No matter which one I put in, it seemed to start right in the middle of things. After trying them both, twice, I put one in and watched both sides. When I put the other disc in, I saw that whoever burned the disc did something wrong. The disc that I watched second was really the first disc. The two sides were switched. I ended up watching the movie like this: last half, second quarter, first quarter. The movie was alright, but I bet it would be even better if I watched it in the correct order. I’ll have to try that again.

March 13, 2009

It’s Friday the 13th!! Cool. Have I told you that 13 is my favourite number? I think it’s because so many people think that it’s unlucky. Yeah, I’m weird like that. I really think Friday the 13th’s are cool. Just something silly to share. Unlucky days for Mongolians are Tuesdays and Saturdays. I haven’t figured out why, yet. People don’t like to travel or do much of anything on those days. The big market in the city is closed on Tuesday. People won’t invite you to their homes on those days. Hm, I really want to find out why, now. I’ll get back to you and let you know.

Ah, here’s another silly story to share with you. Do you remember me telling you about the life-changing find that there is a secret compartment full of blankets and sheets in my couch? Ever since then, I’ve been using one of the blankets to lie on while covering myself with one of my sleeping bags. It’s taking some getting used to, but I prefer folding a blanket in the morning to zipping, rolling, and cramming the other sleeping bag that I used to lie on. But, to even out the hassle, the blanket has caused some unexpected extra work of its own. I don’t know what the blanket is made of, but there are always little red hairballs that fall off of it. Those, in turned, get trekked throughout my apartment. That causes me to have to go through and pick up each hairball individually. I try to get a little exercise out of it, though, by staying in a low wrestler’s stance. There are usually enough little red hairballs strewn throughout my apartment to have my legs burning really nice by the time I get them all. I do the same when I have to sweep. I’d really like to have a vacuum, but I don’t see myself being able to justify the cost anytime soon. Until then, I’ll keep working on my stance.

I had been tempted to go to UB this weekend when some friends called and invited me to a birthday celebration. I decided that I would stay home and do absolutely nothing, instead. When I was trying to figure out what I wanted for dinner, I decided that I wanted hoshor, but without as much hassle. After looking through my kitchen, I had a craving for potato with meat and veggies hoshor. I put the potatoes to boiling while I chopped onions, mushrooms, cabbage, and beef. When the potatoes were as soft as I wanted them, I drained most of the water, added some of the garlic butter that I’d made, and mashed the potatoes. After I mixed in all the stuff I’d chopped, I made the dough. It’s a very simple dough, consisting of 2 ½ cups flour and 1 cup water. After rolling the dough into an elongated shape, I cut it into several sections, which I then rolled out into small circles. From there, I spooned a glob of my concoction into the centre of the circle, and then pinched it closed and smashed it flat. To cook, I just deep-fried it. I put hot sauce and Ranch on them, and boy, oh boy, were they good! I have leftovers for tomorrow, and still more potato mush that only needs more dough.

While I was cutting the meat, I remembered a story about when I was in Amsterdam. It was a couple nights before I was to go back to the U.S., and I wanted to buy and cook a nice dinner for Austin for letting me live at his place for two weeks. I hopped on my bike and rode to the store that is just a few blocks away. Unlike Mongolian, an English speaker can half-way read Dutch and kind of sort of make out what is being said. I bought what I thought was some nice meet, some good veggies, and decent beer. I got back to Austin’s and immediately started cooking, telling him that I’d take care of everything. He came in a few times, just to watch. Once, he saw the meet and asked what kind it was. I told him it was venison. He looked at the package and told me that he thinks I got food-for-animals meat. I told him that it was right in the middle of every other piece of meat in the store, and I thought it would be okay. He immediately started trying to text one of his Dutch speaking friends to find out exactly what I had gotten us into. I forgot about him (though that’s hard to do), finished the meal, and gave him a bowl of my creation. He took the first bite and said it was pretty good, though the meat was a little tough. Halfway through his second bite, he received a text saying that the meat I’d bought was deer hearts and organs, and people do sometimes buy that just for their animals. I laughed and told him I didn’t care, it tasted good all the same. He carefully picked every piece of meat out of his bowl and gave it to me. He got a kick out of telling people that I cooked and ate “dog food.” He would be hard pressed if he ever found himself in Mongolia, with some of the food decisions I make on a regular basis.

Here’s another story. The week that I celebrated Tsagaan Sar here, I had the equivalent of Mongolian milk wine. I had seen one of the women drinking it from a juice jug, but I thought it was just water. Somehow, the jug got around to her husband. When he started pouring it into shot glasses, I knew it was more than just water. I was given a big shot and was basically told “it’ll sneak up on ya.” Whenever I hear something like that, I’m always careful, so I smelled it and sipped it, then took the whole shot. It tasted like water that had come from some obscure source, giving it a slightly un-watery taste. That’s the only way I can describe it that makes any sense. In fact, every shot that I had of it, I was even less sure that it wasn’t water from some obscure source. If the Mongolians were joking with me about it being really strong Mongolian wine, they never let the façade slip. The hosts even gave another bottle to someone as a gift.

March 15, 2009

My weekend has been just as lazy as I was hoping for. I watched a lot of South Park, did a little reading, cooked some good food, and got plenty of sleep. I haven’t been outside once. It’s been kind of nice to stay half-way warm. I finally made that cheesecake that my sister had sent to me. Man, that thing is good. I made some more hoshor, and I still have some filling left. Good thing the dough is so easy to make. Now, I have to worry about what I’m going to do with the oil I used to cook them in.

I hope you are good. As always, write when you can. I hear awesome stories from some of you, sometimes, and I can’t get enough of it. Keep ‘em coming.