Your Home is Behind You

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."  -Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

My first post after arriving in Japan pondered the possibility that it was better to be a tourist than to live here.  After two years I'm not sure I figured it out.  On one hand, I have had far more experiences and learned much more than I ever could have hoped, even if I'd spent every vacation I had in the last two years in Japan.  However, the truth remains that work was...challenging, at best...and my salary low enough that after two years I've decimated* my savings.  It was a two-year whirlwind, but the school year finally edged its way into thankful oblivion.  I got my Mongolian visa, eventually** finished packing and cleaning, and headed back to the States for the summer.

Iowa might not exactly be my favorite place in the world, but it's got a few things in its favor, other than my family.  There are times that I think you could film a live-action Studio Ghibli film here.  Although spaces as green as the shady spot in a corner of my dad's field are few and far between, the sheer numbers of fireflies are mind-boggling, and the number of butterflies this year was just unreal.  I mean, every time I drove anywhere I felt like I was mowing down nature, although this presented an excellent opportunity to collect...let's say...art materials, although I don't have a project in mind yet.  It was also pretty cool to feel like I was stepping into the Shire whenever I left the house.

Under the circumstances, maybe it was inevitable that I'd want to celebrate achieving Level 40 with a bonfire/fairy party.  I spent so long making wings for the various Winter Lords and Summer Ladies that it didn't turn out to be quite as big a dog and pony show as I originally envisioned, but that was probably for the best.  The kids had fun playing together and the mortals invited to the revel all went away unscathed and still in fashion, as we broke up the fairy ring somewhere short of a hundred years.  

A couple of days before that my old rival and fellow Faerie Queen, Baby Chicken Wing, invited me to go see Japanese schoolgirls (and one schoolboy) play in a handbell choir.  Could there possibly be a better event for me?  I say nay.  Both of us were familiar from handbells from attending a certain church in our hometown...Babysis turned down the opportunity because she still goes there, thus it ain't no thing for her...so we kind of had expectations about what a handbell choir would be like.  Which they proceeded to smash with their first song, the main theme from Star Wars.  They played some jazz, a traditional Japanese song, Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers...of course they played a couple of hymns, but they were so completely entertaining to watch that these couldn't even be compared to the old ladies that play at church.  My mind was also occupied with thoughts of the social dynamics of the boy in the cultural club from a Japanese high school, when it wasn't busy thinking that I ought to reread the Old Kingdom Series by Garth Nix (necromancers with handbells...you tell me YOU wouldn't have been thinking it, too).

The family, on the other hand, convinced me to go to the zoo with them.  Okay, it was actually Shaggy - I figured if he drove (just under) 5 hours (in his new Beemer, no kids or dogs, obvs) to celebrate with me I could brave the heat and sun, especially when he promised we weren't staying all day.  He kept referring to the Henry Doorly Zoo as "the best zoo in the world," and while it is a damn fine zoological park I have reservations about it being the worlds' best, although since zoos aren't really my thing, I can't provide any annoying counterarguments.  It was neat to see how much it's changed since the last time I was there, which was probably around 10 years ago, and I loved seeing the niblings together.  Later I shared the photos with the family, prompting my dad to admit this might be the best way to experience the zoo.

On my actual level-up day my Mom and I packed up the niblings - detained to give their mom the chance to get shit done - and headed down to Shaggy's place.  This is kind of important, since it gives me the chance to visit my grandmother and my great uncle along the way, but what I was really looking forward to was...less a mini-reunion than a micro one, since it's always just me and the Nice One.  

That said, this is the third or fourth summer we've gotten together to catch up, providing some much needed sanity and at least a couple of reality checks.  Also, a good browse through Barnes and Noble and more food than is probably a good idea.  I mean, seriously, America!  Who puts brisket on a burger?***  And THEN tops it with a bajillion onion straws???  That thing won't even fit in your mouth!  For the record, I ended up knocking most of the onions out of the middle and eating them dipped in sauce, which, also for the record, was excellent, but probably made the order of onion straws we ordered as a side totally unnecessary.  Hours later we chased it with custard from Andy's, which Shaggy pointed out they sell at the restaurant, but even if he has room for ice cream after a burger like that, I sure as hell didn't.  We discussed taking a road trip for our next act, and now that I've seen this year's school schedule, we might actually be able to make that into a mini-reunion after all...the Evil One's going to be Stateside in January and with a longer vacation the fates may, perchance, align.  We shall see.

Somehow vacation was over before I felt like it had really started.  My mom always complains that my holidays are too short, but this time I couldn't really argue...in spite of the fact that I spent a whole month at home, it seemed to fly by.  I'm not really complaining, since I'm happy to be back in Mongolia, although I'll be a lot happier once school starts and I get to spend time with my kids.  Still, it felt strangely short, the way time is a little different in the realms of faerie, where a year can go by in the space of a cicada's song.  There aren't any of those here in UB, but I have a feeling the next year will pass in the blink of an eye nonetheless...

*I mean that very literally...I have 10% of the savings that I had two years ago.  But if my parents are reading this right now, fear not - I'm planning to save more this go-round.
**6 a.m. the day I left Japan...
***Blaaack Sheep, that's who.

A Sampler of Cities

Here's a joke for you that rings all too true - what kind of hotels do art teachers stay in?  Sketchy ones!  It's been a while since I've stayed in an actual hotel, and I wasn't really planning on doing it now.  AirBnBs tend to be a better room for a better price, but the one I booked myself into in Nagano turned out to actually be a hotel...which just happened to be a few blocks up from a red light district.  I've done this on more than one occasion (notable exception: Amsterdam) and it never fails to amuse me that I can be so adept at it.

This has been a strange sort of trip for me, as evidenced by my inability to keep up my blog.  I ran around a lot, and saw some stuff, but most of the things I saw and did I've seen and done before.  Since I didn't want to bore all six of my faithful readers with the same old stories, it took me a little longer to come up with a different way of approaching this trip than "Lemme tell you all the stuffs I did."

The whole point of my Golden Week travels was to go to Toyama, but once I got off the Willer bus there, I stuck my bag in a locker and immediately caught a train for Kanazawa.  This was kind of dumb, because the bus goes on to Kanazawa from there, but I didn't  realize that when I booked the ticket.  Anyways.  If you can believe the hype, Kanazawa rivals Kyoto for its beauty and intact old buildings, which is a nice thought but untrue in my opinion.  Kanazawa was nice enough (except for the tourists and the hot sun beating down), but unlike Kyoto, I feel no need to go back.

For me, the highlight of Kanazawa was the gardens.  Ain't nobody does a water feature like the Japanese.  All throughout the place you could hear the laughter of water over rocks.  I wished I could have seen it back in late February, when the plum grove would have been blooming.  Instead I got to witness clouds of pollen launching themselves off thousand year old pines.  I went through a lot of tissues that day.

I headed back to Toyama that evening.  This was a city I actually liked quite a bit, and it's kind of strange.  I didn't actually do a lot there.  I went because I wanted to see the firefly squid light up the bay, and sadly, I missed it.  The hostess of the second place I stayed said they'd been on the beach the night before I came to stay with her, and though I went out both nights I was at her place, they didn't come back.  It was disappointing, but I wouldn't mind trying again next Golden Week.

Instead I got to see them in the Hotaruika Museum in nearby Namerikawa, but it felt like a bit of a cheat.  Since that quest was ultimately a failure, my favorite thing about Toyama - besides watching Avengers without having to book in advance or share armrests - was the Glass Art Museum.  Or, to be more precise, their "garden" of Chihulys.  These days I don't go full fangirl every time I see his work, but they had some amazing pieces, curated beautifully.  I looped around and went through the exhibit again after I finished the first time.  It was great.

I also made a side trip to Takayama.  Although I went there for the folk village, that wasn't the best part of Takayama.  What I loved most about it...okay, the thing I really loved the most is that someone made a theme cafe right across from the station based on erotic ukiyo-e prints.  I didn't actually go there - too many questions about what's in the secret sauce for this girl! - but I looked at the photos on Google maps and it was accurately named.  Besides that, my favorite thing was the temple district.  After finding a place for a late lunch, I wandered downstream to a huge torii, and found my way uphill to its shrine, then wound my way through old streets - the setting sun cast a golden light on everything, making me wish I had a little longer to explore everything.  Instead, I had to catch the train back to Toyama.

It actually turns out I really love the train.  It should seem like a huge waste of time to chug along the tracks on a local train.  Instead, I find it really relaxing.  You get to think, and read, and enjoy the scenery.  For about two hours I was planning to keep things simple and just take the shinkansen to get to Nagano.  It would have saved me four hours, but cost twice as much.  Since I don't get paid that kind of money, it's just as well I like the train.

Nagano was...not what I was expecting.  I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, other than the fact that my distant cousin had been living there and seemed to like it a lot.  It once hosted the Olympics and grew out of a temple district, and that seemed good enough to justify a trip.  Also, the bus back was half the price of getting to Toyama, and should have taken half the time, although I've now been on this bus for longer.. it turns out the traffic getting back from Golden Week is a pain, and I maybe should have splashed out on the Shinkansen this time.  Oh well, we're almost back to Shinjuku now, and it's given me time to work on this blog.

The final flavor in my sampler of cities is Matsumoto.  I argued with myself as to whether or not to spend the time and money to see Matsumoto.  The main draw there was their castle, which unlike most of the castles I've seen, is black, and yes, that IS a legit reason to want to see a castle.

But when I went looking for what else there was going on in Matsumoto, I found out they had an exhibition of Kusama Yayoi's art...which I'll talk about in a later post.  Suffice it to say that this was enough to decide it for me, since her museum in Tokyo is still sold out three months in advance.  Instead, I want to take a break here to talk about food. I'm giving my very brief time in Matsumoto top honors, because it had something that none of the other places I visited had - easy access to fast food.  When I walked out of Matusmoto Station McDonald's was waiting right across the street.  Macca's is my breakfast of choice when I'm traveling, mostly because I'm lazy AF and usually it's convenient.  Not so on this trip - there NEVER seemed to be one close by.  Since it was too late for breakfast, I stopped for lunch at the Coco Curry that was just around the corner before hoofin' it up the street to the art museum.  This had been another rarity, even though in Tokyo I can almost use it as a landmark.  Which just goes to show that traveling is all well and good, but sometimes it's just nice to stay home.

How to Celebrate Like a Mongolian

As my original 6 readers know, before I moved here I lived in China for two years, and I've had the chance to experience the madness that is Chinese New Year three times (twice in Shanghai, and last year in Harbin).  It was my absolute favorite time to be in Shanghai, because as long as you didn't go to Yuyuan Gardens there wasn't a single crowd to be found (unfortunately the same can't be said of Harbin).

And I haven't even really done the crowd justice...

While I have a complicated relationship with China, I have to say that they know how to throw a party.  Even with the city emptied out (because everyone goes back to their ancestral home in the countryside) Shanghai sounded like a warzone for about two weeks.  There are three nights in particular that the fireworks go off for pretty much 24 hours straight - lunar new year's eve, three nights later, and seven nights later (the night honoring the Money God, which - as you might expect - people really go nuts for).  My second year in Shanghai, I went out on this night at around a quarter to midnight and wandered the streets, watching everything go off around me.  It was mayhem, and I loved it.

I don't know if you've realized this from last week's post, but Tsagaan Sar is nothing like that.  The only thing that it really has in common with Chinese New Year is getting together with your family.  Some of our kids here did go out to the countryside, but not all of them.  There IS an exchange of money, but it's more formal, more ceremonial.  In China, you hand out red envelopes to all sorts of people - maids, drivers, children, etc.  If I understood Engrish right, in Mongolia it's about a hierarchy, and most people end up getting back about the same about that they give away (all in crisp new bills), and you present it on top of a blue khadag (silk scarf) stretched over your arms.

But unless you've got some good Mongolian friends or some REALLY awesome students (ahem), you probably won't get to experience the airag drinking, snuff-sniffing, ger-tastic fun of Tsagaan Sar firsthand.  So this is how I recommend celebrating:

1. Pay off your debts:  By Tsagaan Sar eve, you're supposed to pay back any money you're owing.  Since my credit cards have been paid off, the only person I was indebted to was Engrish - 30,000 tugrugs for the ticket to see Arga Bileg.  Sadly, I didn't get to give her the money until three days into the new year.  Ah well, better late than never!

2. Take a hike:  It's supposed to be lucky to meet the sun (in a non-vampiric way) the first day of the year:

"We're up all night 'til the sun
We're up all night to get some
We're up all night for good fun
We're up all night to get lucky"  
(^See what I did there?)

Now supposedly which hillside you go up to meet the sun depends on the time or the year or something having to do with your birth.  I say just go up the nearest one, especially if it has an ovoo.  Dress warmly.

3. Clean that filthy hole you call home:  Okay, seriously, as sad as it is, I have a really hard time actually cleaning my own apartment.  I blame this on having a maid for a year and a half in Shanghai.  I'll get part of it done, and then wander off and play around on the internet, or something equally important.  So that was what I did most of Tsagaan Sar Saturday - I swept, swiffed, wet-swiffed, did the dishes, did the laundry...

No, I didn't kill the nest of dustbunnies living behind my headboard.  They're just too damn cute.

4. Cook a big meal: You're supposed to stuff your face during Tsagaan Sar, so who am I to say no?  Supposedly if you enter the new year hungry, you might go hungry throughout the whole year.  While that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing in some of our cases, I say when in Rome, do a Roman.  For my big Tsagaan Sar dinner, I followed the tradition of cooking white foods...buuuuuuuuut...Romans or no Romans, I believe enchiladas are a good food for every occasion, and Tsagaan Sar is no exception.  Mine just happened to be chicken (white) enchiladas with pepper jack (white) cheese and salsa verde (green is close enough to white, right???).

5. Finally - Have your nearest and dearest over for dinner:  Blondie, Champ, Wallflower, and another friend came over and partook of my enchiladas, making my Tsagaan Sar dinner just about complete.  The only thing lacking was Engrish, who is basically Mongolian and would have given a certain kind of legitimacy to my bastard celebration.  However, she was still with her Mongolian families having thousands of buuz (steamed mutton dumplings).

She may be practically Mongolian, but by that point she was wishing she was at my place eating enchiladas.

Snow Bunnies

Engish - a hobbit amongst elves

Today - which is apparently a very auspicious day for people who believe in such things - was the first ever Ulaanbaatar Winter Festival.  When Engrish, Blondie, Champ, and I are old and grey, we just might be telling our grandkids (or great-great niblings) about the winter of 2014, and how we were at UB's very first winter festival.  We school-dwellers set out from the teachers' apartments with the newest newbies, Young and Love, for the Tuul River bright and early at 10:30 yesterday morning.  We should have known better - as much as I love Mongolia, things rarely start on time, especially when it's the first time - but I was really excited about this festival.  Ice archery!  Knucklebone shooting!  And the thing I was looking forward to most - dogsledding!

If you're not wondering about where at the river I was talking about, you should.  Where I come from, you just don't go out "on the ice" unless you're ready to get wet, because there's no guarantee that it will be able to hold you.  It just doesn't get that cold in the mid-Midwest, and I've fallen into the creek on my parent's place at least a couple of times in winter.  On the other hand, I know from experience that back in Iowa I can walk home from it and not have to have my toes amputated from frostbite.  Now, if the ice on the Tuul River is thick enough to drive on (and it is - Enkhaa and I were joking last week that if the traffic was bad we could always take the river), it's probably safe for even someone as Rubenesque as me, but the cracks in the ice and the bitter cold (around -30C) did make me consider how bad the frostbite would be before I got home.

We wandered around, watching them set up, during which we lost Young/Love (they went home because it was kinda cold and nothing was happening), but it was kind of interesting watching everything get set up.  We were particularly fascinated by seeing them get the archery course ready.  This is Uriankhai archery, a kind of Mongolian archery that - from what I can tell, involved shooting targets (snowballs, in this case) that are lying on the ground.  The problem was that there wasn't a back side to the course, so we spent some time trying to figure out which direction they were supposed to shoot from:  Engrish - in her rush to find Enkhaa at one point - nearly walked between the archers and their target.  The good thing is that if she had, the arrows are blunted.

Since my New Year's Resolution - if I believed in them - is to elf myself, I was tempted to get Enkhaa to ask them to teach me to shoot.  Engrish, on the other hand, was more interested in the knucklebone shooting....

These guys were shooting while things were still setting up, but later it became an open invitational, and everyone, including foreigners, were allowed to participate.  Engrish was a little too late to sign up for it, and because she's a nice polite Canadian she didn't force the issue.  Manners are overrated, and since I'm a loud American I offered to convince someone to let her take a shot, but she insisted it was fine.  So now I have to go find some shagai in town so we can try it out on the school ice rink.

Dogsledding is one of the things that's been on my list for a while now.  A friend got to do it here last winter, and I passed up the opportunity because I was supposed to be running an activity at church that Saturday.  Since November I've been trying to figure out a way to do it with the French guy in town that runs it, but his tours were too long and expensive.  I was determined to get in one of those sleds yesterday - and then I didn't.  Engrish got the brochure from the Mongolian guy who runs this company (ie, this isn't the French guy), and it's way more reasonably priced.  I might not get to do it this winter, but I'm definitely staying for another year, so it's definitely going to happen.

The events were great, but it was just a really good experience.  It was great getting out of our apartments and breathing some fresh (-ish) cold air (and - as Bear Grylls says - you burn twice as many calories at extreme temperatures!)  Seeing the kids all bundled up was too freaking cute, and I may have said, "I can't put my arms down!" more than once.  It also amazes me to see how well the Mongolians have adapted - and continue to live with - the cold.  Unlike some places where I have lived that are extremely hot, they keep living and thriving in the cold, instead of just staying inside for the worst of it.  Engrish and Blondie followed up the morning by even more walking around in the cold as we headed up to Gandan ONE LAST TIME after thawing out at California's (where Engrish was glad NOT to eat buuz!)  I STILL didn't get to see sand painting, so I guess it just wasn't meant to be, but I'll say it again, a monastery is never a bad place to be during a holiday, especially when it's a very auspicious day.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

So far, I am not impressed with Tsagaan Sar.  Don't get me wrong, I understand it is family time, not a flashy festival involving wild and crazy stuff (unless you count sniffing one another's snuff bottles), but I was hoping for a little bit more.  Maybe it's Engrish's fault for suggesting earlier in the year that I might have students invite me to their homes.  I did try to hint to some of my classes that such an invitation would not go amiss - I even promised not to judge them if their buuz (mutton dumplings) were ugly, which is what Mongolians do - but, alas, none of them took the bait.  So I had resigned myself to a couple of quiet days before Sunday's more exciting events.

Then, I read this on InfoMongolia's upcoming events:
9:20 am Chief of Staff of the Office of the President of Mongolia P. Tsagaan and office officials to visit the Gandantechinlen monastery attending "Mandal" spiritual and ritual ceremony.

I've bitched before about how hard it is to find out what's going on in UB, and one of the things I've been wanting to see, ESPECIALLY since I didn't get to see it while I was in Tibet, was sand painting.  One of my students told me they'd seen it at Gandan once, so I made a wild guess, hoping that the ceremony in question was the painting of a mandala.

As I was leaving the apartment WAY too early (around 8, since I wasn't sure if the buses would run or if I could catch a taxi), I noticed that all the ovoos that I could see (quite a few, up here on the Hill) were surrounded by people.  I wanted to run up to the monument and see what was going on, but I was afraid that I would lose steam, and the game was afoot (yes, I may have watched the new season of Sherlock recently...)  I asked Enkhaa later what was going on, and he said that it's lucky to meet the first sunrise of the new year.  Damn it.  Well, I went on my way and found that the buses were, in fact running, and eventually made it to the monastery.

I poked my nose in a lot of places that I didn't see the first (and last) time I went to Gandan.  That time, I was on a city tour given by the school, and I was happy just exploring the main temple.  This time I was on a mission.  There was definitely something happening - there was a camera crew there - but I couldn't figure out exactly what.  However, it was kind of nice being there - it brought back memories of Tibet and Bhutan from this summer, and although the Energizer might be disappointed that the only thing I definitely  recognized were the protector gods, everything felt a lot more familiar, and that was nice.

I was giving up and headed for the exit when a Mongolian guy stopped me.  "Can I ask you a question?" he asked.  I passed over the well-worn response that he already had, and, since it was Tsagaan Sar, decided that I'd play nice.  "Sure, one question," I agreed.  He asked where I was from, and in the ensuing conversation I realized that he might be able to answer my question.  So I explained that I was there hoping to see them paint a mandala.  He went and found a monk to ask, and said, Wow, they're doing it today!  HA! - I thought - MY TREK UP HERE HAS NOT BEEN IN VAIN!!!  My new buddy Gampa told me it was supposed to be at 16clock (4pm), and he wasn't sure which building it was supposed to be in, but he showed me which one he thought the monk was talking about.  I chatted with him, happy about my decision not to be a bitch, and left for California (which was miraculously open) to have brunch, where I texted Enkhaa to see if he could drive me to Gandan that afternoon.

Well, part two was no more successful than part one, really.  I poked my nose into even more strange places, including this courtyard, which looked like it had been abandoned for decades and might be a good place to stage a zombie apocalypse film.  I wanted to leave no stone unturned, and I didn't, but I still didn't find any artistic monks.  The best clue I got was that the assembly hall that has the banners leaning against it in the above photo had monks chanting and banging drums and cymbals.  I stopped and listened, taking in the atmosphere (and warming up) for a while before calling Enkhaa, who told me he could come and take me home.  As I'm writing this, I have begun to wonder if perhaps that was the opening ceremony, as it were...according to Wikipedia, a cleansing ceremony including chanting and music is how the mandalas are started.  Unfortunately there is SO little in me right now that wants to go back to Gandan and see if they are working.  I'm going to start cleaning my apartment instead - usually about halfway through the process I want to do something else, so with any luck that will give me the motivation I need to get back out there...

The upshot to the whole fiasco is that, cold aside, there isn't a much better place to be during a holiday than a monastery.  Except possibly on top of the ridge behind my apartment, and since I can't cheat and drive up to the top, that probably wasn't going to happen, anyways.

A New New Year

This is our first of six days off for the Mongolian celebration of Lunar New Year, Tsagaan Sar.  Last Year I was all about getting every bit of use out of my Chinese visa I could, starting with a trip to Harbin during Tsagaan Sar.  If the holiday falls for the right length at the right time next year, I will be off to Greece, so I figured this was the year for me to experience Tsagaan Sar, Mongolian style.

The days leading up to the break are just like such days in any school in America - a total (as Blondie says) "shit show."  Our food drive, which was a little late getting started this year, kept everyone a little bit focused, but by Wednesday, it was pretty futile trying to teach anything, although some of us tried.

The Mongolian teachers had no choice - Wednesday was their big event, the Mongolian culture fair.  There were a few students who set up booths about different cultures, but they were largely about aspects of Mongolian culture.  Since there are a lot more students participating than there are, really, things to research, there was a lot of overlap, but they did a really good job, and I always think it's cool to see the kids in their traditional gear.  I even found out something I've been wondering about.  Mongolians have silk scarves similar to the white ones used in other Tibetan Buddhist cultures, but there are many different colors - most commonly blue, but also white, yellow (for religion and education), green (for nature), and red (for fire).  I've seen a few black ones, and wondered what they meant, and one of my students was finally able to tell me that this is the color you tie to a tree if you are having lots of bad luck.

We also had a performance by our sister school, school 60.  It involved a lot of the usual suspects, and a few unusual ones (a trio of girls who lip-synced to K-Pop in gold sequined dresses, and a group who danced - if I read the styles right - a Bollywood number).  The boys who performed on moriin khuur, the horse head fiddle (an instrument whose story demonstrates why you should never make your woman jealous of your horse), were some of my favorites, and when the student behind me told me he used to play it, I told him he should pick it back up (mostly because smacking him wasn't an option).

The real show stopper, though, was their contortionist.  This girl couldn't have been more than ten years old, and she did pretty much everything I've seen any of the professionals do.  The best part, though, was watching my students flip out - the girl sitting in front of me kept covering her eyes.  It freaked them out that she could bend like that.

The staff dinner was not as great as last year, but I went and had some buuz with Engrish, Champ, and Wallflower anyways.  Teachers are encouraged to dress up in national dress, as well, but since American national dress (t-shirt and jeans) is boring (if comfortable), I wore my eagle hunter coat.  I was on my way out the door when Peppermint told me she wanted to come and participate, too, and after a little discussion we decided she could dress up as my eagle, made possible by the feathers I brought back from the festival.  My students pointed out that I could have used my longer feathers for her tail feathers, and she wanted to kick my ass for not thinking of it myself.  Oh well, maybe next year.

More to come....

Throw Down

For Mongolians, the most wonderful time of the year is NOT Christmas, it's actually Tsagaan Sar - Mongolian New Year.  It's the time when you...well, you're going to find out more in the coming week, but you can read what I wrote about it last year to tide you over, if you like.  What you need to know for now is that there are wrestling tournaments as part of the celebration, and on a whim, Engrish and I decided we needed to go today.  We planned to meet at the Wrestling Palace after I finished church, and since I got there a few minutes before she did, I went ahead and bought the tickets.  This was a bit of a maneuver, because when I went to the KACC office on the side of the building, where tickets are sold, the guy didn't understand me, and sent me to the entrance, where they promptly sent me back to the side.  Eventually I got things sorted out, and ended up with one of the security guys, who was so eager to show me where to sit that he almost missed the fact that I had two tickets and was waiting for minii nites (my friend).

She had mentioned our desire to see some wrestling to our fearless driver, Enkhaa, at some point in the past, and he was bemused.  Why would a couple of white girls want to go watch wrestling?  To which I must say why WOULDN'T we???  To quote my recent Expats Blog contest entry:  "Beautiful strong men in tiny underpants...need I say more?  (See more at: http://www.expatsblog.com/contests/746/n-is-for-nomads)  Apparently it's something men are more into ogli....er, spectating...than women, but that's never been something to stop me.  Of course, I don't think we really realized what a treat we were in for.  I should have - I've recently been fighting with one of my seventh grade girls about changing in the hallway, because she doesn't see anything wrong with changing her clothes in front of God and the whole world.  Well, neither did the wrestlers.  There were strapping young lads in nearly every stage of undress scattered around the palace, and it did my poor, very single heart a WORLD of good!

We wanted to go to the wrestling palace last year, but the opportunity never presented itself.  I actually got to see some wrestling at Naadam, but it was hot and sunny and I'd just had my back messed up by a bunch of Mongolian women forcing themselves onto our bench, so I didn't stay long.  But even if I had, it wouldn't be the same.  The wrestling palace is a much smaller venue than the Naadam stadium, so you feel much closer to the action.  There's a great deal of pageantry involved in a Mongolian wrestling tournament.  When things were finally ready to start, some of the lamas chanted, after which the referees and wrestlers came out onto the "mat" - a round green carpet that covered the floor of the palace.

The names of the wrestlers and their home aimags was announced, if Engrish can be trusted (and since she's practically Mongolian, she generally can).  The wrestlers left the floor, some of them to go back and change into their deel for a later match, and some to merely come back in a few minutes.  Before they start, they "salute" the referees and the Mongolian flag.  Or salute is the best description I can come up with for it - it's actually more graceful, and involves more of the body, as they walk or kind of skip around, gently flapping their arms like an eagle.

I have to admit that I haven't seen much wrestling in my life.  As a band geek, I played at football games and basketball games, but we didn't go to wrestling meets, so the sum of my experience with wrestling comes down to when I couldn't get Shaggy to change the channel as a child and had to watch Hulk Hogan duke it out with Randy Roddy Piper.  This was NOTHING like that (obviously).

For starters, while Mongolian wrestlers have muscles and then some (the shoulders and the legs on these guys!  I swear!), but quite a lot of them had a lot of fat on them, too.  And they weren't paired up according to size - there were very big wrestlers in matches against much more wiry guys.  Engrish and I both wondered how the matches were decided.

The technique seemed different, too - really intense.  They would grapple with each other for what seemed like a really long time, in some matches.  For long periods, their heads would be locked, like a couple of stags, and then they would start spinning, trying to lock a leg around their opponent or simply just throw them off balance.  It truly was "no holds barred;" they had a hold of each others' tops (open fronted, because once upon a time a woman decided to compete - although some of these guys had more boobage than a couple of my girls...) and bottoms.  I was hoping for a wardrobe malfunction at some point, but Engrish pointed out that most of them seemed to be wearing bloomers under their...bloomers.

Then there was the fact that there were LOTS of matches going on at the same time.  It was hard to know where to look.  Engrish and I would pick a couple to watch - occasionally the same one - but it became harder to keep track of them as they moved around the floor.  Wrestlers were constantly hitting the mat.  I found it amazing that nobody got hurt - tribute, I guess, to the refs' hard work (and occasional ass smacking).

The lamas who did the chanting earlier in the afternoon were also the keepers of the winners' brew - airag (fermented mare's milk) - and these fried dough things that you always get served when you visit a ger.  The wrestlers tossed these up into the crowd.  Engrish suggested that it might be lucky to get a treat from the winner.  I suggested that it would have been MORE lucky for them to lay a big wet one on a ginger girl (I've read somewhere that being fire-kissed brings luck), but unfortunately we were sitting in the wrong section to find out.

The truly incongruous thing seemed to me their boots.  Mongolians wrestle in big, ass-kicker boots, which seems funny with their teeny tiny costumes.  It was especially funny to see them walking down the stairs for their next match in just their underpants and boots.  Not that I'm complaining.

Well, we made it to nearly 5 o'clock before Engrish asked if I'd gotten enough photos and 5,000 tugrugs worth of entertainment.  I'd just been thinking to myself that it seemed like the matches were going to go on ALL NIGHT, and since I hadn't had lunch, I was ready to go try my student's restaurant, Korea House (conveniently located behind the wrestling palace).  But I wouldn't hesitate to go again.

The End.

Home for the Holidays

They say there's no place like home for the holidays.  Well, I could probably think of a few places that would have made pretty fine holidays (warm, sunny places), but a promise is a promise, and let me tell you, people, family is far less likely to freak out on you for skipping off on a Himalayan adventure (as I would like to, this summer) if you've paid your dues at Christmas.  And I love my family, so, you know, no big.

Like I mentioned on Saturday, I thought about doing a series of blogs about Omaha, but it didn't happen.  So here's a whirlwind blog of Christmas in Munchkinland.  For starters, you've got my mom and her "peeps."  Every week or so these "ladies who lunch" do lunch - in Glenwood, or elsewhere, and sometimes see a movie.  They're kind of like the G-wood chapter of the Grub Club.  Of course, there are a few less choices in a small Midwestern town of 5,000 than there are in bustling UB, but they have a good time and are always happy to see me, in spite of the fact that I'm a total brat.

Then there's the Winter Quarters temple (oh yeah, and my new haircut.  I was starting to get snarls the likes of which I have not seen since I was ten years old, so I chopped it off and sent it to Locks of Love).  Here in UB, Mormons in good standing are supposed to go to Hong Kong for the temple.  Me, I'm more of a Seoul girl (much cheaper, and oh, the memories), but the Winter Quarters temple is sort of my temple, so of course I had to visit.  And while I was there...

...I had to check out the gingerbread display at the Visitor's Center.  Mormons are sort of into crafty stuff - heck, we were scrapbooking before it was popular (I need a pair of hipster glasses for that statement).  This makes sense - if you're not going to spend your free time boozing and picking up men, you gotta do something (the men of the church play sports - Mormon basketball is one of the world's most dangerous sports, especially if you've got a lot of Tongans and Samoans in your stake).  Anyways, as I was saying, we do crafty stuff, including gingerbread.  Now, when I was a young, innocent single Mormon girl, my singles branch, the good ol' Independence 5th, had a Family Home Evening once a year dedicated to making gingerbread houses for the visitor's center.  They were monstrosities, often made of graham crackers, unless Sister D and Sister P were feeling ambitious and did a whole lot of baking for us (and they often did).  But they were made from scratch, one way or the other.  None of this prefab, cookie cutter gingerbread house business.  As you can see, there were plenty of AWESOME original designs, but also far too many that came out of a box.

 

But then, I couldn't help myself from picking up a prefab gingerbread house to decorate with the Princess.  I mean, she's just so damn adorable.  And just try to stop her from eating that candy.  You know she's thinking about it.  The Princess lives in Utah with my brother Shaggy and his wife, which I find hilariously ironic since I'm the Mormon.  And until I sat down to write this blog I hadn't even considered that it might seem I was trying to indoctrinate my adorable niece into the crafty Mormon lifestyle.  I'm not, Abby, I swear!

I also got the chance to catch up with my high school AP English teacher, Drim.  She's retired now, or else she would have brought me into school to tell her World Lit classes all about my adventures (I know, she's done it to me before).  As it was, she threatened to call the town paper and tell them to do an interview with me, which seems bizarre to me, because even if I AM a little Iowa girl living in Mongolia, to me, that's just what I do.  No big.  After lunch at the Spaghetti Works I took a stroll around the Old Market, and wandered into my favorite part (not least because it is inside), the Passageway.  It sort of reminds me of the galleries of Paris, now that I've been there.

I have had felting on the brain, and decided some felting needles and wool roving would go a ways toward alleviating my night time boredom, so I finally tried needle felting.  Ariel there was my second attempt - I made a dragon for my first, but it didn't turn out as well.  Practice makes perfect, they say.

But the best thing of all about being home is, of course, the kids.  Bunny here was born the Friday before I came home and she is just about as sweet as can be.  I still had my UB cough for a week or so after I got home, so it took me that long to see her.  And it's still a little strange to think that my Babysis had her own baby.

The Dirt Devil is Shaggy's own personal mini-me, in my humble opinion.  Shaggy's hair was never that red, but he DEFINITELY had that mischievous gleam in his eye.  Dirt Devil doesn't talk much yet, but he's got the most infectious giggle.  I'd have packed him up in my suitcase and taken him back, but he's his momma's boy and it would have broken his heart <3 br="br">

And finally, our Princess.  Words can't do her justice, just take a look at my sibling's faces.  She just LOVED her princess dresses from her grandma - she danced around in front of the mirror on her tiptoes while the rest of us laughed so hard we cried.  Like I said.  Too.  Damn.  Cute.  I miss those kids already!