Sunday, August 28

San ban oh!  This is how we say hi in Mongolia.  This is my phonetic spelling and not what you'll find in the English/Mongolian dictionaries.  Our language progress has been slow, so this week the mission is to find someone that we can meet with regularly to help us with the basics.  There is no shortage of Mongolians who want to help us in random situations.  From the manager of the gym we go to (that's one specific set of phrases) to the staff at a picnic, we can learn all sorts of words.  The problem is remembering one or two as we're bombarded with multitudes of words and phrases.  Then there is always the question of what the word really means, which can be judged by the faces of the people that we're trying to communicate with.  The learning curve is huge but not insurmountable.

The setting yesterday for our impromptu language lessons was Pam's and my first khorhog.  This was a picnic with many of the staff and their families from ISU.  We  found ourselves on a bus/van turning off the paved road bouncing and shaking our way past gers, Habitat homes, goats, cows, dogs, shaman prayer sites and, we think, Buddist prayer sites.  We finally stopped under some trees next to a wide open space dwarfed by mountains that surrounded the area.  In the open field some Mongolian staff were huddled around what looked like old aluminum milk containers.  Next to them was a grill with sausages smoking away.  When it was decided the food was ready, the milk containers were carried between two haulers to the food table.  There the lids were popped off releasing a great smell of carrots, potatoes, cabbage and mutton.  It reminded us of a boiled New England dinner with just a different kind of meat.  With a long handled ladle and hands to grab leg bones and other anatomical parts of the sheep, the food was pulled out along with hot rocks.  We were then told that holding the hot rocks was good for the health.  So a number of us played the hot potato game tossing the palm size rocks back and forth between our hands.  The food was very good and rich.  The meat was a bit tough but had great flavor.  After eating, out came the vodka which we were told helped to cleanse the system of grease.  Some of us decided that we needed a good cleaning.  The clear liquid became known as grease cutter.  The Mongolian staff got a huge laugh out of the new name for the vodka.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wading in the Tuul River and playing games like ladder golf, which I brought from the States, ultimate frisbee, singing songs from the various national backgrounds and hitting a volleyball.  We're off to the river again today to do a float trip with inner tubes that another staff member brought back from the States.  This week is the 3 day outing for the secondary program that will have us in the mountains doing team building, rock climbing, some academic work and living in gers.  I'll write about that next time.