We have done over 12 months in Mongolia (well, not really considering the two months just spent in Australia, and the one month in Thailand, but we have had our house in Mongolia for over 12 months). We are starting to experience events for the second time. Today was the first day of Tsaagan Tsar - the Mongolian New Year. It is interesting to compare our experience of Tsaagan Tsar this year to our experience last year (see here for a reminder). This year we were invited by a good friend, Tseggi, to spend the first day of Tsaagan Tsar with her family. We left our house at midday and headed for a part of the ger districts that I have not visited before. About 15 minutes after we left I remembered that I left my camera at home, and I was kicking myself all day when photo opportunity after photo opportunity presented itself. So the photos included here are just samples of typical Tsaagan Tsar behaviour borrowed from other websites.
The traffic was terrible, but after about 40 minutes we turned off the main road and into the maze of fences that is the ger district. We were visiting Tseggi's oldest sister and her family. It is usually the responsibility of the eldest in the family to host the first day of Tsagaan Tsar. There is a traditional greeting when you see people on the first day of the new year - the eldest is greeted first. There is a particular way of grabbing both arms - the eldest person places their arms of top of yours. Then you lean in and sniff each cheek, while saying something in Mongolian. Chris and I got accustomed to this after a few stumbles.
The house we were visiting had three rooms - kitchen, lounge, sleeping/living. We were all in the sleeping/living room, seated around a big table that had the Tsaagan Tsar centrepiece of a hunk of mutton and a tower of cookies and sweets. The picture below is similar to what we had. They knew that I was vegetarian, so a small selection of vegetarian food had been prepared. We ate well, told some stories (translated by our friend) and otherwise observed the family being jolly. It was just like Christmas Dinner at home, all the family getting together and eating too much.
When the gift-giving started we were surprised when we received some lovely gifts. Chris got a wooden chess set. I recevied a box of beauty face makes made from sheep placenta. Let me quote from the packaging: "The nutrition structure of sheep placenta is closest to human placenta. It also contains numerous nutritional content, which is similar to human placenta and has magic function.....It deeply nourish the skin, replenish aging horny cells, lighten uneven skin color, revive elasticity, redness and whitness of the skin." I will let you know how I go - from the sound of the description I should have skin worthy of a Cate Blanchett advertisement for SK II.
After the gift-giving we got all our warm clothes back on and drove further into the edges of the ger districts to pay a visit to the oldest family relatives. Tsagaan Tsar is about eating and visiting, for three days. The house we went to was almost on the edge of the city, tucked in under a small range of hills. It had a huge yard, with goats, cows, horses and dogs. The weather felt quite mild (-10) so the girls were able to pat the animals. In a stall in the corner was a cow with a small calf. The calf was wrapped up in a special coat. Spring is coming and so are the baby animals. The elderly couple in this house had 10 children, so there was a constant stream of relatives coming through. It is custom to give every visitor a drink, something to eat and a gift. We were included in this ritual, so more gifts went into our car. The girls were loving the lollies everywhere. We discovered at this house that Alesia is capable of holding on to a wee all day, as she refused to use the squat toilet. The mid-afternoon sunlight was fantastic on the snow covered hills and I kicked myself again for not bringing the camera.
We had been invited to a third house, closer to town, but we couldn't leave until we had eaten some of the traditional new years dumplings. These had to be freshly steamed, so we all sat squashed into a big room looking at each other. It was clear that this place was different to the first. The first place was clearly a close family function, with lots of laughter. The second place was friendly but had a clear atmosphere of duty calls. After the dumplings were done we got back into the car and headed towards town. The traffic was still terrible, everyone in the city was heading between houses for Tsaagan Tsar visits. The girls both had lollypops in their mouths. Keira fell asleep with her lollypop tucked into her cheek.
The third house was within site of the city. This was the home of a relative of the SDA Mission translator. Her daughter does ballat with Alesia. She clearly had SDA expatriate friends, as on her special food table she had salad, kidney beans and other vegetarian options. The girls were getting tired out by then, and were happy when someone found Teletubbies on the tv (dubbed in Mongolian, actually probably a good way to learn Mongolian!). At other places the tv had been on Mongolian National Broadcasting, which showed a continual stream of Mongolian cultural singing and dancing, interspersed with big business people in national dress giving their thoughts on the new year (kind of like a continual Carols by Candlight on Christmas Eve in Australia).
We got home at 7pm, feeling like we had been out all day, and absolutely stuffed with food. Terence (Finance Director, an expatriate also) had spent a lot of the day doing accounting in the office, so we introduced him to the concept of re-gifting and left him with part of the chocolates and biscuits that we had been given throughout the day. The visiting and feasting continues on Thursday and Friday, but Keira has picked up a cough so I think we will spend the rest of the holiday hanging out at home.
