How Internet Access Works in a Soum

A large packet of info about the English Olympics came from Peace Corps. Finally! This thing was probably mailed 2 weeks ago. I leafed through it with much interest. There was a lot of stuff that we could have been using already. Instead, we had mostly been drilling them from Test Master 1 and Test Master 2.

“Look at this,” I pointed out to my counterpart. “Some volunteers have put old Olympics tests on the internet.”

“Oh that’s good. Do you think we could use them?”

“Yes. If I could get on the internet. Then I could print them out and make the students do them for practice.”

“Well, maybe you can borrow the modem and find it. I’m going to my seminar now.”

The “Olympics” (In Mongolian, it’s called the Олимпиад) is a yearly academic competition which falls in March or April around the break between the third and fourth secondardy school terms. Schools select 9th and 11th-grade students (and teachers) to compete in a variety of academic subjects. As a Peace Corps TEFL volunteer, it was my duty to work with my counterparts - the other English teachers - to select and train the students who would compete in the English part of the competition.

These old tests could be the most useful prep tool. If I could download them, then transfer them to a flash drive, put them on the school computer, and figure out how to get the printer to work, I could print out copies to give to the students. I could even time them. It’d be like a real English Olympics! We could keep some copies in our TEFL curriculum book and use them indefinitely. The only cost to me would be disinfecting my flash drive from the viruses that were on the school computers.

But first I had to get online. There were three Gmobile modems in my village. One belonged to a photographer, one belonged to the physics teacher, and one was the “school modem,” which got passed back and forth between the training manager and the computer science teacher.

The next day, Thursday, I went in to ask the training manager if I could borrow it. She thought about it, and said she needed it because she had to file reports on all the graduating eleventh graders, spreading out a stack of wordy papers with pictures of my eleventh-grade students, looking criminals in profiles compiled by the police. (Mongolian students graduate after the eleventh grade.) She offered to give me the modem this evening, provided I get it back early the next morning, because she needed to report on the graduates by then.

“Erm.” That wasn’t a whole lot of time. Under any conditions, the connection would be so slow it would take at least that to take care of everything I wanted to do. I told her to go ahead and keep it, and finish her work. I’d take it tomorrow afternoon. She agreed.

“The school kitchen’s closed and your hashaa family’s gone. What are you going to eat?”

“I’ll cook in my ger.”

“Why don’t you have dinner with us tonight?”

“OK.”

Dinner at the training manager’s house was chaotic and noisy, with five young children running around in a small living room kicking over toy cars. One of the boys had a sawed-off plastic rifle.

“What happened to this?” I indicated the missing barrels.

“No, it shoots better that way,” he told me.

Who takes the time to saw off a toy gun?

The evening ended with us lying on our bellies fiddling with Rubix cubes. I managed to solve one, for the first time ever, by the novel method of disassembling and reassembling it. Why has no one thought of this before? Honestly though, it wasn’t actually that much easier than doing it the traditional way. By the time I was done 3 hours had passed.

I told her husband, the art teacher, in passing that I would finish off my chicken tomorrow. He was really excited by the thought of chicken (or probably anything other than mutton) so I invited him for lunch.

The next day I made fried chicken. I called the art teacher but he didn’t answer. After lunch I dropped some chicken off with his kids and went back to school to do more test prep. I didn’t see the training manager around, so on the way home I went back to the house to inquire as to the parents’ whereabouts. Their oldest son shot off some rapid Mongolian explanation of which the only significant word I understood was the name of another county. So, did they skip town?

Back in my ger, I tried to contact the computer teacher, physics teacher, and photographer, but none of them responded, either to calls or text messages. It was quite possible they were all in the countryside somewhere out of range of the network. After all, the break had started so they weren’t obliged to stay put at school. Obviously, I should find something else to do tonight.

To my surprise, the accountant and training manager showed up at my home while I was sawing wood. They helped me saw. T.M. also told me the modem was at school, locked up, and would it be acceptable to borrow it tomorrow? She was very busy. I agreed. No doubt she did need it more than me.

The next day, Saturday, I didn’t see her. The physics teacher showed up at school though. A very sweet young lady, she poked her head in the English classroom to say, “Hi! Good morning!” After the pleasantry I asked if she had her modem. She gave a Mongolian explanation that I didn’t really understand and suggested I ask the TM. I called the training manager.

I was coldly greeted by a recording: “The customer’s phone is turned off.”

“Yaanaa…” The students giggled at my use of a Mongolian interjection.

Later I ran into the TM again, and was again told to wait one more day. I did. On Sunday the TM’s room was locked all day. I ran into her once.

“I’ll give it to you when I go home. There’s so much work to do.”

“Did you eat the chicken?”

“Yes!” She grinned. “It was delicious!”

“Wasn’t it cold by the time you got it?”

“No, it was fine.”

My students went home to lunch but didn’t come back for afternoon study. There wasn’t much for me to do there, so I was about to leave when two 12-year old boys burst into the room with the modem. As I took it they informed me I needed to bring it back to school at 10AM the next day.

I’d used these Gmobile modems a few times before. I hurried home, because I knew it couldn’t get a connection inside the school. It worked much better in my ger. But even then working with it required skill and patience, because at its best, it was minimally acceptable by American standards. The potency of its signal varied greatly depending on location. I’d discovered from experience that the best spot was in the northeast quarter of my ger about 1 meter off the floor. I began stacking boxes on a chair to bring it to the required height.

Previously, I’d had to install the software and configure it. Then, each time I borrowed one of the three different modems, I had to call the owner to help change the username, password, and other settings, blah blah blah. But I’d saved them all now. So I hoped I could get on quickly today. Nevertheless, I knew there were always some false starts before the connection actually worked.

So it was today. The signal still wasn’t very good. Eventually I got a better signal by raising the computer up a few inches. Now I had to use it standing up. But even then the signal wasn’t very good. It took a few false starts to connect successfully. Even when a strong spot is found and the computer is kept still, signal strength fluctuates quite a bit. And if it’s weak to begin with it will spontaneously disconnect after you’ve connected. This is what happened, several times. I jiggled the position of the computer carefully as I tried to connect. After I connected, the speed was still a problem. My homepage is Google, and several times it failed to load because the computer took too long. At one point I accidentally hit “disconnect” on the modem screen. This is bad, because for whatever reason the modem only works the first time you start it. If you try to connect again after closing it, it won’t connect properly and gives you a “retry” message; you have to restart the computer for the modem to reconnect properly. (Thank goodness this doesn’t apply to when the modem disconnects itself randomly.)

I was relieved when Google finally, completely, loaded. It was now a half hour since I’d plugged the modem in. Now I had to go through that again with Gmail. “The remote computer did not respond. Response time timed out. DNS lookup failed. The server sent no data. Please reload later.” When it finally began to load I rushed to click “Load Basic HTML version” or else I would get stuck in email sign-in limbo. When my inbox came up, it was loaded with stuff, most of which I would never read. I checked about 20 items and clicked delete. Uh-oh. The computer couldn’t handle it. I came up with a blank page. I tried reloading the old inbox, but that failed, and when I clicked back all the way to the Google homepage, that failed too. I had to close the browser and go through the process of opening it, loading Google, and loading Gmail again. And for some reason, I immediately tried to delete more email, which messed up my session AGAIN. Why had I been so dumb? This time it took even longer to start up again, with even more failed attempts to load Google and Gmail. I wasn’t counting, but probably 12 or so. Loading a webpage is like a form of gambling. You hope that you’re lucky enough to click on the link at the moment the signal surges; otherwise, I don’t care, it can slack off as much as it wants while I’m merely VIEWING the page.

When I got back on, I merely overlooked the junk and managed to read several emails. One was about some picture posted on Facebook. I couldn’t load the actual picture, but a lot of people had posted that they hated it. I typed a comment, “My connection was too bad to see the picture, but judging by the other comments, I probably wouldn’t like it.” But it wouldn’t post. So I did it again. And then when I loaded the next webpage, I saw,

“This page could not be loaded because you are not connected to the internet.”

What? Sure enough, I had been spontaneously kicked off. And the signal indicator wasn’t even weak. By now, I’d been “using” the internet for 1.5 hours and had managed to read 10 emails. It hadn’t been THIS bad before. When I reconnected I started slowly moving my computer around. My usual policy is never to move the computer once I get a stable connection because the modem is like a spoiled child and even the slightest change will make it throw a tantrum. But the signal was so awful, it was worth doing anything to improve it. Unfortunately, I only managed to lose it completely. I took the computer outside to see if it’d work there. A little better. But not good enough, and it was getting pretty cold.

I thought it was about time I give up, because there was no way I could get on PBWorks to download the tests at this rate. But I started it up one more time in my ger, and BINGO! It worked. The signal was at the strongest I’d seen it. For the next hour or so I surfed, very slowly, but I did achieve a few searches and found some useful information. And then suddenly the connection dropped, again, for no reason. And I still hadn’t gotten those tests downloaded. After I got it going again, my computer froze. I had to restart it. That brought up a blue screen. “An error has occurred. Blah blah blah. Your stuff’s alright though, so just go ahead and press ENTER to continue.”

I started up, but this time there was no indication of a signal. I stared at the icon on my desktop: EasyWirelessNet. “B----,” I thought. There will be no old Olympics tests to practice with.

And that is how internet access works where I am.

This is Your Brain on Fire

My life has changed so much it’s hard to remember how I used to be. It all started when I moved to a strange, unfamiliar place. I had grown up in sunny, warm California. I never worried about staying warm. It just came naturally. But then I joined the Peace Corps and moved thousands of miles away from home to Mongolia. I didn’t recognize anything and didn’t know anyone. I felt out of place, but wished that I could integrate. Little did I know where that would lead.

The first time I used fuel was soon after I arrived at site. My hashaa family had given me a bin filled with sheep dung. At first I was grossed out because, seriously, it came right out of some animal’s butt, but the Mongolians assured me that it was dry and safe to handle. “Just try it,” they said. I decided I would, even though I felt warm enough without it, just because I was eager to be culturally sensitive and didn’t want to disappoint them by turning it down. My hashaa dad showed me how to light the dung. It was just OK, I thought.

I didn’t use any more for a while. Sometimes my hashaa dad came in and made fires for me. Then he told me I should learn to make fires myself. So I started using dung when I was alone, making fires in my ger. First it was a pain in the ass to get used to, but as I got better at it, and could get more flames from my poo, I even started to like making fires. I looked forward to practicing every night.

Later I ran out of dung. The school came to the rescue, but this time they didn’t bring dung, but wood. I mastered wood too. The Mongolians were all excited to see how good I was at starting fires. When I saw how proud they were, I felt happy. Like I belonged now.

I thought that I just did it because I wanted to, and I could control it. But sometimes I burned wood too much, and had to take off my clothes because the ger got TOO hot. Soon I was making a fire every night. Then I started making one in the morning to get going. Finally I lit them in the middle of the day. One day I woke up shivering. I didn’t WANT to make a fire, I NEEDED to make a fire. In desperation I crawled to my stove, fiddling with candles and matches and paper with shaking hands until the wood caught and I breathed a sigh of relief. I was lighting fires more and more, and I was lighting bigger fires. A regular fire just didn’t have the same effect anymore. I felt cold all the time. And when I didn’t have any fire at all, watch out! The first sign was that I could see my breath. Then my toes got numb, I started to shiver uncontrollably, and finally standing water in my ger froze. But most of all, there was an overwhelming, uncontrollable urge to start another fire.

This led to some desperate situations. One day my hashaa family left for UB when my wood ran out. Oh shit, I thought. Oh shit, I thought again. I had to get some fast, but they’d left the saw and axe inside their locked house. I’d never been a beggar, but that gray afternoon I went from neighbor to neighbor until someone gave me their tools, and miserably I sawed away, with a handle-less two-person saw. But when I finally set the match to that magnificent timber, I felt all the effort had been worth it.

But even wood wasn’t enough. One morning I woke up and the water in my boiler-thingy, that I’d just boiled the night before, was ice. I talked to my hashaa family. They asked if I’d ever tried the hard stuff. You know. Coal.

I didn’t want to do coal. I’d always thought coal was ugly, dirty, and dangerous. I’d seen it used on the streets of UB. I’d heard stories about people even dying from CO poisoning. But at that moment I was so desperate to stay warm I didn’t care, and said yes. After all, when I looked around, all the people in my sum were doing it, and they were all right, right?

Now most nights I sit in my room, hoping that my smoke detector’s batteries don’t die at just the wrong moment. My hands and coat are dirty from coal dust and I bet smoke inhalation is the reason I’m coughing now. Sometimes I wonder what my friends and family would think. Everything I’d believed in and held dear - moderation, non-pollution, renewable resources - all of that went down the drain. I betrayed it all for just a few hours of warmth. Right now I’m warm and it’s easy to say I can deal with a little cold. But deep inside I know that in a few hours, once the shivering starts, I’ll reach for my lighter and coal bin like always.

My advice to you is, don’t make the same mistake I did. It’s much easier never to start. I know. I wish that I could quit. Just say “no” to coal.

Women's Day

Last Thursday, March 8, was Women’s Day (Эмэгтэйчүүдийн Баярын Өдөр) in Mongolia. As could be expected it was celebrated with lots of food and vodka and dancing teachers. Dancing teachers in themselves are worthy of a blog post. Never since I came here have I wished I had a video camera as much as when I saw a bunch of middle-aged Mongolians in suits raving to a techno version of the Für Elise. However I’d like to take this opportunity though to point out why we should celebrate Mongolian women, because it is women who run the country. Women here are teachers, governors, doctors, lawyers, business owners - in fact, they are overrepresented in nearly every profession. Why is this?

Part of the reason has to do with Mongolia’s traditional economy. Until recently in history, almost everyone in the country herded animals or was a Buddhist monk. Both boys and girls do work in herding families, but the boys’ role is greater. When the Socialists dumped a national education system on Mongolia, most families figured that if there were going to educate one of their kids, they would send the daughter, and keep the son home to do manly ranch work. So more women finished school, more women went to college, and more women got jobs. When the professional sector appeared, it was filled with women. A substantial part of the population is still involved in herding, so the trend continues.

The gap begins early. In  my upper grade classes, there are always more girls than boys. One class has 6 boys and 19 girls. Mongolians aren’t giving birth to girls at a 4:1 ratio over boys. The boys are dropping out of school.

My school has 36 faculty (at least on the contact info sheet). 8 of them (including me) are men. The other 28 are women. That means they outnumber us almost 4 to 1. Moreover, the really powerful positions are all women. The school director (principal / superintendent) is a woman, as are both of the training managers (the teachers’ immediate bosses, who oversee them and approve all lesson plans). Our past few directors and training managers were also women. Of 4 doctors I’ve met, 3 are women. Our soum governor is a woman. Men are shepherds, drivers, handymen, watchmen, miners, welders, stokers, etc. - mostly shepherds. Or they’re unemployed. Only when you get to the very top (parliamentary representatives, for example) do men dominate again.

One consequence of this is relationships in Mongolia are very mismatched status-wise. In most countries people marry people of equivalent education and income. If they don’t, it’s usually the man who’s higher status. In Mongolia it’s very much the opposite. Women are usually better-educated and make more money than their husbands. Of the male teachers I mentioned above, 4 are married to other teachers, 1 is dating another teacher, 1 is dating a student (a UNIVERSITY student, if you were wondering), and 1 is married to the governor (even the governor can’t resist a sexy teacher). Obviously 23 of the women are going to be unable to marry another teacher. One is married to a bank clerk and the rest that I know about are married to herders, drivers, and school workers (not teachers). One of our teachers, who went to the National University of Mongolia (the top school in the country), is married to one of the men who, if I recall correctly, maintains the furnace at school, and who presumably never went to college. In the US it would be really bizarre for an Ivy League graduate to marry a guy without any college education. But it happens in Mongolia.

Nevertheless, everybody is married. Why aren’t there instead a bunch of lonely old teachers dreaming of an equitable match? Because in Mongolia everyone wants you to get married, now. People here (in the countryside) tend to marry by their early twenties, marry the first person they date, and marry quickly (i.e., we’ve been dating for 4 months, let’s get married). Ironically, this is fueled by the lack of educated men, because everyone is in a hurry to put a lock on the first decent man they meet. It’s like an arms race, except instead of being the first person to detonate a nuclear weapon, you must be the first person to marry that guy who just came back from the city with a degree. If you can’t, you find a nice guy among the herdsmen, lest you end up with an unemployed alcoholic (which are unfortunately common in many places).

Of all those 36 teachers, only 2 are neither married nor engaged: myself and one 26-year-old woman. Unsurprisingly, a few teachers have begun to ask if I would marry her. They could be joking, but I’m not sure. What sane woman, already past her early twenties, would not jump at the golden opportunity of a man with a degree and job being dumped right next to her? (In any case, she herself has shown no interest in me.)

So let’s celebrate women and all the hard work they do, and hope more men get their act together!

MWW 14: Хадаг

Cyrillic	хадаг
Transcription	hadag
IPA	[χa.tǝk]
Layman’s Pronunciation	HAH-duck
Translation	silk scarf
In Genghis Khan’s time it was qadaγ.

A хадаг (hadag - often transliterated khadag) is a silk scarf that has ritual significance in Mongolia. Usually they’re the color of a summer’s sky - or the Word-of-the-Week table above. There are also golden-yellow ones (for religious offerings), white ones (for high honors), and red and green ones. They also sport Mongolian designs whose cultural significance I can’t begin to speculate on.

Hadag of different colors

Хадаг play a part in many ceremonies. During Tsagaan Sar, they’re usually presented to one’s elders. They also appear in welcoming ceremonies. When I first arrived at my training site and at my permanent site, I was given a хадаг (and a bowl of айраг). Once you get a хадаг, though, it’s yours; you can’t reuse one someone gave you as a gift to someone else. You can give it to nature though. Хадаг are frequently seen in large numbers tied to (sacred?) trees or to овоо. I’ve also seen drivers with хадаг spread across the top of the windshield, held up by the shades / mirror.

Close up of a hadag

Hadag can be tied to just about anything worthy of recognition - in this case, a  ram sculpture on a rock outcrop  overlooking the road near Tsetserleg, Arkhangai Province.

MWW 13: Бууз

Cyrillic	бууз
Transcription	buuz
IPA	[pʊ:ts]
Layman’s Pronunciation	BODES
Translation	large steamed meat dumpling
In Genghis Khan’s time it was buuja.

Buuz is one of Mongolia’s chief dishes. To quote a conversation one of my friends had,

Bryce:                          What is buuz?

Mongolian teachers:      It is a Mongolian national food.

Bryce:                          I know, but what is it made of?

To answer that last question, buuz is made of flour, water, meat, and usually onions. The meat is finely chopped and mixed with finely chopped onions, sometimes seasoning, and whatever other optional ingredients you want to add. The dough is rolled into little circles and filled with the meat mixture. Then you pinch the top to seal it. (Mongolian women usually pinch the top in one of several neat, floral-looking patterns. This is notoriously difficult for Peace Corps volunteers to do.) Then you steam it.

The buuz above is pinched along a long seam. You can see some nice pictures of more typical top-pinched buuz here:

• http://hazarainmongolia.wordpress.com/tag/buuz/
• http://www.teatime-blog.com/2005/01/01/

Buuz is usually made without yeast, but it can be made with yeast. In this case it is called мантуун бууз (mantuun buuz) after мантуу (mantuu), a kind of Mongolian steamed bread.

Buuz is stereotypically Mongolian, and is eaten throughout the year, but it has a special place in Tsagaan Sar. It can be compared to turkey. Turkey is easy to find in America and scarce in most other places (including Mongolia), and is eaten throughout the year in sandwiches but takes center stage during Thanksgiving. In the case of buuz, my hashaa family made and froze 1,600 buuz in preparation for the holiday.

бууз                 чимхэх
buuz                 chimheh
[pʊ:ts              ’tʃ^him.xex]

BODES           CHIM-khekh
to pinch buuz

Бууз                чимхэж          чадах уу?
Buuz                chimhej           chadah            uu?
[pʊ:ts              ’tʃ^him.xetʃ        tʃ^hat. ’xʊ:]
BODES           CHIM-khej      chat-KHOH?
Can you pinch buuz?

Чадна             шүү!
Chadna           shüü!
[’tʃ^ha.dǝn         ʃʉ:]
CHAD-uhn      shoe!

Yes I can!

Яамар                        муухай           бууз!    Чадахгүй.
Yaamar            muuhai            buuz!    Chadahgüi.
[’ja:mǝr            ’mʊ:χæ           pʊ:ts.   tʃ^ha.dǝx.’kʊ:]
YAH-mer         MOO-kha        bodes!  Chah-dukh-GOO.
What an ugly buuz! You can’t (pinch).

PS: I had been called to the capital by Peace Corps for an emergency drill when I was updating about Tsagaan Sar. Then my ride back showed up while I was working on the blog. So, buuz and hadag didn't get posted, and tsagaan was scheduled to be posted before I finished typing, so I added more to it just now.

---

Read More

Buuz recipe on All Mongolian Recipes: http://www.mongolfood.info/en/recipes/buuz.html

MWW 12: Сар

Cyrillic	сар
Transcription	sar
IPA	[sar]
Layman’s Pronunciation	SAHR
Translation	month; moon
In Genghis Khan’s time it was sar-a.

There are twelve months in a year, and coincidentally “month” is the twelfth word in my series of Mongolian words.

It’s not uncommon for the words “moon” and “month” to be the same in many languages. In fact, the English words “moon” and “month” are closely related - but you probably guessed from the fact that they share most of the same letters. Japanese spells both with the character 月, but pronounces it differently when talking about the moon (tsuki) or about a month (gatsu/getsu). But that’s only because it borrowed gatsu/getsu from Chinese. I presume that before that tsuki was used to mean month as well.

Сар appears in the names of all the months:

Нэг сар           January

Хоёр сар        February

Гурван сар    March

Дөрвөн сар    April

Таван сар      May

Зургаан сар   June

Долоон сар    July

Найман сар   August

Есөн сар        September

Арван сар     October

Арван нэгэн сар       November

Арван хоёр сар         December

Incidentally, I just gave you the numbers one through twelve - in their attributive forms, at least. The months also have traditional names using the 12 animals of the zodiac.

Хулгана сар   mouse month

Үхэр сар         cow month

Бар сар           tiger month

Туулай сар     rabbit month

Луу сар          dragon month

Могой сар     snake month

Морь сар       horse month

Хонь сар        sheep month

Бич сар          monkey month

Тахиа сар       chicken month

Нохой сар      snake month

Гахай сар       pig month

Сар is a popular element in names as well - all girls’ names, as far as I know. Here are some examples:

Сарантуяа    “Moonbeam”
Сарангэрэл   “Moonlight”
Саранчимэг  “Moon adornment”

In each of these examples, the -ан- is what is sometimes called the “n-stem” or the “hidden n,” which usually appears in certain oblique cases, or when the noun is used attributively (as in the names above). Some nouns have it, some don’t. You just have to memorize it as you go, because I have yet to see a Mongolian dictionary that tells you which nouns have hidden ns.

More:

бал сар            honeymoon (a literal translation)

нар сар            a pumpkin ("sun moon"?)   

There's also сар шувуу "a buzzard," which I thought meant moon bird, but it turns out a сар with a different etymology means "buzzard" by itself, and the шувуу (literally bird) may have been added to remove the ambiguity.

Цагаан Сар хоёр сарт болдог.
Tsagaan Sar hoyor sart boldog.
[ts^ha’ga:n sar xɔjǝr sart^h pɔɬtǝk]
tsa-GAHNG sahr HOY-er sart BOL-duck.
White month two month.DATIVE become.HABITUAL.
Tsagaan Sar happens in February.

Tsagaan Sar

Tsagaan Sar, the biggest holiday of the Mongolian year, is the Mongolian version of Lunar New Year familiar from other East Asian cultures. As such its date varies from year to year according to the moon. This year it was scheduled for February 22-24. This is later than Chinese New Year, so they must be looking at different moons, I guess. That date is approximate though, as it really starts the night of Feb. 21 and then fades out through March. Like Christmas in America, the "Tsagaan Sar season" actually begins even earlier when you take into account all the preparation that goes into play. Over a week before it began, I helped my hashaa family make 1600 buuz. The primary mode of celebration is by visiting people's houses and gorging oneself in a way that would embarrass Thanksgiving. For example, I visited 26 or 27 households (I've forgotten) and probably ate over 100 buuz over the 6 days beginning on Feb. 21. I was actually a bit overenthusiastic, because I later found out most people only visited a half dozen houses or so, but in my ignorance I ambitiously attempted to visit every teacher. Not that anyone is complaining.

A Tsagaan Sar table arrangement: boov, sheep's back, vodka, juice, fruit,  kimchi (replacing traditional pickled vegetables), potato salad, and buuz

Another setup. Notice on the back wall, the horsehead fiddle and the Chinggis Khaan tapestry. Half the homes I've been to have one of these tapestries.

L-R: a boov pyramid, sheep's back, and bottle of vodka - perhaps the 3 most important items

An urn of airag

An ornamental snuff bottle and purse/wallet

People at a Tsagaan Sar feast

One of the highlights was receiving a new deel from my hashaa family, on which people proceeded to spill tea, airag, and vodka. Another one was when my counterpart took me to visit her inlaws, who are camel ranchers. So, I got to ride a camel named "Lik."

Me, wearing a deel and riding a camel

MWW 11: Цагаан

Cyrillic	цагаан
Transcription	tsagaan
IPA	[tsha.ʀa:ɴ]
Layman’s Pronunciation	tsa-GAAHNG
Translation	white
In Genghis Khan’s time it was caγan.

This time I present you with a batch of four words. In honor of Цагаан Сар (Tsagaan Sar), Mongolia’s biggest holiday, which started on February 22 and fades out over this month, all four words are related to Tsagaan Sar in some way. The first one is the first word in the name Цагаан Сар: цагаан, which means “white.” Цагаан also appears in some set phrases:

цагаан алт	white gold	platinum
цагаан архи	white alcohol	vodka
цагаан баавгай	white bear	polar bear
цагаан борз	?	mistletoe
цагаан будаа	white grain	rice (cf. хар будаа “black grain,” and шар будаа “yellow grain,” both meaning “millet”)
цагаан бурхан	white god / Buddha	smallpox
цагаан гаа	?	ginger
цагаан газар	white earth / place	plain, steppe
цагаан даавуу	white cotton	pajamas
цагаан идээ	white food	dairy products
Цагаан нуур	white lake	name of several lakes and sums throughout Mongolia
цагаан самбар	white board	whiteboard
цагаан санаа	white thought	benevolence
цагаан сэтгэл	white feeling	benevolence
цагаан толгой	white head / hill	the alphabet
цагаан тугалга		tin (cf. хар тугалга, “lead”)
цагаан хоол	white meal	vegetarian food
цагаан хоолой	white throat	windpipe
Хятадын цагаан хэрэм	China’s white fortress	The Great Wall of China

As you can see, aside from its literal meaning, it also carries connotations of goodness and purity. There are also some idiomatic phrases, like цагаан толгой and цагаан газар (I can attest that the steppe is not white where I live). Anyone want to speculate on the origin of such phrases? I assume that цагаан бурхан is a euphemism because referring to a plague literally would be taboo. And why does "white" imply "dairy" when attached to "food" but "vegetarian" when attached to "meal"?

The meaning goes much deeper than just the word цагаан though, all the way down to the element ца-. My dictionary reveals a whole bunch of words related to light or purity which begin with ца-.

цаас	paper
цагаадах	to be rehabilitated
цагаатлах	to be absolved
цайвар	light-colored
цайлган	kind-hearted
цайр	zinc
цайрах	to be pale
цайх	to turn pale, to go gray (hair)
цал	hoarfrost
цардуул	starch
цас	snow
цахилган	lightning
цахих	to strike, to flash