MWW 4: цай

Cyrillic	цай
Transcription	tsai
IPA	[tshæ:]
Layman’s Pronunciation	TSA
Translation	tea; meal
In Genghis Khan’s time it was cai.

Here you go! You get two words this time to make up a little.

Mongolians drink lots of tea. I usually drink it at every meal. Usually, it comes in the form of сүүтэй цай (süütei tsai), or milk tea. However, at the school cafeteria I tend to get “brown tea” which has no added milk. Tea is especially important at breakfast, when it seems that most Mongolians have tea and nothing else. Whenever you visit someone’s house, you’ll get offered tea. Tea is so important to Mongolian’s diets that apparently they can’t conceive of a meal without tea, because sometimes they use the word цай for the entire meal as well as the tea.

Thus, although there is another word, хоол, for “meal,” “breakfast” is called өглөөний цай (öglöönii tsai, “morning tea”) and “lunch” can be either өдрийн хоол (“day meal”) or өдрийн цай (“day tea”).

Хоол goes with the verb идэх (ideh), “to eat,” and цай goes with the verb уух (uuh), “to drink.” So if you want to ask if someone ate breakfast, you say,

Өглөөний цай уусан уу?

Morning.GEN tea drink.PAST QUESTION

“Did you drink morning tea?”

and even if you only had toast and nothing liquid, you could correctly answer,

Тийм, уусан.

Yes drink.PAST

“Yes, (I) drank (it).”

Actually, this isn’t that strange. Other languages have derived a word like "food" or "meal" from a particular food item. In Japanese, gohan means both “meal” and “cooked rice.” (I think the same thing happened in Chinese; examples, please?)

MWW 3: говь

Cyrillic	говь
Transcription	govi
IPA	[qœjw]?
Layman’s Pronunciation	GUHW
Translation	“desert”
In Genghis Khan’s time it was gobi.

In Mongolian, говь refers to a desert, such as the Gobi Desert. In fact, did you notice something? The English word Gobi itself comes from this word govi. It was borrowed from Mongolian, presumably long ago when /b/ was still [b] and before it became [w]. The vowel i, like most short vowels at the end of words, isn’t actually pronounced anymore. However, it remains in the spelling (spelled with the Cyrillic “soft sign”) because it caused changes in the preceding sounds. Here it fronted the vowel! It also causes consonants to be palatalized, but I can’t really tell if [w] is palatalized here. I recently had the pleasure of hearing some guy repeat говь over and over again, and it sounded like there was a palatal glide in front of the labiovelar glide.

Also: look out for additions and corrections to the previous Words of the Day.

Swearing-In and Site Placement

Peace Corps is an exercise in detachment. The first and greatest tearing away is when you leave your home, family, and country for Peace Corps. Then you get put in alphabetical groups for the purpose of room and board and generally keeping track of you. After a few days you get put into new groups, which seem to be assigned randomly for the most part, and sent off to your training site, where you are now made to live with a Mongolian family. During that time, your group gets split into lower- and higher-level Mongolian language classes. Then after 11 weeks of getting to know those fellow trainees, your host families, and Mongolian teachers well, you get moved to your site and away from everyone you’ve ever met before. And you start all over again.

Final Center Days and Swearing-In

PST wrapped up in the beginning of August, during which time we had to undergo practice with local Mongolian students, the TAP (Trainee Assessment Packet, in which we have to assess ourselves and discuss it with Peace Corps trainers), and Mongolian language testing - after which we got two days of relaxation before leaving our training sites, and coming back to the Training Center for “Final Center Days.” I was excited but also knew I’d miss my training site, my Mongolian teachers, and my fellow trainees. Goodbye, S---!

The first Final Center Day ended very dramatically with our site announcements. We went to a park where there was a giant concrete map of Mongolia on the ground. Whenever someone got their placement, they went to stand on the corresponding part of the map. I was one of the last (of 66) people to find out where I was going, and it turned out that I was going to K--- sum. The rest of Final Center Days consisted of meeting and getting to know our new coworkers. I met Enkhtuyaa, my landlady / training manager.

The last Final Center Day, Friday August 19, was the Swearing-In Ceremony, accompanied by performances of traditional Mongolian songs and dances (performed by the trainees). Of course there were speeches too. The US ambassador to Mongolia gave a speech. I was also one of 3 volunteers who had to give speeches. Swearing-in is the pivotal point: prior to that, we were merely “trainees;” now we are called “Peace Corps Volunteers” (Энх Тайвны Корпусын Сайн Дурын Ажилтан).

That realization lasted a moment before we had to grab our stuff and leave. The dozen or so people that were staying nearby in Bulgan, Orkhon, and Selenge Provinces, or Darkhan itself, would be sent directly to their sites. The rest of us would be bused to the capital, Ulaanbaatar (UB) before being dispersed to our sites.

I was in UB for about 3 days, from Friday afternoon to Monday morning. In UB, we had bureaucratic issues to take care of. We were also supposed to shop for whatever we couldn’t find at site, whatever that was - I only knew that it probably included most things I could think of. I also went to a small show by the Mongolian band Altan Urag.

On Monday August 22, I left for K--- in a car driven by Munkhjargal, the school’s social worker, with his wife, Enkhtuyaa, the training manager, who were also going to be my landlords. The trip took most of the day, mostly because we stopped several times. During one of these stops, I had my first taste of airag: Mongolia’s national beverage, an alcoholic drink made from horse milk. It tasted a bit like very watery unflavored yogurt. In all, we probably drove about 4 hours along one of Mongolia’s few paved highways. Mongolia doesn’t have a highway system that connects every part of the country. Some people had to fly to their sites; driving would have taken days. Most of the way, we saw only grass and hills, with a few random homes along the side of the road. The last hour or so of driving was along a dirt road which led to my site. My town doesn’t have any paved roads.

K---

When I arrived, I was greeted by Ouynbileg, an English teacher at my school, who is what Peace Corps calls my “Counterpart.” She and my landlords welcomed me to my new home:

My new home is a ger. It’s about 16 feet in diameter and 8 feet high in the center. It comes with a bed, tables, shelves, cupboards, an oven, a stove, a dry sink, and two cats. I inherited these cats from the previous PCV. One is called Amrag, meaning “lover.” The other cat is called Öör Muur, which means “the other cat.” Both of them quickly attached themselves to me. They hang around the ger all day, usually sleep inside it, and beg for food. The Other Cat also sits on my lap when I sit down, and follows me when I walk, and runs into my leg when I stop walking.

My training site, S--- was near the Russian border and surrounded by woods. My site is on the steppe, with almost no trees, and near the center of the country. This means it’s also nearly in the center of the continent, and about as far away as I can possibly get from the ocean anywhere in the world. This village (in Mongolian, sum) has about 3000 people, most of whom live in the countryside herding sheep and goats. Several hundred people live in the sum center, where the school, the hospital, the government buildings (and I) are located. I can walk around the entire village area in a couple of hours. I can also see the entire place from a large hill behind the school. Despite what Peace Corps’ information packet said, there is no internet access. To use the internet, I take an hour-long ride to a bigger, nearby sum. There also isn’t much you can buy here, even if you simply want groceries. To do that, again, you go to the next town. There are no foreigners here, other than me.

I have a great view of the sky, though!

On the first night, we got a windstorm, and Munkhjargal came in and showed me how to take down the stovepipe and close the flap covering the top of my ger. That week, we also got several rain showers. Gers are made of canvas and felt, which are not completely waterproof, so they inside gets damp. Don’t put your electronics near the wall. I don’t think I need to worry much about rain anymore though. We’ve already gotten snow, and it’s not going to get warmer. I’ll have to devote another entry to that process.

MWW 2: баяр

At this point, it's more like Mongolian word of the month, but...

Cyrillic	баяр
Transcription	bayar
IPA	[ˈpa.jər]
Layman’s Pronunciation	BAH-yer
Translation	1. joy, happiness 2. party, celebration, holiday
In Genghis Khan’s time it was also bayar.

Today's word is баяр, the basis of several of the most common expressions in Mongolian. By itself, it has several meanings. Firstly, it means "joy" or "happiness." It also refers to a party, feast, holiday, or any other occasion for celebration. For example, a баярын өдөр is a holiday.

Greetings

Баяр is most important because of its use in greetings.

Anyone who has studied even a tiny bit of Mongolian will recognize the word баяртай (bayartai). Баяртай, "happy," is the comitative case of баяр and so literally means "with joy." However, it is most commonly used by itself with the meaning "Goodbye!"

Just as important is Баярлалаа (bayarlalaa), "Thank you." Баярлалаа is originally a verb form meaning "have / has just rejoiced," from баярлах "to rejoice."

One more useful phrase is Баярын мэнд хүргэе (Bayaryn mend hürgeye, "I will send joy's greeting"). It is equivalent to "Congratulations" and may be said at any number of happy occasions. Frequently, it is shortened to Баярын мэнд or Баяр хүргэе (Bayar hürgeye, "I will send joy").

Names

Баяр is very popular as a name, and as a part of other names, such as Энхбаяр
(Enhbayar), former prime minister and president of Mongolia whose name could be translated as "Peace and Happiness." Other examples include Батбаяр, Ганбаяр, Мөнхбаяр, Баярцэцэг and many, many more.

Sentences

Би баяртай (байна).
"I am happy."

Баяртай!
"Goodbye!"

Баярлалаа!
[ba.jər.ɬa:] or [baj.tɬa]?
"Thank you!"

Төрсөн өдрийн баярын мэнд хүргье!
Törsön ödriin bayaryn mend hürgeye
"Happy birthday!"

PST: Part II

Climate

Despite being next to one of the world’s most famously cold and barren regions, I’m not cold. Actually, I’m hot.

I had read that temperatures average in the 70s during the summer, which sounded pleasant enough. This is true but misleading. The key word is average. The reason temperatures average in the 70s is not because most days are in the 70s (they aren’t), but rather because they fluctuate between very hot and cold.

The heat isn’t surprising. When the sky is clear, the land gets more than enough sunshine, because the sun doesn’t set until after 10PM, and rises about 4AM.

The rainy season in Mongolia, especially in the north where I am, is during the summer, and when it finally started to cloud over and drizzle after I had been there a week or two, I was very pleased, because the temperature dropped quickly.

The rain has generally gotten more intense each time it’s come, with the temperatures swinging downward. Two days in particular were cold and wet; one was the day of our local Naadam, on July 6. (Mongolia’s nationwide Naadam sports festival is from July 11-14, but many towns celebrate local Naadams before that. Like a tournament, winners from the local Naadams often get sent to the national Naadam, such as Kari’s host dad, who kicked everyone’s butt in archery.) A few days before our Naadam I was sweating in my dress shirt. On Naadam, I was wearing four shirts and still a little cold. Plus, it was raining, although it mostly just spit.

Sometimes the sky is completely empty, sometimes it’s impenetrably cloudy, for the most part there are some clouds floating here and there. Usually there’s not much of a breeze, but the clouds float slowly from west to east, so there must be a high-altitude west wind. That would be normal in the middle latitudes. Since that would be coming from the center of the Asian landmass, naturally it brings warm, dry weather. However, before our biggest rainy days, the normal rhythm of the skies was interrupted by a very strong, cold north wind, which could be felt at ground level. Obviously these storms must be coming in from Siberia, perhaps because of an intrusion of the polar air mass. During Naadam I noticed the wind change back to west-east, so I guessed the weather would clear up. Indeed, the next day it did. And after 24 hours, it was in the 80s again.

Allegedly one of the teachers said that the wind usually blows from the west for a week, and then for a week it reverses, bringing rain. If we have wet east winds, it must be because they’re carrying air all the way from the Pacific Ocean, and it may even have something to do with the monsoon.

They try so hard to warn you about the country being cold, to prepare you for being cold during the winter, that they fail to warn you that it will be very hot during the summer too. It was for the first week I was in S----.

I had been so busy trying to prepare for the Mongolian winter that I failed to prepare for the summer, so I didn’t bring shorts, sandals, or anything else suited for the heat. (I didn’t bring anything for the rain either, but my parents sent me a package with an umbrella in it - Thanks!) So if you’re packing for Mongolia now, bring shorts. The small town where you get sent for training won’t have a clothing store, and you won’t be able to leave the town without official permission from Peace Corps, which usually means bringing a member of your host family with you.

You might also consider taking swim trunks and pool shoes in case you live near a river, like I do. When it gets hot, you’ll enjoy jumping in the river, and it will be more convenient and less constraining than a bath in a tumpen. However, the Peace Corps Medical Officers like you to wade with shoes on, to avoid cutting your foot on a beer bottle someone threw in the river and getting an infection from the bacteria swimming around.

Daily Life

Our weekdays are as full as any school. Monday through Thursday we have language classes from 9 AM to 1 PM, go home for lunch until 2:30, then have technical training (TEFL and community development classes) until 5:30. On Friday we just have the language classes. S--- is divided into two parts, “Uptown” and “Downtown.” Our group is similary divided. Six of us, including me, live at the bottom of the big hill, and the other five live at the top of the hill. The school is also on top of the hill, so us downtowners have a 30 min. walk uphill to get to class. Since I go home to eat lunch, I spend most of the time walking, and only get about 30 minutes to eat. In total, I spend minimum 2 hours a day walking Monday through Thursday.

Naadam

Naadam is the national sports festival. It features three events: horse-racing, wrestling and archery. Since this is a Mongolian specialty, there’s lots of information in books or online about how it works. For now, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:

I missed the horse race, which starts early in the morning, but I got to see parts of the wrestling and archery competitions, which went on until late in the day.

Etc…

Yesterday we killed and butchered a ram. I’ll have to talk about that later.

Mongolian Word of the Week #1: Тэнгэр

Some people have said they wanted me to do a Mongolian word of the day. There's no way I can do this every day - maybe a Mongolian word of the week (or month) - but here it is! And why not start with the word in the title of my blog? I give you Tengri!

Cyrillic	тэнгэр
Transcription	tenger
IPA	[theŋ.ger]
Layman’s Pronunciation	TEN-geer
Translation	sky, heaven
In Genghis Khan’s time it was tenggeri.

Тэнгэр (Tenger), usually spelled Tengri in English sources, was the name of the sky, and of the nomads' God who was personified by the sky. (Another Mongolian word for God is бурхан) The word is widespread among Central Asian people and is even mentioned in Chinese texts. The equivalent Turkish word is Tanrı (and yes, you’re seeing right: there isn’t a dot on that “i” and there isn’t supposed to be), and it is used as a synonym for God. In Uzbek, the equivalent is dengiz.

Tenger in Arkhangai Province

Puffballs

Now, I’d like to introduce you to a fascinating little idiomatic expression I discovered one day while preparing for a Mongolian barbecue picnic by the river. I came upon a big fairy ring of puffballs. My Mongolian teacher told me that puffballs are known as тэнгэрийн дүлий (tengeriin dülii). That’s tenger in the genitive case plus dülii, “deaf.” This name could be literally translated into English as “The Deafness of Heaven.” Why would they call it that? Nobody could tell me. It sounds kind of sad, yet poetic, doesn’t it?

Anybody who can find an explanation for this name wins my gratitude!

Мөнх хөх тэнгэр, "Eternal Blue Sky," in Mongolian script

Training

Time does fly differently here. I've been away from Pasadena for one month and one day now, but it feels much longer than that. Although my sense of time has begun to sync with what feels normal, for the first couple of weeks time moved much slower (or faster, depending on your perspective). After I'd been there two weeks, it already felt like I'd been there at least a month, because so much had been going on. Now I'm sitting in a restaurant in a different town with free wifi that's actually working at the moment. Since it's been a looooooong time since I've been online, let alone posted here, I've got a lot to go over.

My first flight, on Thursday, June 2, 2011, was from LAX to SFO, where I met the other trainees (we're not volunteers yet) in the M22 group (i.e., the 22nd group of people going to Mongolia) and attended "Staging" (the pre-Orientation Orientation that takes place in America).

From there we flew to Korea on Friday June 3, and in the process of crossing the International Date Line it became Saturday June 4. Because I used to live in Japan and I had a sentimental attachment to it, I negotiated with the other passengers to get a window seat so I could Japan when we flew over it. To my great disappointment, we didn't: we crossed Sakhalin Island and then flew south down the Sea of Japan without even touching Hokkaido. Fortunately, I got some nice views of the mountains of eastern Siberia.

We had a nearly 24-hour layover there with nothing to do but hang out and look around Incheon (or Seoul, for those wanted to pay $90 for a 40-minute taxi ride one way).

On Sunday June 5 we left Incheon. As could be expected, it was hot and humid, so I took off my denim jacket and ended up leaving it at the gate when we boarded. I don't think I was the only person either. If airport security hasn't already blown up the unattended item, someone who works at Incheon International has a nice new denim jacket.

The flight to Ulaanbaatar took 3 hours and then 3 ½ very long days after I left home I was finally in Mongolia. We spent the night in a ger camp, got vaccinated for meningitis, hepatitis, and rabies, and delivered our winter bags into the hands of the storage people. We won't be getting those bags again until the end of PST (Pre-Service Training) in late August.

Then we had a three-hour bus ride north to the Training Center. It rained along the way, which is supposed to be a good sign. At Training Center we stayed in a high-school dorm and attended meetings with lots and lots and lots of information. We started language lessons. In the evening we got set free to roam the streets and attempt to buy all the things you forgot or failed to foresee needing in Mongolia. I spent it mostly with a cool group of fellow trainees – Chris, Nick, and Tim – discovering Kharkhorin beer.

After four days of this, and one week from the time I left home, I got moved again, this time to my training site. The big Orientation for everyone is only a preface to PST: the real action happens elsewhere in smaller training communities. Our 68 people were divided into 6 groups: one for health volunteers, one for business volunteers, one for community development volunteers, and the TEFL volunteers, including me and the biggest group overall, were split up apparently randomly. Each of these groups was then shipped off to a small (or at least small-ER) Mongolian community a little bit away from Training Center. Each of the volunteers is then sent to live with a host family in the community.

My training site is S---- (No, I'm not going to type out the whole name, for security reasons Peace Corps doesn't want us to post our exact locations, but if you already know me you can just email me and ask). So on Thursday June 9, I was shipped over there with 11 other TEFL trainees. Unfortunately one of us already went home due to family issues back in America. That leaves 11 of us now: me, Rachel, David, Nathan, Bryant, Garrett, Natalie, Christine, Kari, Heather, and Joe. Besides that, our group includes Munguntuya (Moogii) and Munkh-Uchral (Uchka), our LCFs (Language and Cultural Facilitators, i.e. our Mongolian teachers).

On Sunday June 12, we all went back to Training Center to get follow-up shots. I also got to use a computer in an internet café. That was the last internet access I had for 16 days, until I got a few hours of very slow service thanks to Kari and Natalie talking the principal into letting us use the school's internet flash drive, which seems to be the only internet access in S----.

S---- is in the far north of Mongolia. We are so close to Russia - the part of Russia known as Siberia - that if you climb up the Big Hill you can see some mountains which are actually in Siberia.

More to come!

I'm alive

I'm not dead, I'm just in training! I'm in Mongolia now. Our days are pretty full and I've spent most of the little free time with the other trainees or taking care of other physically/bureaucratically necessary matters, and my internet access is limited anyway. Soon we'll be heading off to live with our host families for the rest of PST (Pre-Service Training, we have a lot of acronyms). Hopefully, I'll have more chances to use the internet and update my stuff.

Fun Facts About Mongolia

If you were going to move to another country, you'd want to find out everything about it. I did, and I'd like to share some of the interesting little fact(oid)s I've found about Mongolia.

• Mongolia is the 19th-largest country in the world.
• Mongolia is the 2nd-largest landlocked country in the world (after Kazakhstan). Before Kazakhstan became independent, Mongolia was THE largest landlocked country.
• Mongolia is bordered by 2 countries: Russia (the Siberian part) in the north, and China (the desert part) on all the other sides.
• Western Mongolia contains the furthest point away from the ocean of any point of land in the world.
• Mongolia has the lowest population density of any independent country (about 4 people per square mile).
• But it has 81 airports.
• Mongolia's capital, Ulaan Baatar, has the lowest average temperature of any world capital (it averages below freezing for 8 months of the year).
• Mongolia has on average 257 cloudless days a year (which doesn't sound that different from Southern California).
• The lake Khövsgöl Nuur contains 2% of the world's fresh water.
• Mongolia has snow leopards, wild gazelles, reindeer, the world's only REAL wild horses (i.e., not just feral), and some elusive thing called "the Gobi bear."
• Cows, sheep, goats, horses, yaks, and camels outnumber people almost 30 to 1.
• Mongolia was the world's second communist country (after Russia).
• More women than men go to college there.
• As much as 8% of the men in Asia (2% worldwide) are direct descendants of Genghis Khan.
• In Genghis Khan's time, urinating in water was punishable by death.
• In 2010, the tögrög was the best-performing currency world-wide.
• Rumors are circulating that the country will open its first McDonald's and Starbucks this year.

Feelings Going into Mongolia

When I was invited to Mongolia at the end of February, I was surprised because Mongolia wasn't a country I'd been nominated for, and I was uncertain of what to expect. I didn't know anything about Mongolia except what I learned for a report I wrote about Genghis Khan years ago. Immediately after accepting it was a rush to get the passport forms and other urgent paperwork in. But the more I read about Mongolia, the more excited I got, until I really couldn't imagine getting invited to any other country. It was all good for two whole months, with only a couple of moments of worry that something could happen before June - some sudden illness or injury or something. One of my friends was all set to enter the Marines in March when he sprained his ankle and boot camp got put off a month. If that happened to me, well, I'd already become endeared to Mongolia even though I'd never been there!

But in early May, even though I was still excited, the anxiety really stepped up. One day I went to the store and while walking down a random aisle, I suddenly stopped, got butterflies in my stomach, and just thought, "Holy ****! Mongolia! June 2nd!" It wasn't a panic attack, but it was just like it had all suddenly "hit" me. Most of the time the future creeps onward at a steady pace, but at that moment it was rushing down on top of me. Since then almost every day I've had one moment where I just stopped whatever I was doing, got this feeling like I'd had too much coffee, and inwardly screamed "Mongolia!"

Not to sound morbid, but I think of it as like a little death. In the case of death you have to make the most of your time alive - think seriously about what you want to do, and do it - because you're going away for a long time and you can't take anything with you. I have to make the most of my time in America, because I'm going away for a long time and I can't take much with me. I want every minute to be the most memorable, emotional minute ever. Now, I've also gotten frustrated because I feel like I've wasted all of the free time I've had for the last couple of years of under-employment, and that I've got to live two years in two weeks. Of course overall, my outlook has been positive. Major life changes bring every kind of emotion, don't they?