Party week!

This week is full of parties! October 6th is an auspicious day for Mongolians and any time there is an auspicious day, Mongolians have housewarming parties, weddings and hair-cutting ceremonies. Yesterday I went to one of my fellow English teacher's housewarming party. He had a beautiful, new, two-story home built. In Mongolia it seems that a two-story home is a status symbol, just like a car. If your home has two stories and/or you have a car, you must be important and/or have money. The difficulty with a two-story home is that it is difficult to keep warm though! In Mongolia, I personally would prefer my small 1-room ger to a big two-story home any day! It is interesting to me that a fancy home still has its needed outhouse rather than an indoor bathroom. I'm sure that an indoor bathroom would be the ultimate status symbol...You've gotta be some sort of king to have that! haha.

I really enjoy the parties now. The parties always begin with a round of milk tea while eating the potato salad, ham and pickles, and carrot/cabbage salad that is presented nicely on the table. After, airag(fermented mare's milk) is passed around. The custom is to be able to finish three bowls of it. The bowls for the airag are always bigger than the bowls we get soup in! ha. At the same time some vodka is being passed around too. One person always serves this and waits for you to finish. After he/she will refill that shot glass and hand it to someone else. No one ever has their own glass and it lends itself to peer pressure. ha. I've gotten in the habit of grabbing whatever plates and cups I can when the vodka guy comes around to me. I just say my hands are full and I can't take the shot. ha. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. I've been here a little too long to plead ignorance. Eventually, a soup of some sort will be given to the guests also. Usually guests collect money to give to the party host as a gift. Presentations of money and gifts are made to the host. After there is always singing. A bowl of airag and a shot of vodka is passed around. The person with it must sing a song and then give the alcohol to someone else and then that person must sing. It's like a singing "popcorn" game. Luckily, I have one song I can pull out of my pocket for this. Most of the time you only have to know the first few lines because everyone else will soon join in. I really love singing at parties. It kind of makes me sad that we, as Americans, don't have this practice because I really enjoy it now!