Birthdays Abroad

On this trip, many of us will be celebrating our birthdays in some exotic place.  This past week, Hayden, Karen, Sasha (Alex C), and I all celebrated ours!  This led to a high concentration of cake and festivities galore in a very short period of time.

Last weekend we were also able to go out exploring and see more of the city than just the airport, school, and dorms that we had been confined to the past week.  Some of the MIU students went along with us and served as our tour guides and translators.  We went to a couple museums that spanned ancient history to modern history.  We learned quite a bit about Mongolia! I was also able to find my first international geocache right outside one of the museums!  We also went to a Buddhist temple.  Here we saw a building built around a statue that was almost 100’ tall surrounded by Buddhist prayer wheels, a room of Buddhist priests chanting the prayers of the people, and many small children trying to sell us birdseed to feed the local pigeons.  I am very interested in further researching one of the common courtesy rules of always walking left to right in a clockwise fashion around the different rooms of the temples.  After seeing the museums and temples, we went to a monument that was built in commemoration of the Russian support in World War II.  The monument was huge and it overlooked the whole city!  To wrap up the day, we went to eat at a place called City Nomads.  We had quite the feast! Our meal started with some meat and potatoes (with miniscule amounts of peas and broccoli on the side) and was followed by huushuur (fried meat pockets) and botz (meat dumplings) along with lamb ribs and a lamb shank. 

After we stuffed ourselves full of meat products we waddled back to the dorms.  I was about to turn in early.  I already had my shoes and watch off and I was rolling myself back into bed.  Stuffed full of meat, I was nearly asleep on my feet.  My head was about to hit the pillow when Beard (Alex B., yet another Alex on the trip) storms into the room out of breath trying to say something about how I needed to get down to Agi’s ger immediately.  Now before I dive any deeper into this startling account, I should probably give a bit of backstory on Agi so that this actually makes sense.   I now take you back to a few days earlier….

After a day full of teaching and class, a group of us was hanging out on the balcony of the other dorm when two of the local girls Nicole and her cousin came in to play.  After them their father Agi came up as well.  He mentioned how his daughters had brought some of the girls in to see his home, a ger that is set up right in between the dorm buildings.  He said that all of us were welcome to come see it.  Many of us had been curious about what the gers looked like inside so we jumped at the chance to finally see one.

The ger is the Mongolian term for an easily movable residence that is similar to the Russian yurt.  The inside was fascinating.  The walls were adorned with various rugs and cloths as well as the floors.  To the left of the entrance there was a couch pushed all the way up against the way and mirroring it on the right was a bed.  Straight ahead was a television sandwiched between a fish tank and a book shelf that Agi told us was his library.  He invited us to sit on the couch and bed.  From there we engaged in riveting conversation with the topics ranging from the Mongolian Olympians to proper etiquette in various situations.  Agi expressed disappointment in the Mongolian archer who did not win this year.  He said that she did not practice enough because she was “nose up,” a term we gathers to mean stuck up or conceited.   We discussed sports for a while and Agi revealed that he is a Chicago Bulls fan.  He also enjoys watching a professional women’s volleyball team from Korea. 

The whole time Agi was extremely hospitable while he put up with a host of various questions from all of us.  He helped to better our pronunciation of many Mongolian phrases and told us about all the best local places to get traditional Mongolian cuisine.  He offered to show us around UB and even teach us how to cook traditional Mongolian dishes!  We learned about Agi’s family which consists of his daughter Nicole, his son Justin, and his wife.  Agi told us that his son’s English name is Justin because he liked Justin Bieber and wanted to be called that.  Justin’s Mongolian name is Temulin which is similar to the childhood name of Chinggis Khaan (the Mongolian name for Genghis Khan).  Sadly, Justin is in the hospital currently and his mother (who is pregnant and due to have her child in September) is there with him.  He is experiencing low blood flow to his brain and has to get many injections.  We were able to pray for Justin for a speedy recovery and wisdom for the doctors.  Agi has been a Christian for several years and is a graduate from MIU.  Now he works for them helping with housing.

[Side note: Justin is now back and home and it doing quite well! We have played frisbee with him and he has developed quite the forehand!]

So that is our friend Agi, a friendly employee of MIU who lives in his ger near our dorms.  Now back to the action.  Beard revealed that Agi’s wife had prepared us some meat and he was sent to round up the troops to help take it down.  After Beard’s startling entrance, I found myself torn between bloated lethargy and the exciting experience of spending more time with Agi and trying a traditional home-cooked Mongolian meal.  Lethargy lost this round.

I fumbled to get my shoes back on and waddled down the stairs to the courtyard in which Agi’s ger was set up.  When I arrived at the ger, there was already a battalion of brave warriors sitting around in a circle.  I was greeted with cheers and applause.  The reinforcements had come.  Little did they know that I was not my usual self, having prepared myself for small quantities of food on this trip.  Agi’s wife was sitting nearby carving a boiled cow’s leg. I took my place among the troops and prepared for the battle ahead.  With clear eyes and a full stomach, I joined my comrades in food challenge number one of our trip.

We began passing the plate of beef around, partaking in the chucks of meat as they passed.  We congratulated and thanked those among us who took larger chunks or multiple pieces.  The pile gradually diminished.  We washed the meat down our gullets with a swig of Coke or tea that Agi also provided for us.  It was then that I realized how tired I was.

I reached for the open two liter bottle to refill my glass with Coke.  Something wasn’t right in my brain though.  Either my depth perception was off or my dexterity was lacking; I still cannot exactly explain it to this day.  Well whatever the problem was, I managed to fumble the nearly full bottle of Coke, spilling it all over the laminate flooring of Agi’s well-kept ger.  I apologized profusely and the adrenaline kicked back in, maybe a little too much.  I swept up the spilling bottle and set it back up with a gusto, barely letting any spill.  However, in the process of righting the bottle, I must have shaken it significantly, resulting in a reaction akin to plopping a Mentos into the top of the bottle.  Coke Faithful erupted in the center of this kind, generous man’s beautiful, well-kept home which he so graciously opened to a large group of foreigners whom he had just met days before.  I sat there defeated, Coke streaming from the bottle I had just saved from spilling, unable to do anything to stop this geyser.  The apologies continued as my comrades guffawed in my general direction.  Agi insisted that it was not a problem and began to help clean up the mess.  The only positive that resulted from this incident was the fact that we no longer had to finish a whole two liter bottle of Coke along with the two plates of meat that were presented to us.

As the passing of the plate continued, I repeatedly tried to pass the plate to Agi and his wife.  At least we could share in this meal together and lighten the load of each individual soldier.  Each time Agi politely declined.  He had already had his dinner that night.  So it was just us.  Ten troopers, full of food, against two plates of wonderfully prepared meat, made with love.  The passing of the plate slowed as each of us pondered the next selection we would make.  A larger piece to lighten the load of our compatriots?  A smaller piece to preserve ourselves for later rounds of the battle?  Multiple pieces to become the hero of all?  Eventually, the beast was conquered.  The majority of the meat was gone.  Just enough was left to be respectful.  We thanked Agi for his great generosity and rolled ourselves back to our lodgings.

Food has again and again showed itself as a major theme on this trip.  My birthday was two days later (after an interesting message at church that Sunday from an overzealous Korean guest speaker who insisted that Mongolia reunite with Korea by the “POWER of the Gospel”).  The MIU cafeteria is closed on Mondays so we were sent forth with Lee’s blessing to find dinner with our travel groups.  After our recent experiences with meat, my group decided to explore other options.  We walked into the downtown and decided on a quaint Korean bakery where I ordered cheese noodles (which turned out to be basically fancy ramen with a slice of melted cheese on top in a type of curry broth) while others ordered forms of corn dogs or other similar baked goods. 

After finishing that, we began the trek home.  We picked up some food to serve the group for breakfast the next day (again with the food motif…) and decided to brave the taxi service back as we had walked quite a ways to get dinner.  The MIU students have told us that every car is a taxi.  We test this theory by breaking into two groups one with me, Robyn, and Matthia and one with Trent, Sasha, and Ben.  My group was the first to be picked up.  A younger man no older than any of the three of us in our group stopped in front of us and swung open his doors.  We stepped in and our Mongolian taxi adventure began.

The young man spoke little to no English.  We were able to tell him a hotel near our destination and armed with our basic knowledge of the words for left, right, and straight, we began our journey (words which we found out later were much more complicated based on the four directions and other unknown factors).  UB is not an extremely busy city unless of course you are on the road (which we were).  The main rule of traffic is that big yields to small.  Even though we were in a small Mazda of some sort, our driver acted like a big car, weaving in front of buses, shooting small gaps at higher than recommended speed, various other things of that nature.  We both attempted small talk for a while and I was able to decipher that he wanted to know our country of origin to which I responded “USA.” He nodded in approval and continued spewing Mongolian phrases at us with a speed that rendered them unintelligible.  We had only learned the most basic of conversation which did not suffice for the in depth conversation he was apparently trying to have with us.  After more weaving and bouncing through pot holes, we reached a destination that was close enough to continue to our dorms by foot.

 The rest of the evening was spent calmly reading or relaxing with the guys, ending a memorable birthday experience that I will be hard pressed to forget.