Meet the parents

I made it through Tsagaan Sar reasonably unscathed. The Peace Corps training and advice from other volunteers came in handy. I only visited four homes, so I wasn’t overwhelmed. The holiday itself revolves around visiting other people’s houses. It’s kind of a cross between Thanksgiving Day and a pub-crawl time three. Each household prepares the exact same food and goes through the same rituals. In America, people would try to make theirs unique and outdo each other. Here things are very tradition oriented. You go in and greet everyone in the room by holding your arms out palms up below (or above if you’re older) the other person’s. Then, you eat potato salad, some sheep meat, and finally buuz. The whole time you’re also drinking milk tea, berry juice, and rounds of vodka shots. At the end of the visit, you look at photo albums and exchange gifts.

When I went to coworkers houses, the visit was perfunctory. It was just like any other work party. At my girlfriend’s brother’s ger, things were more festive. Oh yeah, I have a girlfriend now. I haven’t really told anyone back home, so this is my coming out post. I was going to tell my brother, but he’d probably blog about it before me. He’s even worse at keeping secrets than I am. We’d make terrible, terrible spies. Not being an incrementalist, I didn’t think it was worth the time to tell people individually. Hope you don’t mind.

Here are some preemptive FAQ answers:

Here name is Naasanjargal
She is 26 and her birthday is February 28th
She works for a judge and plans to be come one herself after getting work experience
We speak mostly in Mongolian so my language and texting has had to improve
We are not married

Peace Corps had a special cross-cultural training session about sex and dating. They went over what Mongolians expect from a relationship with an American. A lot of them expect you to stay or take them home with you. We discussed me leaving in two years and it hasn’t come up again. It’s common for male volunteers to have Mongol girlfriends. It’s less common for female volunteers to have Mongol boyfriends, mostly because young Mongol guys tend to be assholes. That is, except for Enkhee who owns the bar where I met Naasa. Enkhee is awesome.

This post should be the talk of the water cooler tomorrow. Feel free to comment. Here’s one last thing. When I was in grad school at UW, I had a friend named Paul who had taught English in Korea for several years. He had a girlfriend who he stayed with even after he came back to America. I was joking with him once about it and I said he was like a GI with a local girl. When he heard I was joining Peace Corps he said, “just you wait”. Thanks for the heads up Paul.