Mongol Wedding

The plague quarantine was lifted on the 12th so we were able to go to Altai's wedding and hold the trade fair as scheduled. You can check out pictures of both on my Flickr Page. The wedding was really just a big party. People do an official ceremony then go out to the countryside, set up some gers, and receive visitors. Family members visit the first night, then friends in descending order of closeness. It's sort of like how Tsagaan Tsar works. We went on the last night, because the quarantine had just ended. There was one main ger for the party and a couple others where people could make food and sleep. Part of the tradition is to have two bowls in the middle of the ger with, one with mare's milk and one with Mongol vodka (a liquor made from whey). There is also plenty of real vodka going around and they fill various smaller bowls and pass them around. Once you drink, the bowl goes back to the middle to be topped off, and then passed around again. I tried to drink as little of the mare's milk and vodka as possible. The Mongol stuff is much weaker so I stuck to that. I don't know how the wedding party lasted three days, but they seemed ready to get out of there. The tall white guy in the pictures is the groom, Chris, and Altai is the little Mongolian in the red deel. They're probably moving to Switzerland were Chris is from. He already has a ger set up.

The Trade Fair went really well too. I was gone for a whole month before it happened, so I didn't get to help prepare. The staff had been working with other aimag staffs and the local government so they were on top of everything. There were over 70 businesses from the aimag and UB selling everything from vegetables to electronics. I got to help out a little and take pictures. There were some competitions like wrestling and mare's milk drinking, but I missed those. I'll try to put up some other pictures later.

In other news, we're driving to Zavkhan on Monday morning. We'll be there for a week to help with their trade fair and I may stay on another week to work with their clients. I also might go to Bayan Olgi to see the Golden Eagle Festival, but I won't know until next week. I'll keep you posted.