Naadam

This past weekend was a big deal for my soum. We celebrated both the 50 year anniversary of its founding and Naadam. It celebrates the 1921 independence of Mongolia from China and includes the three manly sports of wrestling, archery, and horse racing. Basically there was a lot of food, a lot of sporting, and a lot of celebrating. It was really fun and I’ll try my best to convey that here, but it’s hard to explain something that I observed as a confused foreigner. And unfortunately, I usually am confused.

To start us off, Friday was both the beginning of Naadam and the anniversary celebration. Lunch consisted of hoshur which are fried meat pockets, more or less. I can’t really think of a better way to describe them. I don’t know what they do differently with Naadam hoshur, but the amount of grease inside is incredible. I went to dip one in the chili sauce and a fountain of grease poured out. Yes, my initial reaction was probably the same as yours right now, but they were delicious so I don’t care.  

After an abbreviated afternoon session with the trainers, it was time for the concert. My host sisters have been basically non-existent for the past few weeks in preparation so I was really excited to see what they had been doing. I didn’t realize how involved they both were – each performed in three dances/songs/performances. There was a lot of dancing and singing and music performing and it was really cool to see a lot of national dances and costumes in a couple hours. Those pictures will probably make their way to Facebook soon, but here’s a picture of me and my wonderful family. Please ignore our sweatiness / my grossness – it’s hot here in the summer.

The fam - Mother, me, younger sister, older sister, and Nomin in the front

 Saturday was the big day for the sports. Like I said, Naadam includes the three main sports: wrestling, archery, and horse racing. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the horse racing because it took place somewhere else, but I have the other two!

We spent most of the day watching wrestling and getting sunburns. Since we weren’t exactly sure about what they were doing and why, we ended up making our own descriptions. We have no explanation for why, but the “what” can be covered pretty well. Before they entered themselves as contenders, they hit their thighs three times, then went to a man in a national costume, spun around him, and surrendered their hats. Then they walked around the flags in the middle like birds, then it was time to wrassle!

Since I really don’t know why they were doing those things, that’s the best I can do. As Americans, our reactions were completely different from the Mongolians sometimes. When there was a distinct size mismatch between the wrestlers (some were so tiny!) we would sympathize with the small one when he got body slammed while the Mongolians appreciated the good wrestling and the victory and cheered. Eventually the matches were more even and we cheered with the best of ‘em. Apparently we missed the final round because we went home with likely cases of heat exhaustion, but the man who won deserved it. Beast.

not the man who won, but an action shot nonetheless

 After all the sporting ended, we wrapped up the day with a rockin’ dance party in the new sports center. I was asked to waltz by a friend of my ээж (host mother) who told me I danced well even though I stumbled a lot. So I chalk that one up as a victory. The funny thing about the Mongolian waltz is that they do it to all styles of music, not just what we would probably consider a waltz. But we all attempted and I think/hope that scored us points with the community. We made a few more friends during the non-waltz parts when a couple of us broke out really bad dance moves like the sprinkler and the rodeo.

Overall, Naadam was awesome. I’m sorry I wasn’t more entertaining. I have an evil cold which is fogging my thinking process/life. Recap of Naadam in a nutshell: I ate a lot and danced a lot and worked on my tan to the extent that my host family thinks I’m going to be black by the end of the summer. It’s good to have attainable goals.