Happy Men's / Soldier's Day!

Mongolians (and Kazakhs) love to celebrate. This past Thursday was "Soldier's Day," or "Man Day" as it was translated to me. For the most part it was just another reason to cut classes short and gather for a party -- to which I was, of course, invited.

Mongolian law dictates 12 months of mandatory military service from young men after high school. From what I can tell, however, there are many ways to avoid the service, the most common of which is apparently to just buy your way out. When I tried to find out more information, I just got a typically ambiguous answer. According to a counterpart, "Every man must serve in the military but every man does not serve in the military." When I asked why, she responded, "I don't know."

Anyways, to mark the occasion, the ladies of the school organized a little afternoon get-together, where the fermented horse milk (which to me tastes like rancid yogurt) flowed like Niagra Falls. All the men were presented with new "Italian" ties and personalized coffee mugs complete with their pictures on them. I even got a mug of my own, although I'm not entirely sure where they got my picture from.

After multiple rounds of "kummis" (the horse milk), during which I stuck to my guns and managed to nurse just one cup, it was time for the games and, of course, the singing to begin. Wanting to be a good sport, I volunteered for the first game. Four of us were brought to a table up front and we were each set before a bowl of flour. Inside each bowl of flour were 10 yogurt-covered peanuts. With our hands behind our backs, we were then given 1 minute to pick out as many of the peanuts as we could using only our mouths. I'll let the pictures do some of the talking.






It wasn't exactly the most pleasant experience I've ever had. I ended up inhaling and swallowing most of the flour in my bowl, but I did manage to extract all 10 nuts! I was thrilled about this, too, because apparently instead of rewarding the winners, the losers were punished. In this case, the poor guy who sucked up the fewest nuts had to stand with his eyes closed while shoe polish was smeared on his face. Don't ask me why.


After claiming victory, here I am sitting down still swallowing the thick flour in my mouth while my training manager, Vasya, gives me a thumbs-up and the guy to my right is using a handkerchief to wipe the powdery stuff off my face.


Here's the poor guy who was shamed with shoe polish.


This is my new coffee mug. I look a bit scary in the picture, but it was really nice to be included.

After the games, the usual songs were sung and speeches were made in typical Kazakh fashion. Another Mongolian holiday down.