Today is Tuesday the 30th of August 2011. I’ve been waiting for this day for about two months. Today was the day that the lady looking after our projects in Mongolia comes to meet with me and my boss at work for a quarterly review. My boss cancelled the meeting. The other people I had lined up to come weren’t here anyway but I don’t care. This meeting is important. I need to make decisions that I don’t want to have to make, and in order to make those decisions I need the outcomes of this meeting.
I have decided that I am not going to stay in my job as it is today. Whilst I recognize my role as a volunteer is more of a showpony role, it doesn’t mean that I like to sit and do nothing for five days out of seven. So I am writing my resume up, it’s harder than I thought. I will send my resume around a little bit. If those feelers come back with bad feelings, I will depart Mongolia to somewhere else, to do something else. Is it hard to get a paying job in Turkey? Or Ireland?
I could sit at my job for a long time longer, hardly enjoying myself and not giving anything to anyone. Or I could leave and at least have fun.
Whilst my actual job is not much fun (say: journal reviews), my colleagues are nice. They force vodka on me more than I’d like but they’re genuinely nice. And fun. And I’m sure there’s something I could do that would help them. But overall as an organization, they don’t need help. On Sunday at 5pm I went to a wedding of the admin assistance. She is 21. She only just started working here.
What do you wear to a Mongolian wedding? Can you wear white if the bride wears a deel? Does the bride wear a deel? Where is the reception? She doesn’t know me, why did she invite me? It’s two days beforehand, surely the RSVP’s had to happen before now? How casual is ‘casual’ dress? Can I wear a summer cotton dress? What about presents?
There are a lot of things you don’t think about when you’re going to attend a wedding in a totally different culture. I consulted a Mongolian friend who told me to wear a summery dress and I’d be fine. She was wrong. The bride is the daughter of a very famous Mongolian politician. The wedding was more extravagant than I ever imagined. I had packed a muesli bar and a bottle of water in case it was long and boring and I got hungry. I even packed a hat in case it was outside (it was a hot day).
The wedding occurred at the Wedding Palace. In Ulaanbaatar, one person is put in charge of officially signing the wedding documents. All couples get married at the Wedding Palace. Only family and very close friends attend the Wedding Palace ceremony. The reception is where the fun starts. The bride and groom make their way to the reception place after their official ceremony. Below: the wedding car and outside the reception
I imagine this experience is something I’ll never have again because I don’t know many Mongolian politicians or rich people (okay, none). So this experience is a comparatively opulent one.
We arrived at 5pm and waited outside for a while as we were early. Walking in to the reception centre, I began to realize what I’d got myself in to. We walked through a hallway filled with balloons and flowers and tulle – so much white netting made in to so many shapes. I was wearing my purple summer dress with pearls. I should have worn a ball gown. Nevermind. Below: me in my purple dress and my colleague Urnaa.
So the reception stuff went for hours. The bride and groom arrived – with fireworks lighting up the aisle as they walked down (you know those ones that flare up when someone scores a try in a football match?). They looked spectacular in a western style white dress and suit (respectively).
There was a stage with disco lights and all the paraphernalia necessary for bands, singing, speeches and stuff. There were a lot of performances on the stage. Traditional singing, throat singing, instruments, speeches. There were pre-prepared speeches about what I can only assume was the bride and groom and how great they are. There was a pre-prepared re-enactment of how they met.
Once all that deal ended, the official stuff began. You’ll have to forgive my memory. So much was happening that I wanted to take notes so I got it all correct but it was a bit rude to pull out a pen and piece of paper at the wedding. I also wasn’t suppose to take photos because the bride’s dad is so famous he wanted to keep it a secret.
There were 32 tables of 10 people = 320 guests, plus the performers plus the bridal party and family. The bride and groom sat on a long table in the middle, the parents on respective sides. There was a collection of curds and cooked sheep in front of the table. No one was allowed to touch them. Food was served intermittently between the happenings.
On each table there was a bottle of Grey Goose vodka, a bottle of the expensive Mongolian vodka, a bowl of fruit, a pitcher of airag, a bowl of curds and cheese, lots of softdrink and some water. And a big vase of pink roses. The theme was pink. Our chairs were pink too. The roses had been used previously – the baby’s breath that was in between the roses were looking at least two weeks old with their brown spots and the roses were a little worse for wear. But, why throw them out when you can reuse them at another wedding?!
From here on in until the cutting of the cake that symbolizes the end of the evening, it was a Mongolian do. Milk in bowls was exchanged – parents of the bride and groom gave the new couple a bowl of ceremonial milk that they had to sip. It was a very emotional time and lots of tears were shed. There were speeches made but you’ll have to forgive my lack of Mongolian language skills – I have no idea what was being said. Once the milk was exchanged it was then taken back to the bridal table and given to the parents again – they stood and took their sip. Below: if you look carefully, you can see the dad with a blue scarf. In the scarf he’s holding the bowl of milk. He hands the scarf and the milk to them.
There was a fountain that looked like it might be for champagne. Of course not. It was for milk. The bride and groom took a jug of milk each and poured it in to the top of the fountain. It functioned much the same as a champagne fountain but without the added carbonation. Milk symbolizes a lot in Mongolia. I won’t even attempt to capture it all. But it’s got something to do with it being white which means purity.
Present time was insane. With that many guests you’re guaranteed a decent present bounty. This was ridiculous though. The couple had changed from their western attire in to more traditional Mongolian garb – the deel (closely resembles a pretty dressing gown and should be adopted worldwide for comfort factor). They were receiving gifts individually. Hundreds of them. Mostly envelopes of money. For the few that liked the sound of their own voices, they could even give a speech to the couple over the microphone. There was a vase and a puppy as well. They were grateful and gracious and graceful. They smiled the whole time. I tell you what, with those shoes on and at my wedding, there’s no way I’d stand there for an hour to receive gifts. I’d rather none at all. Below: the gift giving line up
All of our work was invited. There are 20 of us. 17 made it. We all put in 20,000tugriks each (about $17 and probably 1/5 of the cost of our attendance). We also gave an epic bunch of orange roses.
The cake had 5 tiers. One tier got wonkier and wonkier over the course of the evening but never collapsed. We had about 5 courses of food. One pork (I got the plate with the pork fat but was happily swapped for the meat), one lamb (actual LAMB albeit overcooked), dessert, cake and salad. One course came out after the first meal – I thought it was just dessert. From a distance it looked like chocolate and vanilla icecream and I thought NO WAY! Surely this isn’t going to be actual icecream? And of course, it was the chopped up cooked sheep that had sat in front of the new couple all night. There were rather large chunks of fat which looked like the vanilla. Bugger.
Below (l to r): the beef dish; the cut up sheep dish; the pork dish
The ceremony at the Wedding Palace was filmed and put up on the big screen so we could watch the whole thing. The reception was also filmed live – and played on the big screen. No shit, the wedding was so big they had to have a big screen so you could actually see what was going on. The efficiency spread to a massive banner of the newly married couple in their wedding get up. It was displayed at the entry, just in case you forgot who’s wedding it was I guess?! Unfortunately that kind of efficiency seems to be reserved for the Mongolian super important politicians and not for the general Mongols.
There was another outfit change and it was dance time. Each band played five songs or less. They were all very good. We got up, had a boogie around the bride’s sister (who has a mental and physical disability and was dancing quite sexually sometimes, and other times just so freaking adorable) dancing in the middle of the circle. She loved the attention and we loved the attention being drawn from us. Below: dance time for the couple
More food, more dancing, more vodka. The couple went around to every table and greeted every single person with double cheek kisses and a shot of vodka. I was worried that they’d be pissed by the time they got to our table (we were banished right to the back). Never fear, they had it under control. She was drinking wine and I guess the bloke was pretending to drink his vodka. 32 oversized shots would have been too much even for a Mongolian man. Once we toasted the bride, the bride’s father came around to most tables and was very excitedly received (being famous and all). More vodka. Oh man. So much vodka. Below: my colleagues and I at our table
Dance time for the couple. I managed to get away with only one formal dance, thank goodness. Everyone was getting pretty drunk, sleazy and stinky by that stage. Cake was cut and the lights came on. We made it out of there eventually and then eventually made our way to RiverSounds, a nightclub that was pumping at midnight on Sunday.
We paid a tax to get in (that would be in turn used to bribe the cops when they came around to shut the club down because they’re suppose to shut at midnight). We danced a bit. Everyone’s cottoned on to the fact that I’m happy to dance so were literally forcing me to dance. My boss tried to push me (literally) next to a guy who was pretty good at dancing. She wanted me to compete against him so that they could ‘be proud of me’ and just win a competition. Even though it never existed! I apologized to the poor guy and disappointed my boss (like, big time. She was totally pissed off that I wouldn’t take one for the team and win for them).
I also had to have a lot more shots of vodka. They all know I hate it but make me drink it anyway. My boss was particularly bad. I didn’t succumb often to their peer pressure – sometimes saying no I thought I might lose my job (okay, more I was secretly hoping). The cops came and shut the joint down even though we’d paid our money. Our group was quite riotous and made lots of noise about paying already but gave up eventually (the bouncers helped make their decision) and walked outside. It was 1:30am and there was no way I was going to karaoke. It’s not easy to just go home in UB. You can’t walk alone and it’s not really recommended to catch a taxi alone, and without an escort I was alone and waiting for someone else to take me home. I hate, hate hate this part of Mongolia. I have no independence whatsoever and it drives me nuts.
Anyway, I got home and showered and slept. Yay for sleep. I went to work at midday on Monday as we were told we could be late. No one was even at work. They all turned up later in the afternoon.
Last night was another farewell for more volunteers. It’s sad to see them go but has become a regular occurrence.
Today was my D-day re: work. Until the meeting was postponed. I’m not even angry or upset. But what the hell. I’ve been waiting for this meeting for months – where maybe I’ll be given direction. Or, maybe lack thereof which means I can finally decide to seek other opportunities.
Still no baby.
