Naadam Opening Ceremonies and Movieish Night

Naadam!  The celebration of Mongolia's awesomeness.  More specifically, the celebration of 2,220 years since the Huns, 805 years since the Great Mongolian Empire, 100 years since Mongolian independence, and 90 years since the Mongolian Revolution.

Anya and I were picked up by some staff from the Samaritan's Purse, and we met up with the team from Australia at the stadium at 7:30 a.m.  We had to wait in line for a hour and a half before we could enter the stadium, and then we sat for another two hours before the Opening Ceremony began at 11:00.  

All that waiting gave me plenty of time to get to know Emily, a nurse who loves to travel and will soon be visiting Istanbul, and Laura, a former Journeygirl to Afghanistan who obviously has some really fantastic stories to tell.

The Opening Ceremony was just as good, if not better, than the Olympics.  It lasted two hours.  There were soldiers standing guard over Ghengis Khan's nine flags the entire time, while the world's awesomest marching band routine went on around them.  Okay, not exactly a marching band, but music was played while hundreds of  little kids made lines and stars on the field and danced.  Then the Mongolian horde ran out onto the field, posed in fighting stances, and did their own routine.  They ended organized into the symbol on the Mongolian flag while some horde in silver and gold came out and danced to Mongolian rap.  Let me tell you, dancers have never looked so fierce.

The president spoke, there were national instruments, and important people and important symbols paraded around the track circling the field.  It was fantastic and colorful, and I totally get why the Mongolians have so much pride.

We left before the wrestlers came out, because there are 1,024 of them, and it is only interesting in the finals (according to Anya and Gany, who joined us at noon). There were hundreds of little food stands set up outside the stadium, very much like a state fair.  We ate some more khuushuur, the delicious fried bread/meat/onion fast food thing.  Gany and I got stick on tattoos of the Mongolian flag.  Then we separated from the Australian team and joined the insanely compact crowd that was heading back to the city proper.

We caught a bus that took us into the city suburbs, called the ger district, which could easily be called slums.  It took nearly an hour to get out there, what with Naadam traffic being so ridiculous, but eventually we arrived at Gany's father's house.  They fed us a ton of food, and I didn't eat enough to satisfy them, but luckily Gany assured them she could eat enough for both of us.

We only stayed for maybe an hour before taking two of her cousins with us to Galaa's house for a youth group movie night.  I found out that Johnny (formerly Chatty Johnny) is Galaa's little brother, which means their family is made up of my favorite people that I've met so far, which is fun.  Their apartment is USian nice, and when Galaa asked if I had brought my iPad, he told me they had wireless.  What!?  

Johnny curled up in my lap while Galaa showed me some music and gaming apps to get.  Then we watched some clips from a weirdly hilarious cartoon Galaa likes.  By then, more of the youth group had shown up, so I mingled in the living room.  Anar speaks English really well, so we talked for awhile.  Then another girl whose name I don't know taught me a whole slew of Mongolian words, and several people gathered around to laugh at my attempts and correct me and sometimes, to praise me.

As I am beginning to realize is the norm, someone brought out the guitar, so I started a dance party.  As I do.  Dance transcends all language.  Some kids went put to buy Ramen around 8:30, and I played the fast hand slapping game with Galaa.  I like him because he treats me as one of the group, making fun of me and being very handsy (as they all are with each other).  So he's cute and my love language is touch.  What's a girl to do?  If that girl is me, she kicks the boy, because Galaa was hand slapping unnecessarily hard, right on my sunburnt hand.  So I yelled, "OW!" and kicked him in the shin.  But he just grinned, petted my hand, and slapped me again.

When the Ramen was cooked, he put his arm around my shoulders and pointed to Gany and Johnny and said, "Look at their mouths.  It is funny."  Which of course made me super self-conscious about slurping my own Ramen, especially when the girl who was teaching me Mongolian returned for lesson #2.  Let me just say, practicing all those back-of-the-throat guttural sounds with noodles in your mouth?  Is a really good way to projectile spit your food on your audience.

A projector was set up (yeah, I'm sayin'--the kid is rich), and we were going to watch a movie, but something wasn't working right.  Eventually Anya supplied her iPhone, but the only movies she had on there were Bible movies in Mongolian.  Since it was already after 10:00, Gany, Tsogi (her boyfriend, have I mentioned him yet?  He's very nice) and I walked home.

I'm really proud of the fact that after being here four days, I was able to spend five hours at a party and only hang out with Gany for a minimal amount of time.  I do far better at assimilating on my own than with a team.