Travis & Shauna Hlavka's Photos of Mongolia
Weeknight Schmeeknight
One thing about Mongolians, when it's time to have a party, they don't care what day of the week it is. Tuesday night we had our Christmas/New Year office party. Only problem was, the health dept where Shauna works decided to have theirs the same night. Wha? Oh well. So we partied separately. It was a lot of fun. There was good food, vodka, beer, champagne, wine, etc.., and a lot more people than I anticipated. One of my coworkers, Daanii, drove Shauna and I to our parties. I was definitely underdressed cuz all the other guys had suits and ties, or nice dells. I wore dress pants and a fancy sweater. We ate food and had some drinks and chatted for while. I even made a toast in Mongolian (To your success). I know your impressed with that, but it's only 2 or 3 words. Then the games started. First there was a raffle, in which I didn't win, but, my counterpart won the best prize; a really nice rice cooker.
The other 3 games were hilarious. First, they picked random men and women from the audience. The men were all given a long piece of string and told to weave it up the woman's sleeve and all the way thru her clothes till it came out the pant leg. (As you can tell, we are definitely in a male dominated society. The funny thing is 2 women picked the games). There are a few pictures on the pics page. The really funny part was when they announced what the guys had to do with the string. Apparently nobody knew this game, and most of the people were married.....but not to each other. I think the ladies with dell's had an advantage. Ok, so for the next game, they picked a bunch of guys, gave em a balloon, a piece of string with something small and heavy tied to the end, and made them tie the string around their waste with the heavy thing hanging down in back like a long tale. The object of the game was to race by knocking the balloon between your legs on the floor to the finish. (see the pics, it's hard to explain). The last game involved placing a balloon between two people and popping it by queezing together. For example, the most dangerous idea was, they had my counterpart and I pop a balloon between our faces. I cheated a little tho and bit it cuz i was getting nervous I would smash my counterparts face with my face after the balloon popped. I don't recommend using faces to pop balloons. The others were pretty funny tho; Pop between butt's; Pop between hips facing each other; etc.
Later, after dancing and drinking more toasts, they asked me to be a judge. "Of what?", I said. Well, each table was to give their impressions of "Vodka" in Mongolia. (My counterpart translated what I couldn't understand).. It was actually a very tough decision. One, because I had a few drinks in me, and two, cuz all their statements were very good. Overall, they all believed vodka was not a problem unless it was used constantly and in excess.
Can You Say...International Incident?
Ok, it's not that bad, but around 1am at the party, I was standing talking to someone.......while waving my hands and arms around like normal.....and I didn't see one of the herdsman walk up with a shot of vodka for me. Well, there I am flailing about talking and WHAM, I knock the vodka out of his hand onto the floor. UHHH, WHOOOPS. Even tho they believe too much vodka is bad, it is still a big part of their culture, and spilling it all over wasn't a good thing. However, spilling a milk product would have been much worse. Anyway, I said I was very sorry and..and...and...so we walked over to the table, and they poured me another shot. Phew, I was kinda worried I wouldn't get another shot.....uhh....I mean, I was kinda worried I had offended them. I think it was an "end of the party" shot cuz we all left right after. Hmmmm, now I wonder.....Am I a party killer??
