Khaaaaaaaaaan!!!

Well, we just retruned from Inner Mongolia. Inner Mongolia is a "province" of China that was essentially annexed, but the history is pretty long and involved (like Tibet for instance). We visited the capital city which is Hohhot (pronounced hoo-hot). There were eight of us that went plus a Chinese woman whose English name is Eileen. Eileen teaches at the same school that our Drake pals Sable, Amit, and Angela do.

We visited a mosque along with some Buddhist temples, went shopping (ugh...), and took in the sights and sounds of the city. Plus, we ate some Mongolian barbequed goat. Here are a few of the stories we brought back with us:

By far, the highlight of the trip was when we ventured an hour and a 1/2 outside of the city to the grasslands. Like Native Americans had teepees, Mongolians had gerts (pronounced yurts) which they were able to set up and dismantle with relative ease. We thought we were going to stay in a real gert but we ended up staying in a touristy area that had concrete gerts. Despite that, we had a lot of fun. We rode horses for a couple of hours on the great grasslands and saw some traditional dancing wrestling, and horse racing. The highlight was during wrestling when four Chinese men demonstrated how Mongolians wrestle which involves trying to trip your opponent. When they call for volunteers, our friend Megan enthusiastically raises her hand, but they pick three guys before they finally pick her. One of the guys doesn't realize he is going to wrestle Megan so when he sees Megan, she gives him a "strong man" pose and his eyes widen and he kind of steps back momentarily. Keep in mind Megan is about 6'0" with an athletic build and this guy was probably 5'8" or so and scrawny. Megan ends up taking this guy down to the ground and the guy is totally embarassed while his girlfriend laughs at him. But Megan ends up shaking hands with him and took a few pictures. This Chinese woman came up to me insisting she was a doctor because Megan had scratched her knee, but like any badass Megan refused medical service.

Before we came to the grasslands, we estimated that riding horses would cost us each 100 yuan or so (which is under $20) but they wanted to charge us 200 yuan (which is still not much, except that we are paid in yuan, not U.S. dollars) so we tried to haggle with the guy. This guy ends up getting furious. He picks up a stick of the ground and hits it against the board that shows what our options are for the horse riding while he yells at us. Poor, little Eileen still tries to haggle with him but to no avail. We acquiesce and pay 200 yuan. His mood immediately made a 180 degree turn. The money made the man very happy and he lead us towards the horses. With his fist thrust in the air, he yells, "LET'S GO!!!"

I cannot describe to you how sore our asses (and in general) were the day after riding horses. Not only from the horses but in our gert we slept on hard wood floors. The stirrups were really high so it was really hard to stand up on them.
Needless to say, it was funny to hear everyone, hungover as balls, grunt and moan in the morning and walking all funny. That and everyone expressed a slight pain when sitting down for the next day or two. Also, I think I am officially unable to conceive children now. Despite all our complaining, riding horses was a lot of fun. We stopped a couple places while we were riding. One to admire the grasslands, one to come to a prayer site, and the other to drink milk tea and eat some Mongolian snacks.

That night there was a huge dance party and I tried showing some Singapore dudes how to crip walk. In my excessively drunken state, I'm pretty sure I just made a fool of myself while they laughed. But we ended up hanging out with them for a while and went to a bar with them after the dance. We all danced and got involved in some big circle where everyone held hands and danced around the stage. Pretty awesome.

One conversation at one of our dinners was dominated by the topic of swear words in Chinese and English. I now know how to say fuck you, bitch, and dammit in Chinese. Eileen was confused when we explained the word, "shit" and that more appropriate synonyms are "crap" and "poop." Later, Eileen came up to me and asked me, "Is poop what you lay on your bed to sleep on?"
After I got my laughter under control I said, "No, those are sheets." Then she told me that the word for "improvised bed" in Chinese is something that sounds like poop so then I understood why she was confused (kind of).

During this trip I finally got the courage to say "kan shenme kan?" (what are you looking at?) to some Chinese. Except...it was two little boys, haha. I didn't say it very threateningly, but after I said it they both looked at each other with wide eyes and then looked away from us. I also said it to some women who were staring at us in a shop and a bunch of teenagers...so I think I got it out of my system now.

I'll add more stuff later as I think of them...