Oh Yahnaa!!

One of my new favorite expressions ever is "oh yahnaa" It means "oops" or "oh no" I'm not exactly sure what the context in which you are supposed to use it is... But the day that Tuya (my language teacher) taught us the expression I tried it out on my family when I dropped something on the floor and they all busted out laughing at me. I'm really not sure why, but now it is sort of a running joke. Anytime something isn't going quite right I just say "Oh Yahnaa" and everybody laughs.
It worked especially well one night when my parents had some friends over and we were drinking beer, my Dad walked in with a giant bottle of Chinggis Vodka and set it in the middle of the table. I exclaimed "Oh Yahnaa" and looked terrified (in Mongolia once a bottle is opened it MUST be finished, and there is ALWAYS another bottle) So I guess my Dad made my sister go exchange the vodka for a case of beer, which is much more manageable. I'm lucky in that my family doesn't really drink too much. Although last week my Mom had friends over pretty much every night to drink. One night it was wine, and the other night it was beer. I'm glad they don't seem to have a great affinity for Vodka, because that is dangerous stuff...
This past weekend was pretty crazy... Saturday we learned how to chop wood, build a fire and cook some Mongolian dishes. All the parents had a meeting on Thursday with our LCF's and decided whose houses we were going to. Half of the group came to my house, which was really fun. Friday after classes we went to the market to buy all the food we needed (we had to buy meat, which was a little scary. Luckily our LCFs were with us to help) and then Saturday morning we all learned how to chop wood and then build a fire. My family has a second building which used to be a Delguur (small store) but is now closed, but it has a wood fire stove in it so we cooked out there. We made tsoyvin which is a really delicious noodle/vegetable mix that is sort of stir fried, a lot like Pad Thai, and montain buutz which are steamed dumplings with meat in them, and also tomstae hooshor which are basically handmade hotpockets with potatoes in them. We ended up with way more food than we could eat. The Peace Corps gave us a budget of 1,500 Tugriks each, which for my group added up to 12,000 Tugriks (or $12) and we could have fed about 20 people. After we were done cooking I made my Dad come out to help us eat some of the food, and he brought a bottle of Mongolian Aireg out that his Mom had made. Aireg is a word for Vodka, and Mongolian Aireg is the famous fermented Mare's milk. It is actually pretty good. It tastes a little like Sake, and is not very strong.
Sunday was a crazy day too...
Today we had our Mid-LPI (language proficiency interview) which went really well. It was kind of intimidating, we went in one by one and had to have a conversation with the tester in Mongolian. We weren't really sure what to expect, Tuya gave us a list of questions that we have learned, so we studied that a lot, but the interview wasn't quite like that. I went in and Naraa told me to tell her about my family, and then tell her about myself and then ask her questions. I did pretty well, but she said my grammar was a little off. Mongolian is a really challenging language because most of the meaning comes from endings to verbs and nouns, and the ending depends on which vowels are used in the verb stem etc... It's hard to keep it all straight. And native speakers drop syllables and vowels when speaking conversationally, so it's really hard to understand what is actually being said when half the word is missing!
I'm glad the LPI is over though, and tomorrow we get to go to Darkhan for Mid-Center Days, supposedly they are having a BBQ for us tomorrow for the 4th and they are going to make us Hamburgers!! We are all pretty excited about that. Then next week is Nadaam, so we don't have class very much and it's pretty much a week-long party from what we hear. I'm a little worried about getting locked out of my house, as I don't have a key yet and I have been locked out twice in the past two days... but hopefully that issue is getting resolved today...