ykylimw #23

you know you live in mongolia when...

...every game you play must have some kind of punishment for the losers.

This might mean having to dance in the middle of a circle of folks. It might mean leaning forward so everyone can pound on your back for a prescribed amount of time. It might entail getting flicked on the forehead (and yes, that hurts). Or it might mean having to do any number of embarrassing things in front of a large group of people.

The first question after I explain any new game is "What happens to the loser(s)?" And nothing is not an acceptable answer here.

I usually shrug and then they make up their own punishment as they see fit. Because to be honest, I'm pretty anti-punishment when it comes to games.

I encountered this "there must be a punishment" thing when I lived in Bolivia too. Usually I played along with good humor, subjecting myself to said punishment when necessary and working really hard to avoid it when possible (although let's be real, the whole I'm not a native speaker of your language thing is a legit disadvantage).

However, one evening we were at an acquaintance's birthday party and I'll admit I was in a bit of a foul mood. It had been a complicated day- I thought one of our friends was mad at me and I had really only come because I was hoping to talk to her and sort things out rather than continue to stress out about it.

We played some word game, which are the absolute hardest when you are only at a basic- functioning language level, and I, inevitably, lost.

I was supposed to get up and dance in front of everyone to some random music they would select. Everyone looked at me in expectation, waiting for me to get up from the table.

And I refused to move.

I sat there stubbornly and glared at them as they tried to cajole/force me up and out of my chair. My foul mood made me inordinately stubborn in that moment and I would.not.move.

They all kind of stood there stunned for awhile and then eventually moved on to harassing one of the other guys who had lost. And I sat there and realized that I had never in my life made such a scene about refusing to do something silly like dancing.