As I stated before, one of the big holidays in Kazakhstan is Новый Год, or New Year. Santa Claus comes on the night of the 31st and delivers presents to the kids. On the 30th, it is a busy day at schools, packed with celebrations. I spent most of my day at the schools, watching the festivities. In the morning, my host brother Emir and Alishair participated.
As you can tell by the pictures, New Years is the holiday when children get to dress up in costumes. This holiday is not a religious one, so because of that it was made into a "fantastical" holiday- or so this is what I was told. Emir went as D'Artagnan and Alishair went as Batman.
Batman was more concerned with eating candy than anything else.
The boys with my other host sister- Gohar.
Ludmilla, Batman and me
Emir is in the bottom right.
Gambrill and I posing with Santa and Snegurochka.
For the older kids, the festivities moved into the larger hall with the nice tree!
Gambrill with one of her classes- they put on a dance show that was really good. I have video but will need to edit first before I post it.
In the afternoon, I went to my counterpart's school. Zulfiya and myself in front of their tree.
After that, I was invited over to the park director's house for dinner. This is him and his wife. They prepared bishbarmak, a traditional meal of pasta, onions, and usually horse meat. This was the case here- as well as horse kilbasa which was very tasty. Here Almac is cutting up the meat for us to enjoy.
Now the house is in a flurry of activity- cleaning, cooking, etc. Tonight we will have a big meal, champagne and then will watch President Nazarbayev on TV give a New Years toast at midnight. After that, the town converges on the stadium, where more festivities are planned.
I hope everyone has a Happy News Years! All the best for 2010.
