Halloween 2014 in KZ!

We just celebrated our first Halloween in Kazakhstan! To tell you the truth it was the easiest Halloween ever! It is not part of the Kazakh culture and so there was nothing to remind you about its approach. No Halloween decorations at the stores, no costumes anywhere in sight, and no Halloween candy screaming at you “Buy me, buy me!” And so it just quietly snuck up on us!

We live on Nazarbayev University campus in a big apartment building. The building itself is somewhat unique (more about it in a different post) and so are the people who live here. In our building we have people from America, England, Netherlands, China, Korea, Jordan, Japan, India, Ukraine, Russia, Czech Republic, South Africa, Italy, Kazakhstan and other countries.

Our friends, the Petersons, proposed that we would have a Trick-or-Treating in our building on Halloween night. They received an OK from the building management, and an email went out to the tenants explaining the Halloween tradition of Trick-or-Treating and inviting them to participate in this American tradition. At first they received a very weak response but then more and more families expressed a desire to participate. In fact some of the people got so excited that they proposed a Halloween potluck party in the building with different activities for the kids. And then the University itself said they would also have a Halloween celebration (in a Kazakh way) that same night where they would show some Kazakh legends and also have activities for the entire family.  So many things to do! So many things to choose from!

Halloween Pot-Luck taking place in the 2nd floor common area. Taken from in front of our apartment on the seventh floor.

Our only problem was that our kids didn’t have any costumes to wear. We didn’t bring any with us from America because we couldn’t fit anything more in our 22 pieces of luggage and to tell you the truth Halloween costumes were not high on our priority list of things to bring to Kazakhstan. There are no costumes being sold here at this time. Not yet. I was told that at the end of November all the shops will be filled with costumes (it is a tradition here for the kids to wear costumes for the New Year’s celebration) but in October there was no costume in sight! I also didn’t have my sewing machine here to make some as I would have done in America and I also didn’t have any free time thanks to our kids’ insane school schedule! Besides that, one of our daughters would have to miss the party and Trick-or-Treating anyway because she has an afternoon school and doesn’t come home until almost 8pm. So, I told the kids that we will probably skip Trick-or-Treating this year but that we would go to the University party and see what our Kazakh friends had up their sleeves. The kids weren’t super happy about it but they agreed.

Then the University party got canceled because they scheduled some other event the next day and had to set thing up for it the night before. And then my friend Shari Peterson (the instigator of Trick-or-Treating in our building) said she would help me with the costumes for the kids and convinced me to join in trick-or-treating. Since the decision was made on Friday afternoon, we only had 4 hours to prepare for the evening! I told Veronika (our 9 year old) that if she wanted to wear a costume she would have to decorate our front door. In America people who want Trick-or Treaters come to their door, turn on their porch light. Here we had to put some sort of Halloween sign on the outside of our front door to let the kids know that they can ring the door bell and ask for candy. Veronika enthusiastically went to work and an hour later we had a nicely decorated door!

Our door decorated for Trick-or-Treaters

Also the 31st of October was the end of the 1st Quarter at the kids’ school, so everybody finished early, and our Polina who would have totally missed the event, arrived from school just in time to go out with her sisters, well just with two of them (one had to stay behind because she decided to try on a costume of a very naughty kid earlier in the day).

Three trick-or-treaters and one naughty kid! 

For Spencer and I it was really fun to stay at home and meet all of the Trick-or-Treaters while the girls went on their own on the candy hunt! It was so fun to see the excitement on kids’ (and their parents!) faces and see families from all of different cultures participate in this American tradition! Our girls came home happy with the bags full of candy, helium filled balloons in hand and a handful of French fries! Yes, some people were giving out hot French fries! Thank you, Shari and Jon, for organizing such a fun night!

Returning with loot - including balloons!  They already ate their french fries.

Eating part of their haul.

Three piles of candy - what's left after two days.

The Trick-or-Treating was taking place from 7pm to 9pm. It was pretty much done after about 8:15pm, so we let the girls have a few pieces of candy and put them to bed. And Spencer and I took our dog Yuki for our evening walk. When we got back home at about 9:30pm we found this sign at our door! Veronika and Polina said that after we left people were still coming and were waking them up, so they left some candy out for anybody who might stop by late!

We are looking forward to our next holiday in Kazakhstan!