Astana Days - July 6

On July 6 and 7 Astana celebrated Astana Days, and July 6 is also President Nazarbayev's birthday, so the celebrations were in full motion. There is usually a parade, concerts all over the city, dance competitions and many other things. Babushka, the girls, and I (Spencer had to do some work) decided to go look at one yurt village that they put together for display next to one of the city malls. Each region of Kazakhstan had its own yurt where they presented information about their region. It was pretty fun.

At the "village"

Babushka speaking with one of the presenters. 

I always loved the Kazakh national costumes... so festive!

Inside of one of the yurts

This one our kids loved the most because it had live animals!

Sophie with her new friend!

My girls didn't get the memo that during the picture taking it is advisable to look into the camera. Well, in their defense, there is a live snake in the spot where they are looking.

Another yurt.

This yurt from Aktobe region was pretty cool: it had different kinds of oil. Kazakhstan has a big oil industry on the Caspian Sea.

We had fun at the village!

It was a really hot day, and by the time we were done, we were really thirsty, so we decided to walk to another city mall and have some lemonade and possibly ice cream there. We ran into some interesting things along the way.

We found this exciting reptile bench.

The girls couldn't resist climbing on top of it.

This year Astana built the bike trails that go through a lot of the city. Too bad we do not  own bikes here because they are very nice! 

Enjoying the fountain mist on a very, very hot day!

Babushka

This plaza often has different art exhibits.  This time it was "Kazakhstan through pictures"

One of the pictures. It is very iconic. The two beauties Kazakhs value the most are horses and women; probably in that order :)

The twins are just unable to pass any fountain without getting wet.

We finally made it to the Keruen Mall and had some cherry lemonade and sundae ice cream.

When we got back home, Babushka and the twins were pretty tired but Nika, Lina and I thought we would go check out if anything else was going on at our own mall, and we were right... there was a a kids chess simultaneous game with one of the chess masters of Kazakhstan and a circus performance. We stayed and watch for awhile and then decided to check out the new playground. It was awesome! 

Simultaneous chess games

One of the circus performers doing a hula-hoop tricks

They must have been inspired by the circus performers.

Pretty impressive web on the playground!

As always we had a great time exploring the city and all it has to offer.

KVN Game (Eurasian Cup) in July

This post will probably not be interesting to most of the people outside of Kazakhstan or Russia, but the adventure we had is kind of important to our family. So here it goes…

In America colleges compete against each other in different sports like basketball or football. In the Soviet Union (and now in Russia and the former Soviet Union Republics) there was one big competition between the colleges, and it was in comedy. It was and is called KVN (abbreviation which can be translated as the Club of the Funny and Inventive people). The student teams compete by showing prepared sketches, giving funny answers to the questions from the judges or the audience, and giving musical presentations. The top teams make it to the Highest League, and those games are shown on the national television. The games first aired in 1961 but in 1972 some Soviet sensors decided that students’ impromptu jokes were offensive to the communist regime, and banned KVN for the next 14 years. The show was revived again during the perestroika era with the same host who started it, Alexander Maslyakov, and now is probably the most popular show in Russia and CIS countries. You can always tell what is going on in the country by simply watching KVN competitions.

I grew up watching KVN games on TV, and Spencer got hooked on them during our first visit to Russia after we’d been married for a couple of years. Since then it became our family tradition, and the kids love it as much as we do. Since we moved to Astana, Kazakhstan, we are even more involved in it because one of our favorite teams was from Astana. Last year they won the whole competition. This brings me to the reason for my post.

Usually the games are played either in Moscow, Sochi or Vladivostok (all opposite sides in Russia), or sometimes in the past in a Latvian city of Jurmala, in other words nowhere near our location. But last year there was one big game that was held here in Astana. Unfortunately, we were in the air that day flying back from our Eastern-European trip, and missed the game. We were so bummed because a lot of our favorite teams played in it. But then this summer we found out that there will be another game played on the 4th of July here in Astana with pretty much all of our favorite teams in it, and it would be held just a couple of blocks from our house! Of course, we couldn’t miss this chance, so we bought the tickets. And usually we say that different events are pretty cheap here, like you can go to a big national hockey game for only $5 and get pretty good seats but KVN games are very expensive with decent seats prices going anywhere between $70 and $300 per ticket. But it was once in a life time opportunity, so we went for it.

Unfortunately, we still are not used to Kazakh timing and honestly will never get used to it. In short, Kazakhs and “being on time” do not go together!

We showed up 30 minutes before the game was supposed to start, went to out seats in this huge hockey arena and noticed that there were only a handful of people in their seats. We though to ourselves, “Well, there is still plenty of time, people will get here on time.” Nope. We. Were. Wrong. So wrong! A half an hour past the time the show was supposed to start there was only about 1/3 of the people in their seats. They couldn’t start the show because it was being recorded for the national television, and they couldn’t have people walking to their seats in the middle of it. Finally, one of the organizers asked all of the people from the upper bowls come down and fill up the big section across from the stage (they would be mostly the ones shown on the TV). That made the people in the nose-bleed section very happy: they got to sit in the $300 and $200/seat zone for just $20! We had pretty good seats, so we didn’t move. Finally, an hour later the competition started! But then of course, right at that moment the people who actually bought those expensive tickets started to show up. Most of them were seated wherever they could find an empty seat but some went upfront and moved the people taking their seats out. What a mess! That was the most frustrating hour of my life in Kazakhstan!

Thankfully, the game itself was very entertaining, and we had a great time there once it all started. We loved seeing our favorite teams live, and were very glad we took this chance!

Here are some pictures...

Girls are very excited  to be here!

We are excited to be here!

Here we are, thirty minutes past the time the show was supposed to start, and the camera is looking into empty seats!

Standing in the white suit is one of the judges, Alexei Yagudin, who won gold  in the men's single event of the figure skating competition in the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Judges are in their seats, and we are still waiting for people to take theirs.

Our favorite team "Sparta Astana" during one of their skits.

Another of our favorites - "Soyuz".

All of the teams that played in the game.