Our fall in pictures

I had some interesting experiences with the medicine here in Kazakhstan. We have great medical insurance here but the quality of medical treatments is really hit and miss; everything depends on the doctors you get. When Nika had her surgery last year, we got to a good doctor. When Spencer had his ordeal with cancer, we went through a few doctors before we finally got to a good one. I wasn't so lucky. I have been having an unexplained pain for the last 4 years, and I went to a number of doctors here a few times, every time to no avail as far as my concerns would go. But every time they wanted to treat something else. Last time they thought I had some inflammation in the rib cage, so they prescribed 5 days of IV treatment. IV treatment is something they freely use here to treat just about anything. That and shots. This is how they administer most drugs. You need antibiotics? Sure, here is your shot, or even better ... here are your 10 shots! I had to choose between shots and IV, and since I had to endure IV for only 5 days (vs. 10 days of shots), I went with it. Here is me enjoying my choice at our health clinic on campus. There was no gain but no loss either, so I guess all is well.

Sophie is our absolute animal lover! She loves all animals but especially our dog Yuki. Yuki usually doesn't like cuddling (like in the picture bellow) with anyone, but she lets Sophie do it. This is how I often find the two of them.

We had our friends, the Thomas family, over for dinner and Halloween celebration here on campus. The kids were very excited to do real trick-or-treating among our four apartment buildings. While the kids went on a candy hunt by themselves, the adults had a great time visiting.

Our combined crew of trick-or-treaters.

Getting ready to go out for the candy loot!

As usual, our girls were very creative Halloween artists!

Our entrance door from outside.

I was very proud of myself for creating this Pinterest worthy dessert: witch fingers! (shortbread cookies with jam and almonds)

In November Spencer had his 41st birthday. Contrary to what he may have thought as a child, he didn't die at such an old age! Just got a bit wiser, that's all!

In November we also went to a Korean Cultural Night that was held at the Ballet Theater. That theater was built two years ago and is very modern looking. Before the night started, the Korean ambassador gave a speech  about different projects that South Korea and Kazakhstan have together. The cultural event had dancers and melodies performed on traditional Korean instruments. The dances were very unique.  They were the complete opposite to the energetic Russian dances I am used to. In a way they reminded me of shaman dances of Siberian tribes. Very interesting!

Spencer's childhood friend, Jon Peterson, came to Astana in November to teach a 2-week course at Nazarbayev University. Jon and his family lived here a few years ago, and became our family overseas. It was really nice to have him here and to remember the "good ol' times".

Our Thanksgiving dinner with Jon.

Our church branch had a Thanksgiving get together at the Thomas's house. We had super yummy potluck dinner and then played a fun charades game with a Thanksgiving theme. It was a fun evening.

Here is Sophie showing whatever it was she was showing for all of us to guess.

Our Christmas Program at the church was much earlier this year because all three families (all three happen to be American families) were leaving in the first part of December to various vacation destinations. One went to Dubai, another one went to India, and we went to visit our family in America. Here are our Primary children singing a Christmas song during the meeting. This was the last time all of them were in the same class together because the three girls in the back (two of them are ours) have moved up to the youth class with the ringing of the New Year.

It is 2020 and the University went above and beyond in preparing for the New Year Celebrations! When I took the two pictures below, they didn't have all of the decorations up yet but it was very festive already!

Babushka and Sophie are in the background. 

We had a long fall this year and a pretty mild winter so far but winter nonetheless. My favorite time is when we have a fog in the night and early morning and then the sun comes out, and we have a Winter Wonderland! Of course, we will have this Winter Wonderland for 5-6 months, and by the end of the season we will all be fed up with it but for now it is a pure joy!

The front of the university.

I am just loving all of it!

 Well, as I mentioned earlier, for Christmas we went to America to visit our family and so our next post will be about our adventures there.

Family Holidays 2018

Half of this year is over but I still had a lot of pictures from 2018 that I wanted to share first, so the next couple of posts will be a sort of collage of things and activities we had going at the end of last year. 

Halloween was just as exciting this year as it was in the years to pass. I do not know what it is about kids, monsters, and candy but ... I love this holiday. This year the kids went all out in decorating our front door (in our apartment building, people who want to receive trick-or-treaters have to put some sort of Halloween decoration on their door). This is our front door from the outside.

Think twice before ringing our door bell!!!

And here is our front door from the inside. So, if you did dare to come in... you might never come out!

 This year the twins invited two of their friends, April and Angelina, to join them for trick-or-treating in our apartment complex. I planned a few "mostreous" snacks before they would go out to scare the poor inhabitants of our building. Thank you, Pinterest, for some great ideas!

Our scary crew! Yuki wanted to join them but didn't have any costume to wear, so she had to stay home and enjoy the festivities from the inside.

Counting their loot!

Judging by the amount of candy, Lina was the first one to hit every apartment in the building!

 Our next big family holiday was Thanksgiving but here in Kazakhstan we celebrate it on a small scale. Since it is not a Kazakh holiday, Spencer has to work every Thanksgiving but since we homeschool, we have this day off. To find a whole turkey is near to impossible here, and then it costs about $50 but we still manage to get one almost every year. This is our traditional Thanksgiving dinner - roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, 24-hour salad (Spencer's grandma's recipe), coleslaw, and homemade rolls. Yumm!

Winter comes in early here; usually we would have some snow by the first week in October. I love winter, I love all the snow, and cold, and sweaters I can wear, and all the comfort food that comes with winter season. But most of all I love the family holidays!

I snapped this picture on our campus during one of our evening walks with Yuki. To some it might be just an ordinary tree but to me it is magical!

Ahh, ... snow, pine tree, and my beautiful daughter!

Since we moved here, babushka came to visit us every winter (and most of summers). Babushka means a lot of hugs and kisses as well as tons of candy, pancakes, cheese bread, and pelmeni and varenniki (Russian and Ukrainian dumplings). Here the girls and she are making a supply of pelmeni and varenniki for the winter.

 
We usually spend our Christmas and New Year in Kazakhstan. Only once we went to America during the winter holidays. It is usually very quite on campus because all of the students and faculty go home for the holidays. It is very ... peaceful. We love it!

Our Christmas Tree on New Year's Eve (here the biggest holiday of the year with all of the presents and festivities is New Year's Celebration; we do celebrate Christmas but all of the presents come on New Year). That peanut butter jar is for Lina who is a true peanut butter lover!

Opening presents on New Year's morning.

One of our beloved New Year's traditions is that we have cake for breakfast!

Kids are working on their craft kits that they got for New Year.

Sophie and Lina are working on their project - picture by numbers done with beads.

Halloween 2016

For Halloween this year the kids decided to be truly wicked. Veronika dressed up in the Baba Yaga costume (Baba Yaga is a witch from Russian fairy tales who eats children and lives in a house with chicken legs deep, deep in the forest). Lina couldn't decide what she was going to be but finally made up her mind to be a little devil. The twins were pirates. As with every Halloween here in Kazakhstan, the kids go trick-or-treating around the apartments in our building, and then one of the professors puts up a celebration for the kids in the big atrium of our building. Just like last year, the twins had their best friend from school, Dariya, come join them for the fun of it all. Here are some pictures from the event.  

Veronika as Baba Yaga (Babushka helped her put together her costume)

Polina was a little devil. A very cute one too!

Lexa and Sophie are really into being true pirates!

Some of the trick-or-treaters we got that night

Some of those were our own children!

Trick-or-treaters walking the hallways of our apartment building

The party downstairs

Some of the families really got into Halloween spirit! 

Girls with their friend, Dariya

Playing some Halloween games

Knocking out the peniatas...

As always they had a lot of fun, and we survived yet another Halloween!

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!