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.

Winter Holidays 2016

New Year has come and gone, and January is almost over! Where does the time go? Please, let me know if you find the answer! Time. Time is an interesting concept. I hope one day I can have some understanding of it, for now I am just grateful we have time together as a family wherever we are, wherever we live. And now we live in Kazakhstan!

Our winter holidays were calm and crazy at the same time. Most importantly we had time together as a family. Christmas was crazy because of all of the concerts and shows kids had to participate in on that day, so we decided to have our Christmas Eve tradition on Monday, December 26. Spencer stayed home from work, and we all spent the day together relaxing and playing Monopoly. We usually have Russian pelmeni (meat filled dumplings) for our Christmas Eve dinner, and then we talk about the birth of Christ and sing Christmas songs. This year we added a music talent show since we love music so much in our family and all four girls play some music instruments. We had a lot of fun!

Decorating our apartment for Christmas

Making paper snowflakes to hang on our ceiling.

Sophie and Lexa are playing duet during our Christmas Eve music show.

Nika and Lina are performing a song

We do all of the presents on New Year because it is when Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) delivers presents to the kids in this part of the world and because in the past couple of years our kids always had to go to school on Christmas anyway. It actually works out quite nicely. We usually spend the day playing games, cooking, making cookies for Ded Moroz (just like Santa, he also has a sweet tooth!), have our big feast and then have a “moviethon” when we watch Christmas movies both in Russian and English as long as we can stay up with a little break at midnight when we go outside and light sparkles to meet the New Year. This year the New Year Day was on Sunday and so we didn't stay up too late because we had to go to church the very next morning.  The time we spend together is precious and I hope the kids will remember it when they are out of our nest and on their own.

This year we had turkey for New Year's dinner. Turkeys are very hard to find here and when you do find one, it usually costs a fortune! We never had a full roasted turkey even on Thanksgiving here but I was able to find one right before New Years. This baby cost us $50 but it was totally worth it!

Our little Christmas tree after the kids have gone to bed.

New Years morning - always a happy time!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! And may thins year you will have a gift of time, time with your loved ones, time with your family!
These candles were a present to Nika.  She made them out of a kit.

Ice Skating at Alau

December 16^th was Kazakhstan's Independence Day. It was 25 years since the collapse of Soviet Union when Kazakhstan gained its independence status. There were a lot of celebrations in the city but we decided that we would take the kids skating to the Ice Arena (like they don't get enough of skating every week with their figure skating lessons! :) Unfortunately, Veronika and Polina managed to get into a big trouble the night before and were grounded for the day. I left them with babushka to work on their homework and to clean our apartment to earn a trip to the movies to watch Moana that afternoon, and took the twins for a fun morning at the skating rink. Last year when I skated with them, they couldn't keep up with me. This year I couldn't keep up with them. Either I got older or they got much better (I prefer the later one!). They did make an amazing progress over the last year. They do spins and little jumps and a lot of other little tricks and were happy to show them off to me.

Twins on the speed skating rink (there are also two hockey rinks in the middle)

Enjoying themselves!

Lexa getting ready to do a jump

Sophie is doing the same

You get to see all kinds of people on the rink! Love it!

Because of Independence Day, there was a little program at the Ice Arena. Elsa from Frozen was showing tricks with bubbles and fire. They also had a little speed skating competition for kids. Sophie and Lexa wanted to participate, so I signed them up. The kids raced in pairs, and the twins ended up racing against each other. They were the fastest skaters, and of the two Sophie won because Lexa started slowing down upon seeing what she thought was the finish line but it wasn't, and Sophie just couldn't stop because I sharpened her skates half an hour earlier (their description of what happened at the finish line!). All of the participants (they only allowed 8 kids to compete) received a little gift, a stuffed toy Alau, the symbol of the Ice Arena.

Elsa making bubbles dance

And here Elsa is setting a poor kid on fire! The audience was very excited!

 Twins racing against each other.

Racers!

Winners!

Skating is fun!

Happy kid!

Satisfied!

Happy and a little tired, ready to go to the movies!

Happy New Year, everyone!!!

All in all we had a lot of fun that day, and I am so happy that the girls take after me in loving all the winter sports, especially ice skating!

Nauryz 2016

The last three day all Kazakh people are celebration Nauryz (Kazakh new year). Last year I wrote a post about it here. We were going to Thailand then. This year we are going to Sri Lanka. I guess we are making it a tradition! :)

On Monday we got together with some friends and went to aul (ethnic village that was set up specifically for the celebration of Nauryz just down the road from Nazarbayev University). It was a sunny day, but was only 32F. The main celebration was happening the next day but we had packing to do for our trip, so we opted for the earlier time.

We met our friends and went into the village. We were surprised with all of the security around, we had to go through a check point and a body search. There were a lot of police around the perimeter of the village and inside. We didn't think much of it. We looked around the village. There were vendors selling different crafts and art. There were yurts set up as little dining places. There was a big outdoor stage with a lot of different performers. There was a wrestling rink, and also places where kids could play a tug-of-war games. There were also traditional Kazakh swings.

Lots of people dressed in the national costumes.

More costumes

Some of our crew

Lina and Lexa

Kazakh wrestling match

Weight lifting competition

Kazakh swings

Our kids really wanted to get on one of those, so we stood around waiting for our turn. Apparently there is no line, the kids just stay around the swing set and as soon as the swing stops, they rush to it trying to be the first one to jump on, cutting each other off and even wrestling. Anyway, our kids were way too polite to do that, so finally we, the parents just had to take a matter into our own hands.

Some of our kids finally managed to get on the swing.

While on the swings, Taraz (the daughter of one of our friends) was up in the air and yelled that she thinks that someone famous is coming. When she was up again the next time, she frantically screamed: “It's the President!”. 

Here is Taraz up in the air when she spoted the President!

We looked around and saw a huge crowd moving just 20 feet from us. It turns out

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of the country was visiting the village! The crowd was so big, so we couldn't see him but I managed to snap a photo of him by lifting up my camera as high as I could.

Can you spot the President? He is the white haired guy you can see right off the left shoulder of the girl dressed on the left who is dressed in white.

These girls really had a good view!

He went into the golden yurt, so we decided to stick around to see him when he will be leaving. We waited, and waited, and waited. The kids were getting restless. I just knew that as soon as we left our spot, he would come out. So we waited, and waited, and waited again. Finally we decided to go eat some food, and as soon as we left, he came out from the yurt. We missed him once again. After that the village emptied until only half as many people were there. I was wondering if the people came there just to see the president, or if half of the people in the village were the security agents, because we did spot quite a few of them running around in normal clothes but with ear pieces in their ears.

The President went into that second yurt from the right. 

Loaded on cotton candy

Overall we had a good time, but now we are ready to go to a sunny and warm Sri Lanka for a week to thaw! We love Kazakhstan but the winter is a bit too long for my liking!

Happy bunch!