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.

Children's New Year Celebrations

In Kazakhstan, just as in Russia, the biggest holiday of the year is the New Year. I'll do a different post about all the things people do here to get ready for the New Year but today I wanted to tell about Novogodny Utrennik (New Year's Celebration for the kids) they do around here. This is something I did as a kid growing up in Russia, so I was excited for our girls to have a similar experience.

At the end of December each of our girls’ classes went to a New Year’s Show.  Parents buy a ticket which cost about $10-25 and which gets you in to participate in a show and at the end you get a present from Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost). Kids can come dressed as different fairy tale characters, they sing songs, dance, and play games. Each show is different but they follow the same scenario. Usually some bad characters would try to stop Ded Moroz and his granddaughter Snegurocka (Snow Maiden) from delivering the presents to the kids by kidnapping them or stealing the presents. And then some good heroes try to save the day with the kids’ help.  It is a lot of fun for the kids!

 

Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) and his granddaughter Snegurochka (Snow Maiden)

 Often these shows are done at the school but our kids’ school director (principal) decided that each class should go to performances that were taking place at different entertainment centers around the town.  Sophia and Lexa’s 1^st grade class and Polina’s 3^rd grade class decided to go to a New Year’s Celebration Show to the Children’s Palace on December 20^th and Veronika’s 4^th grade class decided to go to a big entertainment center with an indoor aquarium called “Duman” on December 24^th. Besides that Nazarbayev University had a show as well, so our girls had a lot of fun.

First Lina and the twins went to their show.

Alexandra (dressed up as Night Fairy), Polina (dressed up as Snegurocka or Snow Maiden), and Sophia (dressed up as a gypsy girl) are ready for their show to start.

All the kids dressed in costumes at the Children's Palace. You can see the parents watching from the balcony.

Sophia and Alexandra's classmates and their parents.

After that show was over we went home to have a quick snack and go to Nazarbayev University to see their show that they were doing for the kids of all of the professors and administrative staff. Most of the foreign professors flew home to their various destinations that same morning, so there was just a handful of expat families and a lot of local families.

Our girls running to the place where they had the show at NU

The show began with the appearance of some Disney characters. The kids and their parents made a big circle for them.

Some interesting selection of characters.

Then the villains showed up who tried to ruin New Year for the kids

But no matter how hard the villains tried to stop Ded Moroz and Snegurochka, they still made it to the kids and the fun had begun.

Ded Moroz and Snegurochka started their show

Sophia and Lexa

The kids solved riddles, sang songs and danced.

Kids dancing

With Ded Moroz

The last of the shows was Veronika's a few days later. Their teacher let them out of school a few hours early, so the kids could get ready. My mom made it here from Krasnoyarsk, Russia the day before. She brought with her Veronika's costume which she sewed herself. Our other girls' costumes we bought at the bazaar at the beginning of December. 

Veronika dressed up as Snegurochka (Snow Maiden)

The kids were first greeted by a magical talking stump.

Then they had a visit by this cool looking Dinosaur.

Then Ded Moroz came with his Granddaughter Snegurochka

When I was a kid they would arrive on a horse sleigh. Nowadays I guess they use trains!

Again, they played games and sang songs with the kids. Then the kids could go up and recite a poem about New Years for which they would get a little present.

Then they said some magical words and lit up the big Christmas Tree (here it is called New Year's Tree) and danced some more around it.

Here is Veronika with her friend and classmate Kate after the show with their presents. 

Our kids had a lot of fun at these shows, and I am glad they experienced a little piece of my childhood.

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!