Christmas turned out to be good, despite being the first Christmas I haven’t spent at home with my family. I understand that when you grow up you don’t always get to go home to your parents every year for Christmas, but I don’t have to like it.
On Christmas Eve three of us went to the international Christian church in town for services. The services were very nice and made it feel a lot more like Christmas, since it has been so warm here recently. The church ladies must have some good Western food sources because someone made pumpkin bread (my favorite!) for after the service. At the end of the church service we all sang Silent Night – and on the second verse they had each different nationality in the church stand up and sing in their language. It was amazing. There was Russian, Kyrgyz, Chinese, Romanian, Hindi, German, and a few others I’m sure.
After church we treated ourselves to a nice Italian dinner, and while we were eating it started snowing outside! A Christmas miracle! So after dinner we walked along the streets, caught snow on our tongues, and went to see the giant “New Year’s” tree in the center of town. There were tons of people out to see the Russian version of Santa (Grandfather Frost) and Santa’s helper the Ice Princess. Though there were about a dozen of each character in costume, which would have traumatized western children.
On Christmas Day I was woken up by a surprise phone call from my parents which was wonderful :) And it snowed so hard the night before that there was a few inches of snow on the ground – a white Christmas! Then all the expats here met up for Christmas lunch in one of the dorm rooms, where there was a feast and many bottles of champagne.
A few party pics:
(my awesome dance moves):
A few people built a snowman on Christmas morning; however, they didn't have any carrots and used a cucumber for the nose instead. One of our Russian teachers later said "how nice...but we usually use carrots here in Kyrgyzstan..."
On the 18th, the school had a New Year’s party for students and teachers. It was a lot of fun and to our surprise, two of our friends dressed up as Grandfather Frost and the Ice Princess. There was food and dancing, and afterwards the Russian/Kyrgyz staff went with us to a pub to continue celebrations. At the pub we all had to stand and give a toast and sing a song.
Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost):
Snegyrochka (Ice Princess):
Group at party:
Cute Kids at party:
Me giving a toast:
Singing traditional Russian New Year's songs:
I'll get some of the other posts/pictures up soon!
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