Today we had a Naryuz celebration at school. It was also the second to last day of the third term. The kids got all dressed up and put on a performance at school.
The festival celebrates the coming of spring and is associated with the Kazakh culture. The students' performance was mostly in Kazakh, so I understood very little, but it's such a cool sounding language I didn't mind listening.
After the performances we headed outside to our yurt (yeah, that's right – the orphanage has a yurt).
We sang and danced outside and then I was ushered in the yurt where some VIPs were seated, including some other teachers, our director and friends of his. There was more food than you can imagine squished into this little space and a soup was served. Apparently, it's the soup associated with this holiday, it was clear and had some corn, meat and who knows what else in it. I had some (ignoring the meat of course) and it was pretty good. It reminded me of clam chowder, but the thin, really brothy kind.
The festival celebrates the coming of spring and is associated with the Kazakh culture. The students' performance was mostly in Kazakh, so I understood very little, but it's such a cool sounding language I didn't mind listening.After the performances we headed outside to our yurt (yeah, that's right – the orphanage has a yurt).
We sang and danced outside and then I was ushered in the yurt where some VIPs were seated, including some other teachers, our director and friends of his. There was more food than you can imagine squished into this little space and a soup was served. Apparently, it's the soup associated with this holiday, it was clear and had some corn, meat and who knows what else in it. I had some (ignoring the meat of course) and it was pretty good. It reminded me of clam chowder, but the thin, really brothy kind. 3/22/2010
Thanks to Naryuz, we had about a week off from school. Because of this, a lot of volunteers were heading down to Shymkent where Naryuz is a really big deal. I decided to see what the buzz was about and join my friends for a week in the warm south. When I left to go down south on Saturday (3/20) we had one last blast of -20 degree weather. Southern Siberia is great!
No trains run directly from Petro to Shymkent, so I had to originate my journey in Kokshetau. Getting there was more difficult than I thought. I went home from work, grabbed my things and left my long johns behind! My host mom packed me some yummy train food, and I got on the bus to the station. All buses and trains to Kokshetau were full. It's only about a 4 hour bus ride and I needed to get there quickly in order to catch my train. My only option was an expensive taxi to ge there. So I took the taxi which cost about 4x what the bus would have cost, but it got me there in two hours! Don't ask about his driving.
I got to Kokshetau with plenty of time to spare and waited about 3 hours in the train station for my train and friends to arrive. I made friends with the stray cats and some drunk man who wanted to steal my lunch. He had his own food plus 2 bottles of vodka, but he really wanted to see what I had in my bag. My host mom packed that lunch with a lot of good food. The only place that bag was going was with me! Since I'm an American he wanted to know if I had any dollars on me and could he "see" them. I said no, I have only tenge. So then he asks, “Do you have new tenge, and can I see it?” Sir, I wasn't born yesterday and no, you can't "see" my money...Luckily my friends arrived shortly after, so I had to say good bye to the drunk man.
Got on the train finally in Kokshetau for the 30 hr. ride to Shymkent. Arrived in Shymkent late Sunday night. Monday morning, we were supposed to go to this sports field to watch kokpar. It's an ancient Kazakh game sort of like polo, but played with a headless goat carcass. I wasn't psyched to see that, but I was excited to see the men on horseback. Kazakhstan has a reach history of horsemanship and it would have been cool to see that. However, for some reason that no one knows, the horse events were cancelled. We took these pictures from the field, but there were no horse games.
So instead we went to a park where they were handing out food and people were walking around.
Got on the train finally in Kokshetau for the 30 hr. ride to Shymkent. Arrived in Shymkent late Sunday night. Monday morning, we were supposed to go to this sports field to watch kokpar. It's an ancient Kazakh game sort of like polo, but played with a headless goat carcass. I wasn't psyched to see that, but I was excited to see the men on horseback. Kazakhstan has a reach history of horsemanship and it would have been cool to see that. However, for some reason that no one knows, the horse events were cancelled. We took these pictures from the field, but there were no horse games.
So instead we went to a park where they were handing out food and people were walking around.
It was good to spend time with my group mates, as we hadn't seen each other for 5 months. It was great to catch up and walk around in the warm south of Kazakhstan. Got to eat outside (forgot what that was all about!) and had an excellent time.
3/23/2003
Today we went on a trip to Turkestan, roughly 2 hours from Shymkent. We boarded the bus and arrived at the mausoleum.
We had a few hours to walk around and explore this ancient monument. My camera seemed to develop a parasite that day as evidenced by the black streak in my pictures. It went away later, but unfortunately, I couldn't make it go away that day, go figure... 
The mausoleum was built in the 14th Century as a monument to a Muslim holy man who died at this site in the 12th Century. The architect died before it was finished, and thus it remains unfinished. It is a pretty amazing site considering when it was built. It must have been quite the site at that time, when you were on your horse in the middle of the steppe then happened upon this huge building, but that's just me projecting...
The mausoleum was built in the 14th Century as a monument to a Muslim holy man who died at this site in the 12th Century. The architect died before it was finished, and thus it remains unfinished. It is a pretty amazing site considering when it was built. It must have been quite the site at that time, when you were on your horse in the middle of the steppe then happened upon this huge building, but that's just me projecting...The view of the town of Turkestan:
Some delicious laghman without meat. Ahhh, spicy food how I missed you! After eating my weight in potatoes this winter, the variety of food down south was awesome.
Some fellow volunteers:
Me:
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