Tuesday, May 15, 2007,4:59 AM
New Year's --No it doesn't happen in may here that is how late I am in posting
None of you need to tell me that my last blog entry was less than exciting. I know that, it is apparent in the way that Chirstmas isn’t celebrated with much or any enthusiasm in this country. I found out the reason for that when I experienced my first New Years in Kazakhstan. I don’t think that I have even celebrated Christmas in America as thoroughly as I celebrated New Years here. The first thing we did was decorate our house with sparkly garlands and a yulka (basically a decorated pine tree with ornaments, lights, and tinsel). It is worth checking out my flickr site to see my host mom put up the yulka in our house. She did all the hard stuff like cutting the branches to fit the holes, she even brought the ax inside our house to cut down the braches that were too big. I personally think it is funny and kinda tragic that it is too cold to cut wood outside but it isn’t too cold to wash laundry outside. I mean there is water involved in the laundry and you can’t wear gloves when trying to rinse clothes like you can with chopping wood…but what do I know I still can’t speak Kazakh so maybe there is a logical explanation and I just can’t understand it yet. I bet you all missed my tangents and wandering mind…but back to the decorating for New Years. After the tree was up my host mom ran off somewhere and left me to decorate the tree all by myself. I bet my parents will be amazed while reading this because I hate to decorate Christmas trees, I used to protest when they asked me to hang ornaments. I decorated the whole tree though and I thought it looked great, my dad would have loved it with the tinsel. I was astonished to discover that one of the ornaments was a santa claus but didn’t think too much of it until later when I attended the teacher’s new years’ party at my school and saw the walls decorated with posters of what looked to me a lot like the jolly, fat, often seen ringing a bell or letting kids sit on his lap, Saint Nick. Here they call him Father Frost and he is often depicted in the company of a young woman also dressed in the style we are accustomed to seeing Mrs. Claus wear. Supposedly this girl is Father Frost’s granddaughter, which is a conundrum for me since the legend says that he never had a wife or children. Anyway we all had fun at the teacher’s party. There was eating, drinking, dancing, and games.
 
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