Friends

Four out of five present. We miss Gina!

At the pond at the old square

Atakent

A picnic and a game of Fluxx in Atakent

Nauryz in the old square

On Sunday we visited the old square for the Nauryz celebrations there

ice cream

plov

two girls who wanted their picture taken

Nauryz kutty bolsyn (Happy Nauryz)

The band that played a medley of Abba songs :D

Off to the side of the building we found more performances. Lots of kids

I thought this girl was really pretty

:) and the horses... there were about six or so horses that were led around the park, for rides.

This horse was the prettiest. It looked like it had at least some spanish influence and it was spunky.

Nauryz at Kaim's village

One of our students invited us to visit his village for their Nauryz celebration on Saturday. We went and actually attended three different celebrations. The first was the Kazakh one.

This is Kaim

Lots of dancing

This spunky old granny enjoyed the dancing just as much as everyone else

The long table laden with goodies

There were salads, veggies, nuts, raisins, baursak, leposhka, crackers...

Dishing up the traditional "drink" of Nauryz Kuzhe. It consists of seven ingredients, but each cook can decide for themselves which seven they put in. Most commonly they include milk, meat, rice, salt and other stuff. Ours had the four ingredients mentioned, plus peas, noodles and probably salt. It wasn't actually too bad...

Biz Barmak: noodles with lots of meat. A very Kazakh food. They took hunks of meat and cut off chunks for each of us foreigners first, as an honor. Of course most of us were vegetarians :D but Rebekah and I tasted it. Not too bad either. As we were leaving they scooped up a "doggie bag" of everything and included a huge hunk of meat still attached to the bone. We smiled and said thank you :D It ended up in Tatiana and Lilya's fridge...

Rebekah with some baursak

The four of us with the granny

Burnie was our spokesperson at each of the celebrations

More dances on the Uyghyr side

The third feast, inside a yurt

Us and a few extras

The yurt

The school yard with the mountains in the background

Our supper of leposhka pizza after church that evening

Kaim's mother gave both Rebekah and I headscarves :)