Party Time in Kyrgyzstan

Happy holidays everyone! We hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. Christmas isn’t really celebrated here, but the big holiday was New Year’s Eve. The city was decorated with banners and lights, and in the bazaar there were lots of decorations and even Christmas trees. Devin and I are still getting over all the crazy fireworks that were going off. We did celebrate Christmas Eve-Eve with about ten other volunteers, and we had a Secret Santa gift exchange (check out the beanies and other gifts in the picture above). Then a few volunteers came to “the city” to hang-out with us for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. We made a bunch of cookies with sprinkles!!! (Thanks, Rachel) and then we made Mac and Cheese. The next morning we opened presents and ate banana pancakes with syrup! (Thanks, moms). Later that day we celebrated at the “American Ordosu” which is a resource center funded by the US Embassy. We talked about all the winter holidays, ate cookies and lots of other food, had a gift exchange, made Christmas cards, and had a short dance party where I got to do some really funky moves in the middle of the dance circle.
New Year’s Eve was like a double holiday for us because we celebrated it with our Krygyz host family. Then we celebrated the next evening with another Kyrgyz family with whom we are very close. They brought out the wine, champagne, and kumuz (fermented mare’s millk) for us, as well as numerous salads, candies, nuts, dried fruits, bread, and plov. Then we played games and hung-out. It was really enjoyable and made us feel closer to home.
We would like to send a special thank you to everyone who sent us gifts. All of them have been put to use or put in our stomachs =). Thanks again. Love to you all.