New Year!

Well, it nothing like I’ve seen before. For most of the day I spent it with my family. We exchanged presents. I got a brooch from my host mom and my host sister gave me some dangly earrings. I also got a card. You aren’t going to believe this, they gave me the very best: Hallmark. You can buy Russian Hallmark cards in Bishkek. I was totally surprised. Around 5 my host mom brought in a turkey. Don’t worry it was de-feathered already. But she didn’t know how to cook it in her new oven so the vegetarian had to cook a turkey. We had champagne and a turkey dinner; I mostly at pickles.

I stayed with my host family until about 11:30 and watched a Russian New Year’s concert on TV. We also are right next to where the celebration was held so we walked down to see it for a little bit. They had dancers and singers. They must have been freezing, but it was just like Independence Day where they had about 100-200 dancers in sync to some American Christmas song like jingle bells. I don’t even know the words, but the crowd knew it. Then, my host sister and I left the family. I met Becky and Matt at Lenin Square to see the Grand finale of fireworks. I had just assumed that at midnight everyone would be there and someone would be controlling the final bits of the firework show. WRONG. Instead, workers had set up booths around the square to sell fireworks. People could buy any firework they wanted and shoot it off themselves. There was no orchestrated show. People would mostly shoot them up in the air, but some were ground fireworks so they would just put ‘em in the middle of a crowd, light it and run. Scary. There were several close calls of my face burning off or losing a limb, but don’t worry I’m alive. The ‘show’ lasted for about an hour. It was people just running around, drinking and shooting off fireworks. We stayed on the edge near a park in case we had to run for cover.

I came home around 2 o’clock and my host parents were still up celebrating! It was the New Year and we needed to celebrate. Fireworks went on for a long time after I had settled in to bed. I felt like an old lady going to bed with all that partying still left to do, but I also wanted to be intact.

I don’t know how many people were at the Square but it was a lot and there were a lot of fireworks to be had. There also wasn’t only celebration there, but as you looked across from the square and up to the sky, you could see fireworks throughout the whole city. It was like a liberation or we had just won a war because everyone was so happy and the whole city was in harmony celebrating the New Year.