Graduation and COS

I did a really bad job of taking pictures of our graduation ceremonies. I did get videos of each of them, though!
We have 3 "graduations". The first is for the 4th graders who are basically graduation elementary school and starting secondary school. The little girls and boys dress up and have their hair done and they sing songs and dance and are generally just the most adorable little things you've ever seen. Here is a bit of the ballroom dance they did at the end on the ceremony:

Then there is the 9th grade graduation. Here in KZ, students can leave secondary school at 9th grade to go to a vocational-type school, or go on in secondary school until 11th grade. So there is a ceremony with the whole 9th grade, even if only one or two of them are leaving. Here's the ballroom dance they did: (The woman in the mauve dress is actually the dance teacher. Boys outnumber girls in that class.)

And finally, the big one - 11th grade graduation. Notice the outfits. Awesome. They sing a lot of "traditional" Russian songs - everyone knows them and they've been sung at these things for years. And they're really cheesy. This particular song is about how grateful they are for their parents. It got some of the girls a little teary eyed. Tender.

The weekend after school finished there was a big holiday in the city square for "Day of Europe in Kazakhstan". I had been really unclear about what it was and what was happening, I just knew that there were going to be English activities going on, and I was expected to be there. So I went and met with the other volunteers there, and actually had a really good time. It was actually a really big production. There were representatives from all the countries in Europe that have embassies in Astana (the capital city of Kazakhstan) and they had booths set up in the square and were giving away food and flags and trinkets of all kinds. Then in the park they had activities in English, German, Spanish and... French? I think? Anyway, lots to see and do.  Trevor and I left the English lessons for a bit to go see the speech given (in English) by a European representative, and when we went back to the English activities Garret had taken over and was playing games with the kids. Trevor joined in. I took pictures in the background. Somebody had to do it! :)

Mr. Trevor and Mr. Garret with kids from my school, my counterpart, and the lovely Gunara Kameevna - German, Kazakh, and independent work teacher at my school. She's awesome.

Kids learning English and... some big animal things. Why not?

Mr. Trevor playing Simon Says

A Spainard teaching to count in Spanish using balloon animals. Genius.

And finally, I spent a little time in Almaty for our Close of Service conference. It was really great to see everyone again. One evening I was finally together with the boys that I spent 2 craaaaazy months with during PST for language training. I love these boys. I had so much fun with them during PST. We only wish Nick had been around to hang out one last time, too!

Anna and I had the weekend free before working on some projects at the Peace Corps office, so we went out for a walk on Sunday and ended up in Gorki park - a fun little amusement park. We rode the ferris wheel and took some nice pictures of Almaty. It was just an all around fantastic day. 

This makes Almaty cool

Star Wars - bumper cars

Hey, wait a minute...???

That's all for now! I'm not so sure that I have anything exciting happening in the next few weeks, so this may be it until July, where there will be plenty going on - July 4th celebrations, Camp GLOW, and my last days in Kazakhstan. Whoa....