Happy Holidays!

23:45 25 December 2008

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it! I had a very interesting Christmas this year, unfortunately I wasn’t able to do the traditional Jewish celebration of Christmas- Chinese food and a movie, but I still had a really interesting and fun day that did involve eating at a café with a friend, watching a Yulka (more on that later), and watching a movie (granted it was by myself as I did dishes, but still a movie). My day started with my counterpart asking me to come take pictures of their Yulka. A Yulka is a Christmassy pageant-like celebration of the New Year (which in Kyrgyzstan is like Christmas since most here are Muslim) but has a version of Santa Claus, a tree, presents and other traditional Christmas things. But a Yulka is a choreographed presentation of games, dances, songs, and other performances for the sake of New Year. I was going to go to the one tomorrow at my school but as I said, I was needed today so I went.

The Yulka started off with two waltzes done my students from my school. These waltzes were choreographed by my counterpart and are a big reason that I have been working primarily alone for the past month in the classroom. They were enjoyable to watch and I was genuinely impressed by how good some of the dancers were. After the waltz followed a plethora of other performances that included adorable children doing the chicken dance, a khomuz (the Kyrgyz lute like instrument) performance, a sack race, and much more dancing. I was twice dragged into the fray as a dance partner and found out just how difficult waltzing really is. I was also amused by the array of costumes that people were wearing. In addition to the obvious Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus equivalents, there were creative versions of a mouse and a bull (the old and new Chinese year animals) and snow costumes. There were also people dressed in costumes completely unrelated to Christmas/New Year and it greatly reminded me of the film “Love Actually” and the pageant presented there. The comparison even goes down to the presence of Spiderman, as he was present at our Yulka along with Batman, little Red Riding Hood, the Easter Bunny, and a witch. Anyhow, pictures show what it was like better than words so here they are: