Holiday --

This last week was “holiday.” Some kids went home for the week; some live at school so they were there for the week. Teachers had to report to school from 9am – 1pm everyday. I went. I planned lessons with my counterpart mid morning, then hung out with the kids who were around. We played sports in the gym and card games in another room.

I brought Skip – Bo along with to Kazakhstan in hopes that I would *eventually* be able to play this game with someone! Success! I brought the game to work last Tuesday. I had to explain that this game was not actually “evil;” there would be no gambling involved and I would use it to teach numbers. (the children really like to teach me Kazakh numbers 1-12…quiz me sometime…I’m awesome!) it was allowed! I was SUPER happy! I was also excited that I really didn’t need a large extensive vocabulary to teach this game! And I was SO happy when the children requested it the following day…I didn’t have to force anyone to play they all WANTED to! It was awesome! They even remembered the name of the game! They may not know how to answer the question “what did you do on holiday?” But they certainly play a mean game of skip bo :)

Afterward, I taught "spoons" <-- I'm sure this would be totally NOT allowed though, so I guess we'll keep that one a secret. We used markers as spoons though...I didn't want to ask the cafeteria to supply me with 8 spoons for a card game :)

Also, last week we learned that there was influenza in Karaganda (a bad kind). Karaganda is located 6 hours north of me; however, my school still required me to wear a ridiculous looking face mask. At first I did think I looked silly, but when I realized I was the only person NOT wearing mine, I felt even more weird than I would feel wearing it. So I put it on…then made my co workers pose for pictures with these on…good times!