Ded Moroz and Snegurochka

Now that the holidays are over, I wanted to post about the New Year's tradition of Ded Moroz. From my days in Macedonia, I recall the Santa Claus equivalent called "Dedo Mraz" or Grandfather Frost, and they have the same tradition in Kazakhstan. Here, the Russian name is "Ded Moroz" and translates the same as the Macedonian. One difference is that Ded Moroz is assisted by Snegurochka, his granddaughter.

I asked my local friends for more information on Ded Moroz to see what the similarities and differences are, and there are some interesting differences. Ded Moroz does not live at the North Pole, and he doesn't have elves to make the toys for him. He lives in the forest, and the forest animals help him make the gifts for the children. I mentioned to my friends that Santa Claus leaves lumps of coal for the bad kids, and I asked what Ded Moroz leaves for the bad kids. The response was that there are no bad kids. I wondered how parents get their kids to be good for the month leading up to New Year's.

As I was trying to clarify Snegurochka's role, I learned that people here don't know that Santa Claus is married. My friends said that Snegurochka was basically someone to help Ded Moroz and keep him company. They felt sad for Santa because he's all alone, so I told them that he had Mrs. Claus with him up at the North Pole. They seemed relieved to know that Santa wasn't alone.

One More from Thailand

Here's a pocketbook designed for people who want to curb their spending. The clasp is the claw from a crocodile, complete with talons. It looks cool, but maybe not too practical.

Yet Another Trip to Bangkok

As I mentioned somewhere earlier, our mission in Thailand is a training hub, so I've been there three times in the last year, and I just finished my last required training course. Still, every time I go, I see something new. Here are some photos.

Some notes: the top photo shows ceramic chickens in some kind of cock fight (no, I did not see actual cockfighting while I was there); and no, I didn't see any crocodiles floating in the flood waters of Bangkok; Mom -- I thought you'd like seeing that can of Prickly Heat, something they apparently still use for foot massages in Thailand; this photo of the river is as close as I got to flood waters while I was in Bangkok.

Congratulations to Dave and Jennifer!

About a week after my trip to India, I was back in the US for Dave and Jennifer's wedding. I was there just long enough to get over the jet lag before returning to Kazakhstan, but I was glad to be there. All the best, guys!

More from India (finally!)

As promised, here are some more photos from Delhi, but so much time has passed since I was there, I don't have much to say now.  The second picture here, I took because those girls were diligently typing away at old electric typewriters (the kind I learned how to type on -- so long ago). I thought it was interesting to see old school technology still hard at work in India, but I didn't notice the computers on the sides of the room until I looked at the picture after I got home. Most likely, these girls are learning to type. I think Ms. Arnold from Bis-Henn would be proud.

The bottom two pictures are from a mausoleum in Delhi that is similar to, but predates, the Taj Mahal. There wasn't enough time for me to see the Taj, but this was still an interesting piece of architecture.

Because Everyone Should Experience a Tuk Tuk Ride

I attended a conference in Delhi, India, for people new to foreign service. There wasn't much time to see the city, but I did get out one day. I'll post more pictures soon.

2011 Kazakhstan Open

One of my friends here sent me an email, looking for people to volunteer at the Kazakhstan Open, and I took the chance to see one of the golf courses here.

The event was one stop on the European PGA Challenge Tour. No big names at this event, but mostly younger players looking to qualify for the regular European Tour.

I could only volunteer on Saturday and Sunday, and I had no idea what I was going to do until I got there. Mostly, I was hoping to be the guy that holds up the "Quiet" sign when the players are taking a shot.

At first, I was asked to do some traffic control on the entry road into the golf course, which ran alongside hole 9. If cars or carts came by, I was supposed to let them know to stop and wait until the golfers had finished putting. Thankfully, there was only one idiot who didn't want to stop.

After about 30 minutes of that, one of the volunteer coordinators asked me to do radio scoring, basically following a group of players and calling their scores into the scoreboard control, because I "looked like I could count".  I thought it sounded pretty interesting, so with one other volunteer, I headed to the first tee to meet the guys I would follow. The group had three of the top 10 players in the tournament, so I got to see some quality golf that day. None of them did exceptional, but they played level par on a relatively tough course. Along the way, I talked to two of the three guys, and they wanted to know what an American who wasn't involved in the oil industry doing in Kazakhstan. When I explained that I worked in development, they told me that this Challenge Tour has stops in some places you wouldn't expect, like India and Colombia. At least, Almaty has a European feel to it.

I enjoyed walking the course and talking to the players, so I offered to do the radio scoring on Sunday as well. That day, I followed the group that was just one back from the leaders, so I hoped for some intense gameplay, and that's pretty much what happened. The first hole was an indicator of how things would go. The first two guys put their tee shots well off the fairway, and we spent at least 30 minutes looking for them. No one played particularly well the entire round, and a lot of short putts were missed that would have been birdies or saved par. At the end of the round, one of the guys gave me his ball. I think it was because he just wanted to get rid of it.