Actually, I'm not sure if that's the appropriate greeting for today (or if there even really is one), but that is the holiday that is being celebrated today. It's the "birthday," if you will, for Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan. It became the capital on July 6, 1994. As I also mentioned previously, today also happens to be President Nazarbayev's 70th birthday. Coincidence? I think not.
We ended up going back to Cosmonaut Hotel for lunch and were joined by the Kaplans today. We just had to take a pic of Sean's meal today. It's a Bavarian potato soup in the most interesting bread bowl I've ever seen. Definitely not low-carb!
There have been various kinds of celebrations throughout the day televised on different stations, mostly on the Kazakhstan national channels. However, the one celebration that is pretty significant is a concert being held tonight at Astana Arena. Astana Arena is a new soccer stadium that opened in summer 2009 and seats about 30,000 people. This concert is being televised live on several stations. We tuned in at about 8:30PM, and it's still going on almost 3 hours later. The musical acts we've seen so far ranged from Kazakh boy bands, Russian rock and pop bands, and several big name Russian solo artists including Sergey Lazarev (who we recognized from Russian MTV videos, and who Sean has also dubbed "the Russian Ricky Martin"), to big name European techno groups. For a minute there, I thought we were at a rave and needed to get some glowsticks! There was one Kazakh duo that performed who were totally jamming out on the dombra (a Kazakh string instrument), which was cool to watch. Another interesting act was a Russian guy perfoming a dance routine to a master mix of Michael Jackson's "Dangerous." I think what surprised us was the number of artists (Kazakh and Russian) who performed at least one song in their set in English. Even Sergey Lazarev performed a cover to "Shattered Dreams," a song from the 80's by Johnny Hates Jazz (hope I didn't just date myself there). What's funny is that there is one Kazakh boy band trio who performed, and Sean says that will be James, Michael, and a friend in about 20 years - haha! Anyway, judging from the stage and sets, the numerous acts (some complete with backup dancers) and all the lighting and pyro going on, this is a pretty big production, and it's quite obvious that no expense was spared for this occasion. That is especially apparent to us right now, as the big closing act just came on stage - American artist, Ne-Yo. The crowd is going absolutely nuts right now, especially the girls up front (I, myself, am waiting to see if he will perform "Closer"). Needless to say, with all the screaming going on during this concert, there will be quite a few people in Astana with no voices tomorrow! Hmm...who would've thought I had to come all the way to Kazakhstan to see Ne-Yo perform?
Also, just before 10PM, as it was getting dark, we were sitting in the living room watching the concert, when we suddenly heard a large BOOM. Sean and I looked at each other and were like, "What in the world?!" We looked out our window (which overlooks the large park) and saw a fireworks display! Apparently everyone in the country (even here in Karaganda) is celebrating Astana's birthday. So, we went out on our balcony so we could get a better view. There were a couple of tall trees that obstructed our view, but only a little bit. The fireworks show lasted about 15-20 minutes. Unfortunately, James missed the whole thing as he was already asleep by then, but Sean caught some video of it to show him tomorrow. We also tried taking pics, but Sean tried out the fireworks setting on our camera and it didn't work out too well. So, even though it didn't exactly happen on the 4th of July, we still got our fireworks!
On the adoption front, our coordinator, Natasha, will file an application for a court hearing on our behalf on tomorrow as planned. There may even be a possibility we could be meeting with the social worker (equivalent to a pre-court hearing) by the end of the week! In the meantime we will still continue to visit Michael and bond with him.
So, this ends our post for today. By the way, Ne-Yo did perform "Closer" as the last song in his 45-minute set, so I'm a happy camper. Today I've also included pics of Juliya, our interpreter, and Natasha, our coordinator here in Karaganda.
Paka paka and love to all!
