Kazakhstan – The first
Matt dance
September 22-30
Hello everyone!
This is a short update about how we are keeping on moving in
our second year in the Kazakh steppe. Whether taken in a literal or
metaphorical sense, both I and this country always seem to be on the move.
A few of us took part in a race in late September. Due to
the extreme climate in Astana, there is a limited window for running events to
occur in. Autumn is the best time, and we entered ourselves into a 10km race
close to our house, which looped around the Ishim River. The special guests at this race were the Kazakhstan Olympic boxing team, who all had rather stern countenances.
Well, it was supposed to be a 10km. Due to a rather bad mix-up, everyone was sent to do an extra 1.1km that the half-marathon runners were supposed to do at the end of their loop. Not to be deterred, we all proceeded to set new personal bests for 11.1km (though we are very sure that the extra part was closer to 2km than 1km). The results are on this website http://www.bksoc-marathon.org.uk/eng/race-report.aspx.
The reason we missed this event last year was because we had left Astana to immerse ourselves in nature. We really enjoyed our trip to Borovoe last year, so the following weekend we moved out of the city to return to the ‘Switzerland of Kazakhstan’.
It was significantly colder than last year, rendering my
ambition of swimming in the lake as foolish and unlikely to happen. I did feel
obliged to briefly brave the chilly waters for one seemingly random reason...
In one of the first assemblies of our school year, our
Headmaster showed a Youtube video to our children. Simply put, it was a man
called Matt who would do a dance in front of a camera in places all over the
world. We found it quite funny, so opted to make our own Borovoe edition…
Love you all
Matt
Loved your Borovoye dance! What is "сөре" on the giant orange inflatable thing in the race - does that mean 'finish'??
ReplyDelete