Winter in Kostanay
Hello from Kazakhstan!
Thank you for your letter about your entertaining lives. It was so great to learn about what you do in different seasons and how you spend your holidays. Now we want to share the information about our place and what we prefer doing in the winter.
As for winter, we have much in common. This year, the winter is very cold dominated by severe frosts mostly -30C. Lessons were sometimes cancelled during last two weeks because of low temperature. We were so happy not having classes. That is way we could sleep till the afternoon and stay up late at night. It was like extra holiday for us. What differs this winter is that we have often snowstorms. The roads and highways were blocked and sometimes it was difficult to get anywhere. But in spite of these facts we can ski, make snowmen or snow figures and play snowballs. We envy that you go snowboarding as we do not have very high hills and now the situation is changing as our local authorities are constructing a special place for tubing. We hope that at the end of February we could practice there.
We want to share with you one of the religious traditions which is followed not only the Christians, as well as the Muslims and the Jews as we live in a multinational country with diversity of religious customs and traditions. This holiday is celebrated on the 19th of January called Epiphany, and the tradition is to visit holy springs near the churches to plunge into the holy water or to take some of it home. Actually it doesn't have to be a spring but any lake or river if they have been sanctified in the night of Epiphany by a priest. Since all the lakes and rivers are frozen now, they cut bathes right in the ice to let people dive in for a few seconds. Lots of people, some not even religious, come to get some water during Epiphany. As they say, the water obtains some special, almost magical properties. You can use it for a lot of purposes. For example, it's supposed to cure all the illnesses – through drinking, washing, rinsing or whatever else you can think about. By the way, lots of people claim that actually helps.
The most popular winter sport in our village is hockey. Lots of boys and even girls come to play this game since the first thin layer of ice till the spring. Competitions are incredible event for our citizens. Our hockey team the second place in the regional competition and we are very proud of them. We love skating too. During last four years, we have a skating-rink in the middle of our village, where boys and girls enjoy skating each winter. We all spend our free time here.
