We just had a school-wide celebration for our Kazakh spring festival, Nauryz ("nar-eeze"). The Kazakh kids (with Kazakh passports, who are learning Kazakh language and history as part of the mandated requirements for a Kazakh diploma) dressed up in all kinds of beautiful and intricately-patterned national dress, performed songs, dances and plays about the spring festival and traditional life on the steppe. The ending finale had all the students singing together... it was some singing that only a mother, or teacher, could love -- but boy, did they sing with passion! The only part I could hear was the chorus, which was, as you may have guessed "NAU-RYZ, NAU-RYYYYYYZ!" I loved it! I wish this kind of stuff could happen more often, so that I could feel the old culture of this big city and not just the exhaust and detachment of productivity and modernization.
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