you know the drill

(other than being mrs. noz's birthday and sanity/fear day in DC) saturday was "city day" here in taraz. apparently, every year the powers-that-be pick some random day in late october to be celebrated as the anniversary of taraz's founding. because no one really knows when this ancient city was established, the mayor's best guess is all they got. and why not? he could be right. i have no idea why it's always in october.

the city celebrated the occasion with (say it with me now),: a parade. that's how they do every celebration here. and yes, the usual dancers and traditional costumes came out as well, with those same announcers announcing (one in russian and the other in kazakh) each group that walked by and then leading the crowd in a hearty "oorah!" the only twist was that this celebration took place in the football¹ stadium and not the central square. on the other hand, something did go on in the central square earlier in the day, but we missed it. so maybe they did the square parade as well.

here's my establishing shot:


these are the guys who surrounded the football field and made sure i didn't cause a ruckus:


here's a zoom shot of some of the dancers:


here's a non-zoom shot of those dancers, so you can see how many dancers they had and how awesome our seats were:


here's some signs i can't understand from some group that paraded past us:


and here's that may pole thingy they always haul out for special occasions, even when the occasion is not in may:


there was probably more, but it felt like we had seen it all before. so we went to get pizza in a nearby turkish cafe and watched the fireworks over the stadium as we ate mrs. noz's birthday dinner.

-------------------
1- "football" (Футбол) being the kazakh word for "soccer".