Christmas Holidays!

December 25th is not a special holiday in Kyrgyzstan; we even had a discussion as to whether we would close the office (we did!). The children though had broken up from their school so Jim took a few days off and we enjoyed a few days together at home. Christmas Day itself was very different to usual; we got up early and set off early to the nearby mountains to go skiing! As it was not high season and a normal work day, the pistes were almost empty, and Jim and Felix tried snowboarding for the first time. Felix is now hooked and unlikely to ever step into skis again! Christmas lunch was a ham roll each, but Jane had prepared a wonderful roast for the evening and we all thoroughly enjoyed our first December 25th in Bishkek.

On the last day of 2012 we completed our family challenge for the year of running 1,000 km (see our running blog - link on the right). We ran in melting snow and +4 degrees which felt almost tropical after the temperatures of the previous few weeks.

Whilst Christmas Day is not a holiday, the New Year is, and big time! We saw the old year out and the new year in at our flat with some friends and at midnight watched from our balcony as fireworks erupted all over the city in celebration. There was no planned display - people simply set them off wherever they were, and the sky was constantly lit up. It was an impressive sight!

And as for new years resolutions... we recently watched 'the Age of Stupid', a film set in the future and imagines what the world might be like after catastrophic climate change. The narrator looks back to 2008, when human beings still had the opportunity to do something and asks why we didn't. It is was a timely reminder and prompt about the realities of human induced climate change and our response to it. Among other things, we will work out our carbon footprint now that we are living in Bishkek (and making more flights) and work out how we can both reduce and take responsibility for it.