Holidays (or, "The Great Work Slowdown")

I am blessed to have an organization that works a regular schedule (Mon-Fri, 9-5), and there is actually stuff to do. One main issue that I’ve encountered this month is trying to figure out what to do with all of the spare time that I have had, because nobody works on holidays…or the day before…or the day after…and in some cases (like mine), the whole week.

Kazakhstan has a lot of official holidays in December. They are:

•December 8- Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice)

•December 16-17- Kazakhstan Independence Day

•December 31 through at least Jan 2- New Years

My frustration started last Friday, when my director told me that we won’t work at all the next week because of Kazakhstan’s Independence Day (Tuesday and Wednesday). When I asked why we wouldn’t work on Monday, Thursday, or Friday she had the following answer.

She said that nobody would work on Monday because the holidays fall on the next two days. Thursday is the day after the holiday, and nobody wants to work on the day after a holiday. Nobody works on Fridays anyway because it is so close to the weekend. I was angry when I first heard this, and remained angry all weekend and moped in my room because I felt that my organization was wasting time. I wanted to work, there was work to be done, and instead I’d be stuck at my host family’s house (which isn’t a bad thing, but I get bored if I am there too long).

I stopped moping when I came to the realization that the same “December work slowdown” happens in America also. For some corporations, it is on Friday afternoons in the summer, when people would use a day of leave to have a long weekend. It also happens in the period between Christmas and New Years, where people may work one day out of the week.

Combine all of this with a snowstorm or two, some cold temps, short days and long nights, and it’s no wonder why people in both America and Kazakhstan don’t like to work in December.

So with no work, what did I do this week?

•Learned how to play Mine Sweeper

•Watched Star Trek Insurrection, First Contact, and the Wrath of Kahn (twice…it’s a good movie)

•Taught my host mother how to make pizza dough without eggs

•Studied a little Russian

•Played a saxophone at a Kazakh birthday party (I’ll blog about this later…this adventure is still in progress)

And that's it!