Saturday, March 8, 2014

March 8th

International Women's Day (March 8th) is a big deal here in Russia.  All men (and boys) are obligated to be nice to all women (and girls).  It's like mother's day in the US, complete with high volume flower sales, special printed cards, etc, without the pressure of being a mother, since all girls and women get compliments and something nice.

At work, it is required to have some kind of celebration, maybe taking tea or giving all the women colleagues flowers.  Oh, and March 8th is a national holiday, so the celebration is the last work day before the day off.  If March 8th is a Saturday or Sunday, the day off is a Friday or Monday, sometimes they also have an extra day off.

As a foreigner, S didn't have anyone at work to give her a party or gifts, but she organized the foreign staff to give a collective gift to the international coordinator.  It's a collection of teas, wrapped as a bouquet of flowers would be gifted.  Very clever.



At church, they held a party at the church building on Saturday.  It was in honor of both March 8th and springtime.  Involved showing a movie clip from an old Soviet rom-com ("Office Romance"), and some games for grownups.  This is a charades version of "telephone" (where team members has to copy the actions of the first one and then the last has to tell what the action was intended). Very funny.


Wasn't really for little kids, but there aren't a lot of little kids at church, and it was very well received by all the women at church. There were of course refreshments, but they were sliced meat on bread, cucumbers, tomatoes and juice. A shocking lack of chocolate, and very little sugar of any kind.


Then on Sunday the men came into Relief Society and sang the women a song.  And there were treats for the women and girls (12-18), and probably something for the small kids too.  For the women there were real chocolate bars and some homemade cookies.

At the detskii sad (preschool), the children gave gifts to their teachers (or the parents did).  I imagine some groups took up a collection for larger gifts or gift cards, but we just gave a gift bag with tea in a fancy tin and some chocolate.  By the time each class has two teachers, and the music teacher, and the director is a woman, the gifts add up.

The children put on a show for their mothers and grandmothers, as you would expect, so it approached the nearest to mothers' day.  On Wednesday was the show by the 3 year old classes (including K's).  On Friday was the show by the 5-6 year old class (in which is E).

This is K's class (she is in purple in the second row).  But after this song, K got scared and came and sat with us.  But she knew the words to the songs as well as the other three year olds.


This is E's class and E's teacher dressed up like "springtime":


The children performed songs and dances for spring-time and about their mothers and grandmothers.  E sang along right with the other kids.  


At the end of each show, they invited the mothers or grandmother to come "dance" with their child.  Here is Mommy with K.


And here is Mommy with E.


And to sum up March 8th holiday, what better than this photo:




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