For the past two weeks, my host mom has been telling me that we have a festival to go to on December 15th. My language skills being akin to Katie's in Born to Be Wild, I didn't really understand where we would be going, or what we would be doing there. In the states such ignorance would be intolerable, but in Kazakhstan I've become very used to having no idea what is going on. Most of the time it all works out okay.

I knew that we would be going to the party in the evening, but had to make sure that the movie for movie club got started first. I asked my host mom when we would be leaving, making sure I used the verb "to leave" to indicate that I wanted to know what time I needed to be ready to go, not what time the party started. She replied that we would leave at 6:30. Great! That would give me an hour to get the movie started, walk home, get into my formal wear and be ready to go. So I was a little bit surprised when I arrived home just before 6 and was told that I was late. Another failure of my gorilla-like communication abilities. Ninety seconds later, I was in the living room with my shirt untucked, pants unbuttoned, belt and tie in my right hand and jacket in my left, ready to go. With a 15 minute taxi ride ahead of us, I figured I had more than enough time to get all of the articles of clothing to their socially acceptable places, assuming I could get my tie the right length on the first try. Not so fast. Ұят болады.

"Ұят болады" is one of my host mom's favorite phrases, meaning "there will be ұят" or "that would be ұят." Our language book describes ұят as:

The dictionary definition of this word is "shame" or "pity," but be careful, it's a word that doesn't translate exactly. If something is ұят, it might be embarrassing, taboo, faux pas, or tsk-tsk. Even English has to borrow words and use onomatopoeia to get the point across!

I'm more a follower of Robert Arthur's view of taboos. Everybody gets dressed in basically the same way, so it's not something I'm going to get embarrassed about. But apparently, leaving the house in such a slapdash manner is verboten here, so we spent another few minutes inside refining my appearance. Good thing arriving late isn't ұят.

Upon entering the banquet hall, I was immediately struck by how many old people were in attendance. As it turns out, we were celebrating my host mom's sister's 70th birthday, so I should've expected this. I had hoped that I could use the opportunity to talk with some interesting people who haven't tired of my limited vocabulary, but apparently the way these festivals work is that everybody gives toasts to the birthday girl and her family, so there isn't much down time to chat with the people around you. Only understanding the few simplest words of the toasts, and not knowing who anybody was, the beginning part of the fiesta was a bit dull for me. Until the following happened.

In order to make up for how lackluster the festival had been for the poor American in attendance, the organizers decided to introduce a new game. A grandma dance-off. So fun, so hilarious, why has this innovation not reached American shores? Sadly, our group videographer Alex White is off documenting his own Peace Corps experience now, so you're stuck with preschooler with a cell phone camera quality. These bold women don't fear the ұят!

On the way to the party, my host mom had coerced a promise to dance out of me by assuring me that there would be plenty of young women my age to dance with. In the event, there was one girl in attendance who didn't remember life under Stalin, but was in 9th grade. But no matter, my dancing abilities are much more on par with retirees than people my age anyway.