Soccer is the BEST sport in the world.

It’s my blog so I can say that! Besides the fact that it’s true! Some of the girls from the orphanages we work play for city or regional teams. A few hope to eventually make the national team. Girls here aren’t so often sports oriented so when the orphanages enable the girls who are athletic, they can excel. On the other hand, there’s such a large pool of hopeful boys that they rarely get the opportunity to play on larger teams. However, we have been sponsoring several local boys to take Tae Kwon Doe and recently sent 4 children (one girl and three boys) to a national competition. They did well and came back to show us their medal and certificates.

The city of Taraz also recently held a huge evening sports concert celebrating althletes all over. The ceremony included an olympic torch (the flame recently came through Kazakhstan on it's way to China), 100 ballroom dancing couples, a lot of life sized puppet characters, and athletes from all over. We went to see some of the soccer & Tae Kwon Doe kids marching. It was well worth it to see the spectacular event that was actually put on by a friend of ours. Congratulations Nadeshda!

As fun as it was, I think there was a greater purpose than we planned. Two brothers had just come to the orphanage that day. After some wrangling with their caretaker, they were able to come too. They were so hesitant and cautious at first, but slowly they opened up and were clamouring for ice cream, chips, and a chance to take photos with our cameras along with all the other boys. They are in the picture below with me. I can only imagine that having such a special event their first day helped to ease the pain of abandonement.