The Office New Years Party…

And the holiday celebrations continue.  Today was the New Years party at work and it was great fun!  Much like the US everyone gets together to celebrate and they all bring food, but unlike in the US where we do this for Christmas, here we celebrate New Years.
It took me a bit to understand the WHY, but now I do.  The Communists cancelled Christmas during the times of the Soviet Union.  Communists believed in the state rather than religion, so therefore people began to celebrate New Years in a larger fashion and  have continued the tradition long after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    

The started with the seemingly endless hours of preparation.  I was asked to also bring something and I did, but my greek pasta salad could not do justice to the beauty of Ukrainian salads.  This is Lena, Katya and Olga spending some hours preparing.  It was quite fun!

    

As you can see there are many stages.  And Katya knows them all.

    

My salad on the left and Katya’s on the right.  Very different and both very good.

    

Katya and Katya.  One is making scarves for all of us to wear later and the other is having a great time with her OORA! sign.

    

The New Year’s Tree, and Yula and Olga getting ready.

     

The tables were set up in the largest classroom/conference room in a giant U shape and ready for all twenty of us.

    

The food was placed throughout the center of the long tables.

Lena was chief MC and coordinator of the event.  She is amazingly talented and creative, and seem to just take everything in stride.  She is quite fun to work with and makes all of us laugh often.  She makes for the perfect MC.

    

Father Frost and Snow Maiden even made the party…aka. Kola and Lisa.  Everyone, including me, had to recite a childhood poem or song about New Years or Christmas.  I sang Jingle Bells and everyone loved it.

Alesja read off all the New Years and Holiday Greetings that were received by our office from other organizations.  It was quite fun, although I barely understood a word, it is a great traditions.

This is Katya’s dad, Mikhail, and he also works at the Center with the Facilities Department.  He is awesome and the right after this was taken he joked that he was ready to jump in his car and drive with me to America where we would live forever…it was quite funny!!! 

    

We did two skits.  About five people had to become a noun and act out what was being told.

    

I was cheese and eaten by the crow.  It was hard to understand, but I played along, as usual.

    

We ended the evening with fireworks, big ones, in the parking lot. 
This is definitely one office party I will never forgot.  I work with some amazingly talented people and enjoy what I do, which makes for very fun office events.