For the fifth time, the Central Asian Jewish International Children’s and Youth Festival Freilehe Kinder took place. Participation in the Festival helps to implement creative ideas and performance talents. It’s a strong impetus and some kind of a reward for talented children and teen agers.

  In Pavlodar Hesed Rahel, it has become a nice tradition for the most active participants of the festival to go together on vacation after Freilehe Kinder. This year, our children went to the resort area Bayanaul, to resort hotel Bayantau. Here they met with young people from Karagandy Hesed Miriam. Boys and girls and their supervisor Irina Kozhanovskaya (Director of the Festival) were happy to meet each other. All difficulties were forgotten including the hard road Karagandy-Dzhasabay and rainy weather.
  The vacation was great and full of interesting events. The guys swam in the lake Zhasybay, went to the mountings. Everybody especially liked the tour to the Witch Clove. Woke up early, at five AM, it was cloudy weather but everybody went hiking cheerfully. Beautiful scenery, sweet strawberries, going down along the forest stream gave everybody lots of energy and good mood.

  In the evenings nobody was bored either - games, competitions, discotheques. The guys organized the completion Ideal Couple themselves. There were six participants - three couples. Others were judges and fans. Friendship won.

  And certainly, the guys met the Saturday. After reciting prayers and singing Shabbat songs, everybody discussed the following topics: "who I am in the community", "what I have done for the community", "what the community means to me".

  Time flew. The guys noted that such a joint vacation should be held every year. When parents were meeting their children, they said: "Thanks a lot to Mitsva Association, to organizers of the Festival, and to everybody who helped and supported our children, our special thanks to Hesed Rahel Director Tatyana Slivinskaya".

Irina Tveritneva