Cadets Research the Vernal Equinox Holiday

Eight cadets and two Department of Foreign Languages (DFL) professors from the Russian and Persian programs traveled to Central Asia as part of a year-long capstone course researching the vernal equinox holiday known as Nowruz in Persian and Navruz in Russian – a holiday celebrated for over three-thousand years from the Balkans to the Hindu Kush. The extended DFL Spring Immersion trip explored Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. At the invitation of the Dean of the International Relations Department Dr. Sagyngaliy Aidarbayev, the cadets had the opportunity to poll the opinions of students at Al Farabi National University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. At the Armed Forces Academy in Tashkent, they were greeted by Deputy Commandant Col Murod Ibragimov and had a chance to exchange views and gifts with cadets studying there. This visit to the Uzbek Armed Forces Academy constituted the first by a U.S. military academy in almost thirteen years. Later, cadets visited the major sites of the ancient Silk Road where Navruz celebrations eagerly awaited: Khiva, Bukhara, and Samarkand. They then observed and joined in the celebration of the holiday itself in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.