Hi Emma, Thanks for your email. It was fun to hear about typical hobbies in England. In Kazakhstan, music and sport are
also very popular hobbies.
There are lots of different types of music in Kazakhstan, but traditional folk music is very popular. Our national
musical instrument is the dombra. It's a stringed instrument, like a small guitar or lute. Dombra players often play
and sing songs from the past. The famous traveller Marco Polo noted that travelling warriors played the dombra and
sang songs. Nowadays, young people enjoy dombra parties in streets and parks.
I love folk music and I'm good at singing, so I want to be an akyn when I'm older I go to a club at school where !
practise. Akyns are really good folk singers and poets and they are always very clever and funny. The best akyns
enter competitions called aitys. In the past akyns travelled to different villages to perform in aitys, but nowadays you
can watch aitys on TV.
Sport is also very popular in Kazakhstan and the country is becoming famous for its success in the Olympics. We
won 17 medals in Rio in 2016, three of which were gold! One of Kazakhstan's most successful sports is boxing, but
we also won medals in weightlifting, swimming, judo, athletics and wrestling.
I really loved watching