Next Stop, Astana Kazakhstan!

Last weekend we accepted jobs at Astana International School in Astana, Kazakhstan. We'll be moving there in August. It is the second coldest capital city in the world. John will be admin and Nina will be teaching 2nd grade. We hope to post more along with pictures of Christmas in the US soon.

This sounds like where we will be spending a lot of our winter once it is completed.

Khan Shatyry ("Royal Marquee") is a giant transparent tent currently under construction in Astana, the capital city ofKazakhstan. The architectural project was unveiled by the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev on 9 December 2006.

The 150m-high (500 ft) tent has a 200m elliptical base covering 100,000 square meters.^[1] Underneath the tent, an area larger than 10 football stadiums, will be an urban-scale internal park, shopping and entertainment venue with squares and cobbled streets, a boating river, shopping centre, minigolf and indoor beach resort. The roof is constructed fromETFE suspended on a network of cables strung from a central spire. The transparent material allows sunlight through which, in conjunction with air heating and cooling systems is designed to maintain an internal temperature between 15-30°C in the main space and 19-24°C in the retail units, while outside the temperature varies between -35 to +35°C across the year.