Updates on life in Astana

Aug 29 Sunday- School started on Thursday. We had a half a day of school on Thursday. After all the kids left, Yulia told me us that our landlady was going to sell our apartment and we would have to move. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking at new apartments. We'll look at a couple of more apartments this week and probably move soon. In other news, Nina talked to Tim Friday after school and told him she only wanted to work part time. He said that would work; next week we will hire another HS art teacher and Nina will only have to teach the 7 YO class until 12:30 pm, then she will be able to go home to Sadie. Yesterday, Nina and Mom went to the outdoor market. There was not much there except plastic junk. Don't think we will be going out there very often. Today we went to the oceanarium. It is over 3000 KM from the ocean; the farthest oceanarium from the sea in the world.









Sadie eating in her new High Chair





The rainbow bridge over the river; at night it is lit up with many colors.

Lunch during the first full staff day; all of the staff kids like watching Sadie

Eating breakfast with Sadie in the morning can be a challenge. She likes to pick the strawberries out of my cereal.











The Triumph at night; Sadie helping us shop; Nina with a can of horse meat




































Sadie likes the playground inside the big tent and riding her bike.

More Astana Pictures

Aug 22 Sunday- We walked from the apartment to the Bayterek Tower today. It took us about an hour at a nice slow walk; stopping to take lots of pictures. There are lots of cool buildings along the way. In the tower they have a model of the area and a little more than half of the planned buildings are actually built. It will look even crazier in the next ten years. Many of the buildings have cool names like the lip stick tubes, the lighter, the salt and pepper shakers. See if you can figure out which are which.

We have a car!

I finally found the car I wanted and finished buying it on Friday. Last Sunday (Aug 8th) I went with Tim and one of Yulia's friends to the car market outside of Astana. It is in a big field and everyone who wants to sell their car is there. There were tons of cars and it was very overwhelming trying to find one to buy. I took pictures of some of them and even drove a couple. It seemed that I was mainly drawn to VW Golfs and Subaru wagons. Right before we left I found a Subaru that I really liked. It was a right-sided driving car and seemed like it would work well for us. The next day Yulia tried to call the guy selling it but his phone was off. She kept calling all week but could not reach him. On Wednesday, I had Yulia start calling some other cars I was interested in. We went and checked out a couple of the VW golfs I liked and I was sure I was going to buy one of those. Then, on Thursday I looked at a 92 Subaru Sedan. It only had 106,000 KM and was in pretty good shape; plus it had a sun-roof and a kick-ass radio in it. We took it to a mechanic on Friday morning and then in the afternoon we all had to meet the seller at the notary to sign the paperwork. It will still take most of next week to finish all the paperwork and get it officially in the school's name. The school will then give me Power of Attorney so I have permission to drive the car. Tim and I went to eat at TGIF Fridays after finishing at the notary. Dinner was good and afterward I went to a gas station to put gas in my new car. On my way back to the bridge I missed my turn so I needed to make a U-turn and go back. Now, U-turns are very common here because they don't allow you to turn left across traffic. I drove up to the next stoplight which happened to be a pedestrian walkway. The other cars were all stopped, no one was coming so it looked like a good time to do the U-turn. Well, needless to say there was a cop on the side of the road about a block from my U-turn and he pointed his little orange stick at me and motioned for me to pull-over. He took my documents and the little card that says I paid for the car and said the fine was 21,000 Tange (about 150 dollars). I would have to go to the police station on Monday and pay the fine before I could get my stuff back. I found all this out because I called Anastasia and had her translate for me because I could not understand a word the cop was saying expect that he was not happy with me. She asked me how much cash I had on me (7000 Tange) and offered that to the cop so I would not have to go to the police station on Monday. The cop took my money, gave me back my documents and just like that I had paid my first bribe.

Well my first bribe by myself. Let's go back to the first 30 minutes I spent in Kazakhstan. Tim and I get off the plane; make it through customs and find all of our luggage. This is actually a big feat since Tim checked nine bags of luggage. We were the last ones to get everything collected and as we try to leave the baggage area the guards tell us to scan our bags. No one else had been scanning their bags but since we had so many they made us. Tim had lots of school supplies in most of the bags and they went though all the boxes. It seemed they were going to let us go until they got to the last box was was full of no-slip tape for the stairs at school. Evidently, they thought he was bringing too many rolls of tape into the country. The head guard took Tim and Yulia into a back room and talked to them for about ten minutes. They came out and asked me if I had 100 dollars on me. The guard would let us go if we paid the "fine" now and in cash. Our other choice was for them to keep all of our luggage over night and we would have to go back to the airport the next day, fill out a bunch of forms, and probably pay an even bigger fee. I had 70 Euros left over from my layover in Frankfurt, which just so happened to be about equal to 100 USD. We gave him the money and escaped the airport with all of our luggage.

The Big Tent

On Saturday Aug 14th, I went for a jog and ended up at the big tent. It is only about a ten or fifteen minute walk from our apartment. It is a huge mall under this tent like roof. There are, of course, the normal mall stores with over priced junk. There is a grocery store downstairs; it may end up being the one we mostly shop at this winter. There are many different areas with games for both adults and children; bumper cars, video games, and a log ride where you wear a rain cut and float around a river before dropping down a steep decline and getting splashed. There is a small roller-coaster that goes all the way around the tent. There are some play areas for small children; I expect we will take Sadie there during the winter. On the top is a fancy fitness area and a couple of swimming pools. One pool has waves and a sandy beach. It only cost 10,000 Tange per adult on the weekend; about 68 USD. Kinda of pricey, but I guess cheaper than flying to Thailand.
When I left the big tent I went to the park across the road from the tent. There are lots of trees and a couple of cool statues of various painted animals.