Our life in Kazakhstan: miscellaneous pictures from Almaty

This is Sadie's little buddy Lina. She lives next door. She is a very outgoing, social girl. Her and Sadie treat each other more like sisters than friends, they are not always nice to each other, but love each other so much. Sadie asks about Lina all day long! Lina just left to Thailand with her mom Reada to have the new baby. They'll be gone for 2 months. It's been so amazing to have friends here for Sadie.

This was our first outing in Almaty. We drove out of town for a couple of hours and up into the hills. It's always a good idea to go with another car, because if you get stuck, you're miles from anywhere.

We parked at this lake. On the other side of the lake was a yurt and a herd of horses.

We hiked away from the lake, up a small hill and then down into the river valley.

At the bottom of the valley we could see a yurt far away in the distance. It is the tiny white speck you see if you look closely.
We were told that if we hiked to it, we would be offered tea. We'll save that adventure for another time.

Sadie fell asleep just in time to be carried back out of the valley. When we returned to the lake there was a Kazakh family there with a picnic spread. They invited us to join them! They gave us shashlik and candy and shots of vodka. I took the keys and John had 4 shots. It was one of those moments when I cursed myself for not putting more effort into learning Russian. It turned out to be a birthday party. They were all giving toasts and asked us to give one as well. Our hiking buddies had not joined the party so we had to pull away so we could get back before dark. They gave us their card and stood by the car until we drove away.