It’s nice to get something accomplished

All this visa talk must be pretty boring to read about. I’m a bit tired of it myself. Last week in Almaty a miraculous thing happened. Good old Stan Tours of Central Asia (which gets a positive mention in the Lonely Planet – David is the MAN!) came through with a great tour company recommendation, an efficient little business run by some friendly Koreans. These competent folks took our passports one morning last week and only about $800 of our dollars (the price was much lower than quoted by David) and said come back tonight and we’ll have your 6-month, multi-entry Kazakh visas ready for you . What? Could it be? We desperately hoped we weren’t being toyed with like we are currently with this outfit in Pavlodar (we’ve handed over to them $2K for our Russian visas and still nothing three months later!) So, 5pm comes and Nathan heads over there with DPJ and those wonderful people had our passports all neatly stacked and inside all 4 of them was that glorious visa stamp and all the proper documentation!! They had even made copies of all the visas and relevant pages for nosy police officers (I had an incident a week before here in Sharbakti) Three cheers for the Happy Tours company in Almaty!!

We also had the chance to go to church for the first time in over 5months – there is a small little branch with four sets of missionaries. The senior couple told us that currently no more missionaries are being called to Russia and those that have callings in the MTC are being sent to other places. All this is due to the messed up visa situation. So sad. It has got to change – c’mon Putin, er, Medevev!!! Anyway, what I find so great about little branches, that I want to implement wherever I am, is the instant reception by people when they see a new face and the invitations to get-together that follow introductions. We were invited to dinner that afternoon with the senior couple missionaries (The Vincents) and then for the following day a playdate at another expat family’s home. I love that and it meant soooo much!! I want to do that for people – instantly open up myself, my place to them. . . silent hopes and notes taking.

Nate also met with the State Department Fulbright representative at the U.S. Embassy. That was a great meeting and she was very helpful with a lot of suggestions and it even seemed cool with her that we were hoping to return to Russia for a month, and stay a bit past our targeted KZ return.

Before leaving town we spent a couple of nights up in the lofty mountains near Almaty. We stayed in the utilitarian hotel meant for athletes – there is a large ‘olympic’ stadium up there, the price was a lot better than down in the city (Almaty is so expensive, I think ranked #44 on expensive cities in the world). The backdrop to the stadium is an immense mountain and some brave souls created nearly 900 steps to take to the top. Nate challenged us by saying, “Wouldn’t it be great to accomplish something like that?” Gasp! We decided to take it one step at a time. Zoe faltered at about 20-steps and chose to take the rest atop Nathan’s shoulders. Des, on the other hand, found the steps a little under-challenging and climbed onto the railing and scaled himself up using all fours. A budding rock climber!! After shashliks we returned to the bottom via the road route and just outside the stadium, we spotted some horses and so Des&I went on a 15minute ride. I love horses!! Ideally I love the notion of getting off the road and away from cars speeding down the hill . . . but, as I tell Des everyday, I’m trying to be grateful for what I get.

The train ride to Almaty was from one end of the country to the other (north-south) it took us 2nights and one never ending day to get there. We were only able to find top bunks, just two, and so we sat a top and stood in the little narrow hallway from time-to-time. The babes didn’t sleep during the day like I hoped they would. They played and complained and met one or two other rowdy kids and ran and chased each other from compartment to compartment. We watched a couple of videos too and, ultimately, we made it. Unbelievable. For the return trip back up to Sharbakti we decided to try a different route – boarding at 2pm and sleeping one night (we had bottom bunks this time!) and then arriving at a city called Semey at 11:30 the next morning. Nate talked Semey up and so we decided to stay the night and catch a 5hour bus ride to Pavlodar and then from Pav a 1hour bus ride to Sharbakti. Whatever – the bus ride was long, not comfortable. But I liked Semey and I want to go back soon and see the Dostoevsky museum!!!

Oh, and another thing about Almaty and Semey I love was the internet efficiency!! I uploaded about half a dozen videos to our Youtube gallery and tons of pictures from May-July. See sidebar on the right for links. I managed to engineer two, 3-hour sessions at icafes while Nate&babes went out and did something fun amongst themselves. And in Semey, I was finally able to fulfill my dream to hook up via my own laptop at an icafe. I think, secretly, this was the activity I was most looking forward to, that and going to the big western-style grocery store (in Almaty) and finding things like peanut butter and ‘pizza’ spices. They even had salsa!! Hooray for big cosmopolitan cities.


p.s. A follow up on the well situation – it was about two weeks before we finally had water again. For several days we had to go next door to our neighbors and draw water from their well. We’re very happy to have a fully functioning pump again!