Ded Moroz and Santa Claus

About a week ago Spencer looked out of the window of our apartment and saw a funny picture: Ded Moroz and Santa Claus having a conversation right on the street. Ded Moroz is Grandfather Frost who is sort of a cousin to Santa Claus and wears a long read or blue decorated coat. He is responsible for delivering presents to the children in this part of the world. Seeing them together was really fun! Unfortunately by the time I ran to get my camera to take a picture of them, Santa Claus already got into a car and was following Ded Moroz in it.

  

Ded Moroz walking on the street

I love the coats of Kazakh Ded Moroz!

If you look closely you can see Santa Claus behind the wheel.

New Year's Yolkas

It is the time of the year again when everybody is getting ready to celebrate New Year. The kids are finishing their second quarter at school. Because they still go to school on Christmas (their winter break starts on the 30^th of December), we do the presents on New Year just as the rest of the people in this part of the world but have a little family program on Christmas.

It is also the time when all the kids go to different Yolka (New Year performance for kids called “New Year's Tree”) that are organized for elementary age kids all over town. This year our school went to the Children's Palace just as they did last year, and our three youngest got to go. Nika is in middle school now, so they go to New Years Dance instead. They were especially excited because all of the kids get to dress in costumes. Sophie was a gypsy girl again, and Lina and Lexa were Snegurochkas (granddaughter of Grandfather Frost).

Lina, Sophie and Lexa in their costumes ready to rock!

The kids formed a circle in the middle of which the show was taking place. It usually goes along the lines when some villain trying to stop Grandfather Frost and Snegurochka from delivering presents to all of the children, and some here comes and saves the day.

The main story line of this performance was Alice in Wonderland

The Queen with her evil forces.

Sophie and Lexa with their classmates

Grandfather Frost and Snegurochka finally made it to the kids.

Pretty cool beard!

They also had some kids' dance groups do numbers and those were a lot of fun to watch. 

Little Monkeys Dance

Something must have been really funny!

I stayed with the twins' class, so I do not have too many pictures of Lina but here is one of Lina dancing.

And back to the twins.

Lots of happy kids!

They also went to see a little play in the theater. Here is Lexa waving with her ticket to me.

New Year's Tree at the Children's Palace.

At the end of all of it a lot of time kids would get presents. Parents get together and buy presents for the whole class and then deliver them to the kids during such Yolkas.

Presents that we put together for our second grade class.

Sophie and Lexa with some of their friends and teacher after the performance.

The girl's had a lot of fun and hopefully made a lot of good memories.

The National Museum of Kazakhstan

On our last Saturday before I began school, we decided to take advantage of living in the Capital of a country and to visit the national museum.  We had heard good things about the museum from some friends, so we decided to check it out.

The museum is on the other side of the river, but in the new part of the town.  It is close to a musical university, and to the largest mosque in the city.  It is also right in front of the road where the military parades and review takes place (See our post about that here).

View of the mosque

The mosque. It is a really beautiful building.

Lexa at the square in front of the musical university.

It was a beautiful late summer day and we had an enjoyable short walk to get from the bus stop to the museum.  It cost us less than $40 to see the entire museum, including the "gold room" and to be able to take photographs.  We had Ludmila with us, so that was the price for 3 adults and 4 children.  It was a good deal.

The museum of National History.

The cool fountain in front of the museum.

After our visit to the museum in Bishkek (See post here), the museum in Astana was a pleasant surprise.  The building itself is large and modern and an architectural piece of art with large spaces, big angles, lots of texture, and an imposing feel to it all.  In the lobby there is a large golden eagle that is animatronic and which lights up - it "flies" once an hour.  The eagle is one of the symbols of the state, so it is an appropriate entrance-way gimmick.

Golden eagle.

The museum is a combination of a natural history museum, a history museum, an art museum, and a propaganda piece[1].

The museum was very well put together, which displays arranged by theme and by time.  We spent about three hours walking around and seeing everything, and could have spent longer if we had the patience with the girls.  Some of the highlights were an exhibit about perspective, displays of life on the Steppe, the art portion of the museum with modern and classic art (including a Warhol Campbell's soup painting), and the gold room.  The gold room is a display of the jewelry and other items that were found buried with one of the rulers that was recently discovered (within the past four or five years.)

An electronic display about water and the life in it.

Yurt

Inside of the yurt.

Showing off Kazakhstan's role in space exploration.  Most launches to the international space station still take place here.

Art room

Modern art exhibition. 

"Evolution of growth"

The display and the items reminded me a lot of the King Tut traveling exhibit that my parents took me to see at BYU in the early 1990s.  It was really interesting to see the jewelry and armor made of gold - including the bridle and other tack for the horses.

War horses

Exhibits from the gold room

More of the things from the Gold Room

At the end of the day we came away with a greater appreciation for the history and people of Kazakhstan. We ended the day with a fast food lunch at one of the local malls - it was a great way to end an adventurous summer.



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[1] I mean this without any judgement. One thing that is true of Kazakhstan, but which we didn't see in Bishkek, was that there is a strong sense of building a national identity and national pride. The regime is very conscious about making a Kazakh (or Kazakhstani) history that legitimizes the state.  From a political and sociological standpoint, it is a fascinating process to watch unfold.

Bus tickets

I meant to write a post about funny and odd things we encounter while living here in Kazakhstan for quite some time and I am not ready to do it just yet (still gathering some photo evidence :)) but I wanted to write about one funny experience that we had when we were in Almaty.

While living in Kazakhstan, we use public transportation a lot. We do not have a car here because if you are a foreigner it is a pain in some rear parts of your body to own a car - unless you are here as a diplomat. We have a lot of friends who diplomats, and for them to get from a point A to a point B on busy Astana roads full of crazy drivers that think that they are driving race cars is pure bliss. Police would never dare to stop them. For me though, I prefer public transportation, particularly buses. The bus system is pretty good here and usually very reliable. The way it works in Astana is that you get on a bus and pay your ride fare to a conductor who gives you a ticket. Adult tickets costs 90 tenge which is about 30 cents, and a kids ticket costs 40 tenge which is about 13 cents, and you can ride that bus anywhere in the city. You can also show the conductor a bus pass which are sold at the train station and which will allow you to ride buses limitless for a whole month. That is what I and the kids use because we are on the buses A LOT! An adult bus pass costs $24 and kids' pass costs $5. It is a pretty nice deal!

So, when we went to Almaty, we thought the  system would be about the same since we are in the same country. Not at all! There inside of the buses they have a ticket machine which you feed your cash and it will give you a ticket. The problem is that you have to feed it the exact amount of change otherwise you just lose your money, and it will NOT give you a ticket! So, what do you do, if you do not have the exact amount of change? You pay directly to the driver and get your ticket from him. I have to mention that every so often the buses are checked by a "controller" who checks the tickets of all of the passengers. Well, we walked a lot in Almaty but a few times we rode a bus, and twice (different buses, different routs) our drivers instead of giving us tickets, just ripped and gave us 6 pieces of  paper, bigger ones for Spencer and I and smaller ones for the girls. When it happened the first time, I just ignored it but the second time it made me laugh. I was just glad that the "controllers" weren't checking the buses while we were there - otherwise it would have been hard to explain to them.

Our bus tickets in Almaty!

Our trip to Almaty

Back in August we took a trip down to Almaty. Almaty used to be the capital of Kazakhstan until it was moved to Astana a couple of decades ago. It is also located in the mountain region of Kazakhstan, in the south and thus has a completely different look than the Steppe around Astana. We haven't really been anywhere in Kazakhstan besides Astana and Korgalzhyn, and Spencer went to Karaganda once so we decided to take a quick trip down to Almaty with the girls before school started.

Of course one of the highlights of the trip for the girls was the fact that we took the train there and back. They have been on a train in Russia 3 years ago and loved it so much that they have been talking about it ever since. We took the fast “Spanish” train that goes there over night and takes about 12 hours instead of 18-21 hours on a regular train. The girls loved the bunk beds!

Nika and Lina loving their train bunk beds

Lexa is reading on top of her bunk

The areas we went through for a long time stayed pretty much the same as we see here around Astana (steppe and more steppe) but when we got closer to Almaty, things started to change. There were these areas that were so white that I thought they were covered in snow. Nope. It was salt! Then it was hills instead of flat steppe that we are used to seeing here. And then the beautiful Tian Shan mountains.

The picture isn't great but you can see those white spots which is salt.

We arrived early on a Friday morning and set off to find some place to eat. We bought a map and went on our adventure (that's how we roll wherever we go!). We saw on the map a mall called Mega and since we have Mega here in Astana, we knew it would have a food court and so we headed there. We also had a few hours to kill until we could check in into our hotel. We walked around the mall, and bought a few things for the kids and then surprised them with the tickets to the Minion movie which they really wanted to see and which was playing for the last time in the theaters that weekend. It happened to be a 3D movie. Spencer and I decided that we do not like 3D but the girls had fun.

A monument by the train station

Waiting for the Mega Mall to open

This cute camel is made entirely out of Lego bricks! 

Trying on the big shoes.

In the movie theater ready to see the Minion Movie

We walked to the train station where we stored our luggage and then took a taxi to our hotel that was located right across from another train station (yep, there are two of them in Almaty). Our Kuze hotel was very small and from outside didn't look that appealing at all but our two rooms that we booked were very spacious and nice. They also cooked simple fresh breakfast for us every morning and brought it right into our rooms. The staff was very nice too. That night we went to eat at the cafe right across from our hotel and then we took the kids to some playground we found near by.

Dinner at the cafe across from our hotel

Lexa really liked her cake that she decided to get completely covered in it!

Nika is trying to do some pull-ups at the playground

This is the outside of our hotel. It takes half of the bottom floor of an apartment building.

The next day we wanted to visit Koktobe which is a mountain and the highest point of Almaty and the famous outdoor speed skating rink Medeo where a lot of records were sat and which is located right in the mountains outside of Almaty. But the forecast for most of the day was rain, and so we decided to just visit Koktobe. We took a public bus to the bottom of the mountain and then hiked all the way up. They had a little zoo there, an entertainment park, the full size statue of all four Beetles (the only one in the world) and a beautiful view of Almaty and the mountains around.

The view of the city half way up to the Koktobe hill. At the bottom you can see the lift cars that are going to replace the old ones. The lift was under renovation when we were there but we heard the views from it are gorgeous.

The kids liked their 3D glasses so much that they were wearing them as their sun glasses for at least a month after our trip to Almaty.

Here are the original lift cars

The girls wanted to climb this climbing wall but it was so outrageously expensive.

We thought this was really funny. It shows what your minimum height has to be in order to participate in the climbing activities (140 cm), and then the arrow down points to lower heights and the words "Eat carrots!"

So instead of climbing we let the kids do the obstacle course.

Lina getting ready to jump over a hole in the rope bridge.

A view of the city from the top of Koktobe. The mountains unfortunately were barely visible because of the air pollution.

Enjoying the view from the viewing area.

This reminds me of Siberia, the area I am from.

It is rare when we get a picture of just a two of us. Usually we have some cute chipmunks around.

The life size statue of all 4 Beetles.

Nika is making friends with a goat at the little zoo.

They were herding turkeys from one fenced area to another. The girls thought it was cool.

Spencer and the crew with the TV tower in the back

We then hiked down and went to eat at another mall and then decided to walk all the way down to Panfilov park which is supposed to be a quiet and beautiful place. Well, it started to rain. We did make it to the Panfilov park but didn't stay there long since the rain started to come down really hard by then. That night we ate at another mall's food court not too far from our hotel.

Hiking down from Koktobe

On the streets of Almaty

Walking in the rain

We found this house with a picture of Lenin on the door. There was no more info offered, so we do not know if he stayed there once or what.

A nice little cathedral at the Panfilov park. It was raining really hard by then so we didn't stay long.

The next day was Sunday and our last day in Almaty. That evening we were going back home. We decided to go to church in the morning. On our way there the girls got super excited – after it rained all day and all night, a zillion of snails came out everywhere on the sidewalks. They right away sat on a snail rescue mission and spent the next 30 minutes saving snails. We think that it doesn’t matter what exotic places we take our kids to all they are interested in is rocks, stick, bugs and so forth!

Sunday was beautiful, and the air was so clear after the rain. You can kind of see the mountains in the top left cornet. Those are Tian Shan mountains.

A view of Koktobe hill where we went the day before.

Catching snails. They were the easiest catch ever!

Lina was so excited about the snails (she is our animal lover) that her glasses fell off!

Hey, little buddy!

On a mission to remove snails off the sidewalks where they can get smashed onto the lawns

Sisters!

Kids being kids - playing tag.

We saw our good friends, missionaries, that served in Astana before. Since we were traveling that day we weren't dressed in our church clothes but it was fine.

Some fountains at the park on our way to Mega Mall to eat.

The day before some of them were whining about a little drizzling of the rain. And here they are getting wet at the fountain and loving it. I don't understand them sometimes but I surely love them!

These type of flower beds are everywhere.

These are irrigation canals that go right through the city.

On the train again!

Overall it was a nice little trip and we were happy to learn more things about Almaty. We noticed that a lot more people smoke in Almaty than in Astana especially women. We saw a lot more Russians there - a lot more. It has beautiful nature all around but the air is a lot more polluted. It is an old city, very green with mature trees (something we rarely see in Astana), and the people are very nice.