It has been many months since I last posted and almost a year since these pictures have been taken. A lot has changed in that year including our location (we are no longer in Kazakhstan), and I think I was avoiding to write about it because that would mean that one of the biggest chapters in our life came to an end. But it did come to an end (though we started another exciting chapter), and so I need to write about our last couple of months in Kazakhstan, a country that we called home for six years.
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| Twins on a walk with Yuki. During the lock down we took every opportunity to walk our dog because that is the only time we were allowed to be outside besides grocery shopping. Later our campus allowed families to be outside for 30 minutes at a time. |
On May 11th Kazakhstan ended its first lockdown due to the pandemic. The lockdown had lasted for nearly 2 months. Now people were allowed to be outside and restaurants, stores, malls were opened though at 50% capacity. People took it to heart and it felt like the entire city was out that day. It was also a very warm and beautiful day outside, so we decided to visit the Botanical Gardens that were walking distance from our campus. We'd been inside for too long! This was the first day our kids got to leave campus in two months!
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| Walking to the Botanical Gardens through Expo Plaza. |
At the Botanical Gardens we rented bikes and spent an hour riding around. It was a beautiful day and it felt nice to be outside all together doing something that we loved!
Afterwards we went back to the Expo Plaza, to the Mall that just reopened and had a lunch at one of the cafes there. All the things we took for granted before!
The following pictures show some other things we did in May and June of 2020.
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Over the course of 6 years I have taken a lot of pictures of Astana night skies, mostly sunsets (they are just gorgeous!). And here is another one: night sky after a storm. Love the light reflections off the wet roads and the separation of the sky! There is light after each storm, and that doesn't change!
In June we started playing basketball outside as a family and were grateful that our campus had some outdoor basketball courts! The kids got to be pretty good shots and even took their Papa out a couple of times! |
On June 28th we had our last branch party because all three expat families (us, the Thomas family, and the Calder family) were leaving Kazakhstan in July. We gathered at the Thomas's home and had a little picnic as well as a Court of Honor for Ben Calder who was receiving his Eagle Scout Award. It was nice to see everyone one last time (we were leaving for Texas, the Thomas family was moving to Washington D.C. area for their next assignment, and the Calder family was going back to Utah though Steve Calder was staying in Astana for another year).
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| Eagle Scout Award Ceremony for Ben Calder. |
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Our little branch: the three expat families plus our two of the local members, Kamshat and Zhana.
 | | We decided to eat at our favorite Georgian Restaurant one last time. The food was delicious as always but now I have to learn to cook it myself to get my Georgian "fix"! |
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| Steppe grasses on our way to the SMART Supermarket. I admired them every time we went grocery shopping to that store and wanted to take a picture before city mowed them down. Kazakhstan is a beautiful country! |
