Good Bye, Kazakhstan!

Leaving Kazakhstan took some time and effort in times of pandemic. Our flights kept getting canceled, and we were never sure of the day of our departure. We were booked on Lufthansa flights on July 1st which was canceled and then rebooked for July 3rd. That flight was also canceled, and we were finally rebooked for Turkish Airlines flight leaving on July 2nd. And even then we weren't 100% sure the flight will happen. It was going to be the very first international flight out of Nur-Sultan (Astana) since they were stopped at the end of March due to closing the borders because of the pandemic. 

Our major problem was our dog Yuki. Turkish Airlines, as it turns out, was the only airline allowing pets in the cargo area during the pandemic, so we were very grateful when they announced that they would open the flights out of Kazakhstan and to America in July. To get Yuki ready, though, we had to get her travel passport (a bunch of paperwork stamped by certain government agencies allowing her to leave the country). It had to be done within 3 days of her leaving Kazakhstan. Thankfully the government agencies responsible for that paperwork opened up again just a couple of weeks earlier. It took us a few hours of running around spread over two days but we got it done! Yay! Our dog was legal to leave!

Another problem was to pack our 6 years of life in Kazakhstan into twelve 50 lb bags (two per person), we ended up with 13 bags after getting rid of a lot of things. Not too bad!

The night of our departure (which was around 2 am) we went to the mall across the street from our campus to have our last dinner in Kazakhstan. We all got different Kazakh dishes like plov, fried pelmeni and others that we came to love so much.

Then it was time to gather our stuff and to say good-bye to our apartment that was our home for the past 6 years.

This was our master bedroom. The biggest bedroom I have ever had!

Our master bedroom from the window.

This was the twins' bedroom. It was the smallest one of the three bedrooms in our apartment and the smallest one I had ever had!

This was Nika and Lina's bedroom.

Our living room and the smallest kitchen ever!

Getting ready to leave.

Our life packed into 13 bags!

We were quite a sight arriving at the airport with all of our luggage and a dog! Yuki was a celebrity as always, and a few Kazakhs wanted to take a picture with her. Even though she was a Shiba Inu and not an Akita, a lot of people in Kazakhstan thought she was like Hachiko and always wanted to pet her.

 

Spencer is at the counter in his red hat checking us in and us taking the entire space.

We checked in without any trouble, just had to pay extra for our dog. Then we took Yuki to the cargo area and went trough the passport control and to our gate where we met up with our friends, the Thomas family, who were also leaving Kazakhstan and onto their next assignment in Washington D.C. area.

Girls playing card games with April Thomas, entertaining themselves while waiting for the flight way past their bedtime!

With the Thomas family.

Flying with friends is fun!

Our plan was to fly to Istanbul and then after a short layover to fly to Los Angeles. From Los Angeles the kids and I would fly on Delta to Salt Lake City, and Spencer would rent a van and drive Yuki and our luggage to Utah (pets were still not allowed on domestic flights due to the pandemic). However, our plan came to a stop when we arrived to Istanbul and discovered that our flight to Los Angeles was CANCELED!  

We spent the next few hours figuring out our next move, mostly just waiting for the officials to decide what to do with us. They finally offered to put us on the flight to Washington D.C. the next day which we decided to take even though it would put us on the wrong end of the country. We did have to spend the night in Istanbul though. The airport arranged for us to stay at a hotel in Istanbul but we needed to get visas to exit the airport. After another hour of walking around we finally got our visas (they wouldn't take any cards just cash, so our kids came to the rescue and let us borrow cash from them. Of course, if they didn't let us, they would be spending a night at the airport instead of having an adventure!). 

Not happy! Ours was the only flight canceled that day.

We picked up our dog from the pet holding area (which also took an hour, and they almost gave us a cat instead of our dog due to some miscommunication) and then an airport shuttle took us to the Hampton Inn Istanbul Zeytinburno Hotel (very close to the Old Town) and paid for our stay there including our three very good meals. The hotel was pretty empty, just with a few customers from around the world, mostly stuck like us due to canceled flights. The staff was extremely nice and took good care of us.

Our 3 course lunch at the hotel.

Kids enjoying their meals.

After dinner we decided to walk around a bit to see the area. We were very close to the Sea of Marmara (part of the Mediterranean Sea) and we ran into some ancient fort. Not very many people were out, things were still pretty closed down all around us but the evening was very nice and it felt good to get out for a bit. Now we can add Turkey to the countries we visited even though it was not our plan at all. At least not at this time.

On a walk in Istanbul. Lina fell asleep at the hotel and missed our little adventure.

Ancient fort is behind us.

It looked like those wall were stretching for miles

Yuki zoned out at the hotel.

Yuki was a trooper. She was very happy to be with us and was acting like a world class traveler! That dog is a great travel companion!

The next morning an airport shuttle took us back to the airport where we had to go through some additional steps to check our dog back in but things went pretty smoothly. We were all checked in, booked our hotel in D.C., and on our way to America! Finally!

Istanbul International Airport was the busiest airport we've seen during our travel during pandemic, and as you can see there was plenty of space.

In D.C. it took forever to get though customs. Spencer was flagged and was interrogated about why he was coming back to America. Never mind that it is his country. We waited for him and when he was done, we were allowed to pick up our luggage and our dog. They didn't even check any of Yuki's paperwork. Spencer rented a van, loaded it with our luggage and Yuki, and took us to the Hyatt Place hotel nearby. He got up in the middle of the night to start his long drive to Utah which he made in just 2 days! That man rocks! The rest of us went to Ronald Reagan Airport in the morning and took a Delta flight to Utah. We got to Utah on the 4th of July, and it was good to be finally home.

Waiting with our luggage outside of Dulles Airport for Spencer to get back with the van.

Breakfast at the Ronald Reagan Airport at the only place that was open and serving food.

Empty airport, nice but so strange. 

After a crazy 2 days of travel Spencer made it to Payson, Utah. And Yuki made it with him!

We certainly felt blessed making it across the world in the midst of a pandemic. We made it on one of the only flights that went out of Kazakhstan, we were able to get our dog out with us (a lot of others didn't get their pets out), and even though we had some extra adventures (kind of our thing at this point in our lives) we made it safely. NU was great to re-book our flights, and Turkish offered great service. We will always remember moving across the world at the height of COVID-19!

Freedom! Getting out of lockdown!

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.

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! 

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.

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).

Eagle Scout Award Ceremony for Ben Calder.

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"!

 

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!

Second Month of Quarantine (COVID-19)

On April 10th we participated in the world-wide prayer and fasting to overcome the effects of coronavirus and return to normal life faster. This was an amazing experience because so many people around the world with different religious backgrounds put aside their differences and united in one goal. If we could only do that all the time, put aside our differences and unite, our lives would be so much better. Two days later we celebrated Easter, a time to remember our Savior, Jesus Christ,  and a time for hope and new beginnings. I have a lot of hope.

Our usual Easter breakfast.

The kids asked to do an egg hunt (I thought they were getting to big for this but I guess I was wrong). Since we have a small enough apartment and not very many places to hide eggs, they thought they could be done in 5 minutes. Well, well, well ... not if your Easter Bunny is your mother on a mission  to make life (or egg hunt in this case) difficult for everybody involved. I made a rule that each girl could only pick eggs of different colors (there were 8 different colors). If they found an egg of a color they already have, they had to put it back. The first one to find all 8 different colors got a prize. And then I hid the eggs in "plain sight". It took the kids over an hour to find them. Here is why...

A seemingly ordinary plant. 

But if you look closer, it's a plant bearing an egg. I did a similar thing with other colors like putting an orange egg in a bowl with mandarins or putting a pink egg to stick out of a pocket of a pink shirt. This mama rocks! 

Our twins turned 12 in April. I wanted to have a birthday party for them with their friends but the world decided to collapse, and so we ended up celebrating their birthday the usual way - with just our family. They asked for Angel Food Cake for breakfast which I totally made from scratch and Chicken Tenders and Biscuits for dinner made by Spencer and coleslaw made by me. We thought that they wouldn't get any presents but money because all non-food stores were closed but Nika and Lina found some cute umbrellas in Ramstore (Turkish chain of grocery stores), and the twins were very happy with them! 

During quarantine, nobody could go outside except for grocery shopping, going to a pharmacy, or walking a dog. Since we have a dog we took that opportunity to take kids outside to get some sunshine. For the first few weeks we could only take one kid at a time, so our dog got 4 walks a day! She was happy. We also had to alternate parents, so both of us would get some sunshine. Spring came really early this year, and the weather turned to warm and even hot very quickly.

Lexa walking Yuki with me.

Towards the end of April we took kids out two at a time. Here are Sophie and Lexa walking Yuki with me (or Yuki walking Sophie and Lexa with me, depending on who is telling the story).

We have a very nice pond on campus. Unfortunately the management company wasn't taking care of it and by the end of May it completely dried up.

Here is a couple of random pictures from our quarantine time doing ordinary things.

Lexa practicing her guitar and ... I guess freezing?

Reading books. Here is Lexa reading a book by Dan Haring, Spencer's friend from school. 

Girls made me an Angel Food Cake for breakfast for Mother's Day

For my Mother's Day present I wanted to get some family pictures done and I wanted my people to not look like they don't love taking pictures! And they delivered!

It was too windy to take family pictures outside on Mother's Day but the next day the weather was beautiful! We went around our campus to a couple of our favorite spots and had fun. And nobody objected as promised! Here are some shots from the day!