Our Changing Neighborhood: The opening of Mega Silkway

When we moved into our apartment on the campus at Nazarbayev University 2.5 years ago, we were living in the middle of nowhere.  The nearest stores were downtown, or at least four bus stops and a long walk. However, the plan was to build up around the university - and one of the main building projects is the expo plaza which is being built directly to the East of campus.

March 2015: nothing is out there except a bunch of cranes

East of NU campus. Nothing is out there either!

In addition to the expo, there is a great deal of other development going on - including large numbers of apartment buildings, and a new mall.  The new Mall is a "Mega" a chain mall that has a number of locations in Kazakhstan.  This mall is called the Mega Silkway and is the largest retail establishment in Central Asia.  It is huge.

March 2016 - the skeleton of the new Mega Mall

And a bunch of apartment buildings growing like mushrooms after rain.

What is amazing, is that the entire building has been built since we arrived.  In fact, the fencing was around the project when we arrived, but there was no visible construction until we returned from our first leave home in July 2015.

May 2016 - it is not just a skeleton anymore!

And the apartment buildings look like they are almost ready!

The ball in the center of the picture is the main Expo building.

The outside of the building has been looking done since late fall (October or so) and we heard a number of rumors about when the mall would open.  One rumor was that it would open in December, but that date came and went [1].  The last few weeks, activity has been even higher.  We heard another rumor that it would open on 6 March, and Yulia looked it up online and found that it would have its technical opening on 6 March with a Grand opening around 23 March.

February 2017 - the first fence came down.

And a week later the second fence came down. The funny thing is that they planted the trees upfront before they even leveled the ground!

Monday I had a faculty meeting, and afterward, we walked across the street to see the mall.  The food court was still mostly not open, but we bought some Asian food from a little place - one of three open fast food places.  I called Yulia and she couldn't wait to see it, so we walked over with the twins and met Nika and Lina on their way home from guitar lessons.  One of the features is a trampoline park that also has climbing walls and other activities.  We signed the kids up to jump for half an hour.  (it's about $6.00 for half an hour - so pricey here - but the kids had a great time and were exhausted.  The owner and founder is an American kid (about 30 or so) who grew up in one of the cities in the West.  His dad worked for an oil company there.

March 6 2017 - the Mall is opened to public!

The kids had a blast at Kango. The guys in yellow are professional gymnasts and circus acrobats working on the Kango team.

Lexa is trying the rings

The guys from the team were showing to our kids how to do some tricks.

Rock climbing area

Food court: really bright and happy!

Love these fountains. They change color every 20 seconds or so.

Kids relaxing in "flower" chairs

Assalting a poor lego man outside of their favorite store in town.

At the end of the day they got pin wheels which is a Mega's logo.

The best thing about the technical opening is that the grocery store - Ramstor, a Turkish chain - was opened.  Now we have a grocery store (besides our little mini-market on campus) that is within walking distance, which is tremendous.

Wednesday was the 8th of March - International Women's Day - and so school was out.  I worked in the morning and Yulia gave the kids a light day of school, and then we went back to the mall.  We bought the kids tickets to see the movie "Sing!" and some slushies to each while they watched.  Yulia and I ate lunch to celebrate the day and our anniversary (March 12th).  We ate at the Korea House Restaurant.  It is pricier than most places here, but the food we had was excellent and the atmosphere was amazing.

While the kids are at the movies, we are on a date at the Korean House

We also bought tickets to the Expo for August when we are back from our vacation in Utah and my Mom and Yulia's mom will be here visiting.

The main Expo building, view from Mega Mall

The mall is still not fully functional, but it is mostly functional, and a tremendous boost to our quality of life.  We are no longer at the edge of nowhere.  Soon we will be in the middle of everything.

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[1] There was a fun article in the local news in December that the Mall was "completely launched" in December. We laughed because they had put up vinyl signs for the main stores on the main sign for a few days and then they had disappeared.  Basically they put together a photo op in December and called it "fully launched."  It only took another 3 months to get it partially off the ground.  By May all of the tenants should be online.

The Cost of Nostalgia

On Saturday I was doing the grocery shopping - that's usually my job for Saturday, so it wasn't unusual.  Yulia had already picked up a lot of the groceries, so I only had potatoes on my list of produce.  I bagged up a few kilos of the usual potatoes and then saw some nice new potatoes in the bin next to it.  I decided it would be nice to make new potatoes and white gravy with peas for the kids.  That was a favorite of my Grandpa Jack Crane. He liked it in the early summer when he had fresh new potatoes and peas from his garden.  I had to make do with canned peas, but I was willing to do that to give my kids a taste of my childhood.

New potatoes in the bag.

It wasn't until I was at the checkout counter that I realized that the peas were VERY expensive.  I knew that the cost would be higher, but not as high as it was.  You can see the price on the bag - 6305 tenge.  That is $19.00!  It turns out I had bought new potatoes from France!  They are illegal in Russia because of the counter-sanctions and we assume that each of the potatoes got to fly first class in its own seat to get here.

New Potatoes and white gravy with peas.

I made the meal and it was a hit with the kids and with Yulia and my mother-in-law, Ludmila.

This is why Yulia always sends me shopping with a slight sense of trepidation!

Our Trip to Shchuchinsk (The Switzerland of Kazakhstan)

A few hundred kilometers to the northwest of Astana is a region of hills, lakes, and forests that many call the "Switzerland of Kazakhstan."  The most famous lake and town in the area is Burabay, but the largest town and the rail station is in the town of Shchuchinsk - which is named after a lake that is in the area.  We decided to visit the area in the week after New Year.  We went with our friends from church and the university - the Stices.

We met at the train station on Tuesday morning at around 10:30.  Our train arrived just then and we loaded on.  The train was coming from somewhere else and the seats where we were sitting for our 3 hour and 15 minute train ride had been occupied and were quite dirty.  The Stices have two fourteen year old daughters that they adopted from Kazakhstan about 12 years ago.  Our girls love them and really look up to them.  They had a great time laughing and talking and playing games on the way.  The adults talked as well.

Girls having fun on the train.

When we arrived in town, we took two taxis to our hotel - the Park House - which was located in the National Forest on the other side of the lake from town.  The hotel had been built just a year or two ago and was nice.  The rooms were small, but the beds were comfortable.  We checked in and then the girls spent the afternoon sledding on the ice slide hill that was right outside of the lobby.

Park House Hotel

This is the view from the top floor of our hotel. You can see the lake a little bit.

Just gorgeous!

Sliding hill right outside of the lobby

About ready to be pushed down

Tired but happy

Teamwork!

Train!

We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant to check it out.  It turned out that the food at the restaurant was good and very affordable, so we ended up eating there the entire time that we stayed.

Kids' table! They fell in love with the place!

The six of them also spent a lot of time playing card games at the end of each day.

Wednesday morning after our complimentary breakfast (which was also good), we took some taxis to the big resort hotel the Rixos that is just a few miles down the road.  They have a "Santa Village/Lapland" area that is a tourist area.  We went in and did a tour of Santa's house.  The tour was kind of like "it's a small world" at Disneyland, but without the boats, singing, and animatronics.  The tour went through India, Egypt, London, Paris, Astana, and finally Santa's house.  The kids took pictures with Santa and then wrote letters to Santa (we had them write thank you notes) and got glitter tattoos.

The quality of the pictures isn't the best because Yulia forgot her camera that day, and all of the pictures were taken with my phone.

Writing "Thank you" letters to Santa.

We also signed up to take a reindeer sled ride.  We walked out to where that was located.  There were three little reindeer tied to a sleigh.  Our four girls went, with the driver going along. He let me "drive" the reindeer with Yulia.  That consisted of me poking them with a long stick every once in a while so that they would remember to go - they knew where to go on their own since it was a circle.  There were also dog sled rides, snowmobile and four-wheeler rental, and other activities.  We signed up to go horseback riding.  We had to wait until they were ready and a van was available.  We were picked up and driven to the outskirts of Shchuchinsk to a horse farm.

Girls riding the reindeer sleigh

Everyone, including our 7 year old twins, got to ride on their own horse.  We went on a 5 km trail out in the forest and back to the farm.  The ride was beautiful - the area really is nice.  It is much different from the steppe around Astana (which also has a beauty to it).  The snow was on the ground and frosting the pine trees and it looked like something out of a postcard.  There was a group of four German tourists who were riding off the trail and faster than us, but we just had a nice walk/trot ride through the forest which lasted about 40 minutes.  The total cost was about 8 dollars per person, and it was very much worth it.

Nika got on her horse first. Everybody else is still waiting.

The camel in with the horses - he'll be important later.

Waiting for our horses to be saddled.

Lexa is getting her stirrups adjusted. The dark brown horse is Sophie's.

Yulia on her horse with German "cowboys" in the background. Unfortunately we do not have any pictures of our ride through the forest for the same reason: Yulia forgot her fancy camera. So, you will just have to believe us that it was beautiful scenery. 

When we arrived back at the farm and dismounted, one of the "cowboys" asked us if the kids wanted to ride a camel.  We had seen a large Bactrian (two-humped) camel behind the horse pens when we arrived.  The cost was about $1.60 for each of the girls, so all six of the girls took a trip around the yard on the camel and had a great time.

Lina and Lexa on the camel.

Taking a camel ride.

We had a nice big dinner at the end of the night back at our hotel.

Our last full day at the Park House was nice and quiet.  After breakfast the kids spent the morning sledding on the hill.  We had a nice late lunch and then went out and rented skis (about 50 yards from the lobby) and spent an hour and a half skiing on the trails through the forest. It was the first time any of our girls had skied, and they all did great.  My skis were a bit short and my boots a bit small (I'm bigger than the median Kazakhstani), but we all had a great time.  We had one last nice dinner that evening.

Our happy Lexa

I think kids spent about 8 hours just sledding in three days that we were there.

More sledding

Beautiful trees

Beautiful nature

Lexa trying to figure out how to move on skis

Nika got the hang of it on her first try.

Sophie was a good sport even though her ski poles were too long for her.

Lina did a lot of this in the beginning and was very upset when her mom took her pictures. That didn't stop Yulia though!

Mountain Man

Sophie with papa

Sophie

Friday morning we woke up and had breakfast and then checked out of the hotel.  We took the train back to Astana and arrived back at our house on campus by about 4:00 p.m.

Riding a taxi from our hotel to the train station through the forest.

Ready to get on the train.

We had a very nice mini vacation.  We were glad that we got to see another part of Kazakhstan and to spend time doing some winter sports.  The horse riding was definitely the highlight for everyone (when we include the camel ride as part of that experience), but the whole retreat was great.  Now we want to go back in the summer and hike and swim in the lake.