Random Stuff

This post includes some random pictures that don’t fit anywhere else.

One of the things we love about living here is an endless supply of yummy cheap bread at the stores. The new Mega Mall has a Turkish chain groceries store called Ramstore with one of my favorite bakeries. A loaf of yummy steaming hot bread cost about 60 cents, and they have so many kinds of it. One of our favorites is this set of big rolls called Romashka (means “daisy”). There are 7 rolls in each set that make up a flower shaped loaf. The picture below shows 8 of these sets that we bought for our church potluck lunch one day, and we paid a little over $3 for all of it!

Kids have been into playing Lego lately. This is the sight we love to see: all four of them playing together without arguing, fighting or blaming each other for every little mistake in the world. Love it!

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 This next picture is of the NU main atrium. We walk through it every day, since they connected our apartment building with the University through a tunnel. It is especially nice in the winter!

One day the twins decided to check if their friends could really tell them apart as they always stated. They usually do not dress the same but that morning they dug out all of their cloths and found exactly the same outfits, down to the hair scrunchies and clips! The report was that they were able "to trick the friends in many ways"! A side note: we don't belong to the Patriots fan club but somehow we ended up with these two shirts.

Nika got into baking lately. It does take her two hours or more to make something but it is usually very yummy and thus I am willing to wait! Here she made a coffee cake that turned out AWESOME!

Babushka is here once again! It's been a nice perk of living here. She comes twice a year for a few months, and the girls always looking forward to her visits. And not just the girls, but our dog Yuki too. They all get spoiled rotten when she is here! Babushka is here for the whole summer this time and will stay with Yuki while we travel.

 We love, love, love the sunsets in Astana. There is something different about it in the steppe. The sky will go from blue to purple to pink to bright red. Unfortunately the picture doesn't do it a justice, you just have to see it in person!

This is a view from our west window. They are drying these wetlands to build something there later.

A day trip to Korgalzhyn Nature Preserve Area

Steppe in spring

On Saturday, May 2, we took a day trip to Korgalzhyn State Nature Reserve, the largest preserve zone in Kazakhstan located about 160 km northwest of Astana. The area has had a National park status since 1968 and in 2008 became one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites but it still remains surprisingly unknown, even within Kazakhstan. It is a combination of virgin steppe and lakes, and wetlands and is a home to wolves, marmots and saiga. However the main attraction is the birds including … pink flamingo! The first time I heard that there are flamingo in Kazakhstan I didn't believe it! What?! Flamingo that far north?! But the National park is located right on the crossroads of two bird migration routs and it’s largest lake Tengiz is a final stop for the great pink flamingo coming here for the summer from southeast Asia. They usually come at the beginning of May and stay until the end of August. In that short time they manage to raise a new generation of flamingos that are strong enough to fly back to southeast Asia. This year, though, due to the late spring and possibly flooding, the flamingos haven’t arrived yet. We’ll have to make another trip sometime in the future to see them.

But even without the flamingos the trip was an exciting one. It was organized by Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (Link) specifically for NU faculty and their families. We totally took advantage of this great opportunity. There were 15 of us plus our English speaking guide and ecologist, Vera.

The long road to Korgalzhyn Nature Preserve Area

We arrived at Korgalzhyn Aul (village) which is near the National park at about 10:30 in the morning. The roads there were in a really bad condition and what could have taken us a little over an hour on American freeways, took us two and a half hours and a very bumpy ride to get to our destination. On our way there we also saw some flooded areas. At one of the places MES (Ministry for Extreme Situations, kind of like 911 for nature disasters) set up some pumps to pump water from one side of the road on which there was a totally flooded village to another where they had just steppe.

Flooded barns

Pumps that were pumping the excess water from this side of the road to the other.

Once we arrived at Korgalzhyn aul we had a guided tour of the National Park museum. It was a small but a very nice museum which had exhibits of the wild life found in the area and also a history of the Korgalzhyn National Park. After the tour we stopped by a little gift shop which had the crafts made just by local kids. We were really impressed with one picture made out of fish bones, so we bought it.

A view of the main hall of the musium

A hall about wildlife in steppe.

A little insect exhibit. We were told that unfortunately nobody really studies insects in Kazakhstan.

 

This picture was made by one of the local kids out of fish bones!

Our next stop was a lunch at a guest house – a home of a local family who prepared a nice meal for us: manty (Kazakh dumplings filled with meat), a couple of salads and baursak (kind of like a scone). And of course tea. Kazakhs do not have any gathering without serving tea at some point! We do not drink regular tea (but we love herbal tea), and so we politely declined the offer and turned our energy to treats instead. I forgot the name of our host but she was a super nice lady. She has 3 daughters one of whom was helping her serving lunch, and so she was totally spoiling our girls making sure they had plenty of candy to eat (reminded me of their babushka)! She said she’s kept a guest house for 17 years now and loves all of the visitors that come. There are a lot of students that come from different countries to study birds there, so they stay with her.   

The guest house

Our yummy lunch. On the big plate in the middle is the manty, and a little further away is a plate with baursak.

Our girls with their new "Kazakh babushka"!

Getting ready to get back on the road. Those white covers are the protectors from ticks.

After lunch we got back into our minibus, picked up a National Park rep to get us through the park’s border and went to the park making a few stops at the lakes to see some birds there. Our guide, Vera, had some nice optical equipment with her, so we could watch the birds and animals without getting too close to them and scaring them off. Some of the wild life we saw: grey heron, two kinds of swans, demoiselle crane, dalmation pelican, bittern, gulls, shelduck, great crested grebe, marsh harrier, swallow, steppe eagle, black lark, yellow wagtail, and other birds along with gophers, ground hogs and even a fox.  And of course, the vast steppe, lots of it! We were told that the soil is too salty to cultivate because of the lakes. Half of the lakes in the park’s lake system are fresh water lakes but the other half is salty. In the summer the water level in the lakes are much lower, and the salt from them is picked up by the wind and carried through the steppe.

One of the species of wild tulips. 

Spring came late this year, so the flowers are just barely starting to come up.

Our girls! And our minibus in the background.

Lexa is such a cutie!

Going to see the swans up close.

These are whooper swans.

I don't know why but I just love this picture!

Watching the wild life is much easier when you have the right equipment! There is Spencer talking to our guide-ecologist, Vera, about some birds.

I spotted some horses on the other side of the lake. 

Stilt!

I had no idea I would enjoy bird watching so much!

A pair of demoiselle cranes

Barn swallow

Watching for gophers

Found one!

This one is a different kind of wild tulip. Beautiful!

We found a lizard.

Mute swan in all its beauty!

A bittern. These are very hard to see. Our guide said that in 8 years of bird watching she has only seen them twice! So, we were very lucky to see one right there.

A female marmot.

At our final stop at one of the lakes we had a picnic style dinner, rested, and went back home arriving in Astana at about 9pm.

Our last stop of the day. Isn't this beautiful?

The girls found some swings to play on

And we found some frogs. Now, how many frogs can you see in there? I counted at least six!

Watching for frogs off the pier that was destroyed by moving ice in early spring.

Coming back home we saw some interesting cemeteries.

Some are dated a few hundred years old and just about each one had a legend to go with the name of it.

Exhausted Lexa and Sophie!

It was a long but an awesome day, and we all learned a lot about the wildlife in steppes of Kazakhstan. Hopefully we can come back some time and see the famous pink flamingos.

A gorgeous sunset over the wetlands. We are fortunate to have such a beautiful view out of our window!

Spring Break Vacation to Thailand Part I

In October we booked a vacation to Phuket, Thailand.  It seemed like it would be a long time away when we booked it.  We had the cards paid off for it in December and we were busy living.  And then March came, and it was a reality that we would really be heading to Thailand for our first tropical vacation.  It is also the first real non-travel vacation, or a vacation where we just go and stay in one place for a long time that we have ever taken.

Our flight from Astana left at 9:30 on Saturday evening.  We ordered a minivan taxi to pick us up at 7:30.  We left our dog, Yuki, with our friends, grabbed our three suitcases and two backpacks and headed for the airport. Our friend, Chris Keeley was traveling to Bangkok for a training session for the US embassy, so we waited at the airport with him.  Our flight to Almaty was uneventful.  In Almaty we had to walk to a different building outside.   Almaty was above zero (Celsius), had no snow, and had green grass.  Astana has been hovering around zero (Celsius) and some days had gotten plus enough that the snow and ice began to melt, but there is still plenty there.

Waiting in Almaty for our connection to Bangkok

We waited for a few hours before boarding our flight to Bangkok.  That flight was full, but nice.  We really like the Kazakh airline, Astana Air, because they have a bit more leg room than most US carriers. That extra two inches really makes a difference in comfort for tall people like me.  The kids slept a bit, watched the television, and ate their snacks/dinner on the flight.  We landed in Bangkok at about 9:00 a.m.  The airport was huge and we got a bit lost trying to make our connection - we had to go through passport and customs before making the connection.  We had plenty of time, so we were okay.

After checking in to our next flight and going back through security, we went to eat with the girls.  We went to McDonald's since our kids were quite broken down after a sleepless night and we knew that they would be happier with something familiar.  We had a nice slow lunch and then went to our gate.  We were still a few hours early, so Yulia and I stretched out and rested while the kids played.

Lunch at McDonald's at the airport in Bangkok

View of a garden from our table at McDonald's

Our flight to Phuket was only about an hour long and we were served a nice snack lunch on the way.  When we landed we had to get our checked bag.  It did not come out on the carousel, so we were a bit worried.  Then an airport employee told us that we could pick it up with the international bags.  We had checked it all the way through, so it went to a different carousel and we had to walk through customs with it.  Success!

Our Thai Airways flight to Phuket.  Happy travelers!

We found the taxi company holding up our name on a sign and then took a minibus to the Marriott resort.  It turns out that there are two Marriott resorts and we went to the wrong one.  It was okay - we were treated nicely, given a cold towel and a cold drink, and then driven on a golf cart to the correct resort about a half mile down the road.

Riding the cart to the correct Marriott resort (Marriott's Mai Khao Beach).

We were asked at check in if we wanted to upgrade to a room with a private pool for an extra $30 a night.  We thought, why not?  So we did that.  We were in a two bedroom suite with a kitchen, two bathrooms, and a laundry.  It's about the size of our apartment in Kazakhstan! We let the girls put on their suits and swim in our pool for about an hour.

Swimming in our private pool.

Our living/dining room in our suite.

After swimming we walked down to the beach and we all waded a bit and saw the sunset. Then we went and found a place to eat.  We found a little Thai place that is like a chain restaurant for Thai food.  We ordered and loved everything that we tried.

Walking to the beach (about 300 meters) from our room.

Kids, meet the ocean!

Wading.

The water is so warm - even warmer than our pool at our apartment.  It's fun to play in the surf.

After that it was home to our suite for a well-deserved Rest.