Six months of winter

By the way, if you do not believe that we have winter for six months of a year, here is my proof: these two pictures are taken on March 31st of this year! And if these two pictures had been taken on March 31st of last year or March 31st two years ago, they would have been exactly the same pictures except that two years ago you wouldn't see this main university building because it wasn't built yet. Why, you ask? Well, because we do have winter for six months every year. And I mean, some serious nose-freezing, wind-getting-you-right-through-your-bones kind of winter.

The following two pictures weren't taken on March 31st, they were taken in mid January but I love them so much I decided to stick them in this post. Because you know, I am an adult and I can do it.

Stuck again

Another thing that happening in February was that one of our daughters kept accidentally locking herself up and getting stuck in various places. Once she hid in the closet and the closet door got stuck. Another time she couldn’t get out from the kitchen at our church building. And then there was this situation at home which will be illustrated below in pictures. Because what is the first thing any mom should do when her offspring gets herself in a pickle? Pull out the camera!

This above mentioned daughter of ours went to the bathroom to wash her hands after lunch, and of course with her luck, the door got promptly stuck. I tried to free her for 30 minutes but couldn’t: the lock did not work. Spencer was in America at the time and couldn’t help, so I called down to our building’s reception and asked for help. The receptionist said that they will send the help right away but 30 minutes later we were still on our own. The child inside the bathroom started to panic that she would never be able to get out, so I had to reassure her that she was not in the worst situation … hey, at least she had a toilet and a sink with water, and if it came to worst, she could put towels in the tub and sleep in there. She did not seem to like the idea. Her little sisters chimed in with tons of ideas. They figured out how they are going to pass food and drinking water under the door to the sad child but what really cracked me up was that the main thing Lexa was concerned about was the fact that her sister inside the bathroom would soon get bored, and that, in her opinion, was the most challenging problem.   

Sophie and Lexa are pushing a plate with some food under the door. Never mind that we just had lunch, they are thinking ahead.

Crazy with ideas!

After an hour help finally came! It took this carpenter another 30 minutes of hard work to finally open the door. The lock inside the door broke and was stuck. He had to saw it out. 

 And ... the secret is revealed! It was child number 2 that kept our life in February very interesting!

Lina with the unfortunate piece of the broken lock

"African Beasts" Circus

Back in February, while Spencer was at the conference in America, we decided to go to another circus show with our friends, the Stices. The circus was a traveling one, but I do not know where they were from. We usually get circuses from Moscow that have really good shows. This one was from somewhere else. The show was called “African Beasts”, so we thought that they would have some African animals but otherwise it would be the regular circus, meaning lots of cool acrobat acts. Well, we were wrong. It was mostly animals that weren't in the mood with just a couple of people acts in between. Had we known that beforehand, we would have avoided the show. All of us were very disappointed. Here are some of the pictures from the show.

Girls are having high expectations for the show.

They had a couple of tigers and a lion. One of the tigers and the lion were albinos. 

Jugglers. They were the only "people" act that was more or less interesting.

They brought this giraffe that just ran around the rink. Then some woman climbed on top of that giraffe and rode it a few times around the rink. They announced that she is the only woman in the world that did this act. That is probably because other women have better judgement. The act was really bizarre and ... poor giraffe!

Then this guy tried to make the goat walk on the poll. The poor goat did not want to do it.

Monkeys were a bit more willing but still weren't in the best mood.

This dog was the only enthusiastic participant of the show. He was jumping over running rhino. 

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!

Add caption

 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.

Charity Craft Fair

On March 11 we went to another mall in town, Keruen, where they held a charity event to help the kids from three local orphanages to earn some money for their personal items. One of our local friends, Magi, is involved with the organization, Best For Kids, and invited us to come. The kids worked from the beginning of the school year to prepare for this craft fair. Everything there was made with their own hands. We really liked a few paintings by this one 14-year old artist, Ruslan, so we bought one of them. The picture below is taken by Magi (Ruslan is holding his painting). The event was a big success. The kids sold every single thing they made at the fair.

Twins' 9th birthday

At the end of this week we are going on another adventure that will start our busy summer, and before we go we’ll try to catch up on all of the posts we missed. So, the next few posts might appear out of order Oh, well… at least they will appear. :)

At the end of April our twins turned 9 years old. Here are some pictures from their birthday.

We have a tradition of opening birthday presents during breakfast. And for breakfast the twins requested to have Angel Food cake (not pictured). Smart girls, they take after me! We also got Babushka on Skype from Russia (she is there on the shelf in the upper left corner), so she could be "present" for the celebration. In the evening we Skyped with Oma in America.

Among some other things they got these cool robots.

Sophie with her little buddy.

Babushka is showing her presents she got for the twins.

In the afternoon we picked up Spencer from work and went across the street to the new Mega Mall for entertainment. The girls got a dinner from KFC, their favorite. In this part of the world KFC and other American fast food brands are actually quite good and much better quality.

Birthday girls!

Then we signed up all four girls for the City Works which is a place for kids where they can go and try new professions. Later the girls reported that their favorite job was washing windows on tall building while hanging on the ropes. Go figure! They were there for 2 hours. And what did their parents do, you ask? They went on a date to a new restaurant in the same Mall! Actually it was a bar that served really good food but our waiter was very surprised we didn't want to order any alcohol and he kept asking us what were we doing there! Well, I am sure we compensated by ordering tons of food.

We also stopped by another favorite place of ours... a book store. And loaded on books. Here is Spencer reading one of his while waiting for the girls to come out all trained in their new career jobs.

The rest of the evening was spent at home working their robots.

The robots will follow sign language commands, so here is Sophie teaching hers a new command. Birthday #9 was a success!!!

Basketball Season II

This year was my second year as the head coach of the NU women's basketball team.  Last year was a complete rebuild - with only 1 returning starter and six new players.  In the spring last year we had four girls graduate, and so this year we added four new players to the roster after tryouts in August.  Brandon Brock, who is a writing instructor in the school was my assistant again this year. One exciting development this year was that a new wooden court and new standards were installed so that the local professional team could practice at our facility.  It has made our basketball facility much better.

The team really started building an identity this year, and it is amazing how much improvement they have made.  I have grown a lot as a coach and have been able to build some new drills and routines to maximize the strengths of the girls.  The four new girls that we added to our team this year have been great.  Two of them are from Semey, which was the area of Soviet nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s and had played together in high school.  One of the girls is from Almaty and is also one of the leaders of the NU cheer-leading club.  The last is from Taraz, and she also plays in the orchestra.  We have students from each of the three undergraduate schools, and the girls do very well.

We had a few activities this year.  The first was a breakfast during the first part of the season as a kind of get to know you activity.  We also had a great end of year dinner with the girls.  I spend three nights a week with them at practice, and more hours planning, preparing for games, and just talking with the girls.  They become a part of our family in many ways, and we really enjoy having them as part of our lives here.

Team Breakfast in September

As far as the season goes, we didn't have a national league and tournament this year.  In the fall we put together two friendly games with two universities here in town that have good basketball programs. We played four more friendly games in February and early march against the same two teams.  One of the teams, Eurasian National (ENU), is very good.  They have players that have been playing for a long time, and who have played together for a long time.  They also have a good coach.  We beat them in October, but didn't beat them the rest of the year.  Medical University is another good team, and we split our friendly games with them.

Photos from our last friendly game against ENU - the team that won the tournament this eyar.

At the beginning of April we were told that there would be a city-wide tournament.  The women's brackets included the three strongest teams, us, Medical, and ENU in one bracket along with one weak team.  The other bracket had three weak teams.  Our first game was against ENU and we lost, but in a fairly close  game.  We had a difficult time scoring in the second half and couldn't beat them.  However, we won the next three games and took 3rd place in the tournament overall.  It was a good place to be.  We don't offer athletic scholarships and most of our students have not played a lot of sports, and so we are building a program from the bottom up.  With the girls and the growth they are making, it is our goal to compete every year for the top place in the city, and to be competitive if we ever play games against other cities.

Overall, the year was a success.  We had a nice closing dinner after the tournament ended.  We said goodbye to our three graduating seniors and gave awards for most improved and most valuable players.  The alumni from the past two years put together a scholarship fund (on their own) and awarded two of the girls about $100.00 each to help them with their studies.  Like I said, they are great girls, and we are glad to have them in our lives.  Coaching basketball has been one of the most rewarding things that I've done here and has really tied us into the lives of students here in ways that would be impossible otherwise.

End of year awards dinner

Giving Awards to our three graduating seniors.

Giving more awards

Watching video that the girls made for the seniors

Group Photo

Team Photo 2016-17