Sunday, August 13, 2006

Day 3 "The Final Countdown" - tour of Almaty (double click for pics)



Saturday, August 12th “As the time goes by”

Privet from Almaty, KA3ACTAHCKNN. Looks like we have the correct date now…

Today was another similar day to yesterday and tomorrow…That gives us opportunity to make it different…and we did the best we could!

The morning was spent roll playing with Rylee and playing with Landen. Rylee has turned into the little entrepreneur on this trip. She started with the snack store, and then moved up to a souvenir store, then a clothing store, now she has combined them all and included a restaurant. She is keeping a bill and I can promise you, she will collect every penny or tenge. It has been wonderful for her math skills! We also had some calls from family and friends during the morning, which we cannot express enough how this helps us through those tough times.

After the morning session of play time, we got ready for a day out on the town. We toured the north side (I guess) of Almaty. Kim had seen a “neat” street that she wanted to tour, so we started in that direction. I hope the photos are complimentary of the scenery that we enjoyed on our walk. The terrain was sloped upwards as we walk towards the end of the visible road, where we could see some very tall mountains. The mountains actually have snow on the caps…what a beautiful site to behold. Rylee kept asking when we were going skating, so I replied after we climb that mountain. After a few seconds of silence as we continued our walk towards the mountains….she said “I don’t think we’re getting any closer”, Kim and I could not help but to laugh. No words were exchanged with her, so we continued to walk. After another minute or so, she finally said” Dad, you’re kidding about climbing that mountain, aren’t you?”. If she only knew how tired I was getting she would not have had to ask… During the walk, we came up on a busy intersection that did not have a cross walk. We found a tunnel that goes under the road where we could cross with a stroller. They had a tunnel like this in Pavlodar, so Rylee was excited about crossing it. I was prepared with my change to encounter some “street beggars” like we did in Pavlodar, but to my surprise we found a commerce center under there. Not what you may think (no GAP, Best Buy, etc), but they did have a little clothing store and a print shop. Hopefully the photo will do it justice. We reached the end of the road and took some incredible photos of the mountains. Most of the good ones were with Bob and Diane’s camera, so we will not be able to post them. This area seems to be like most cities in America (north end had a lot of wealthy people) as we saw some incredible apartments, playgrounds, all kinds of spa’s and beauty salons, and the high end jewelry stores. As Kim and Rylee walked around, I was in a fast run to avoid these stores, so the pictures may be a blur…. The buildings around this area are newer and have more interesting architectural design to them. There were 3 “skyscraper” type buildings with similar design, in which one had a ROLEX display built on top of the building. Again, I’m running at this point… We turned the corner of main road and headed down the street towards the mall. This road is parallel to the road we went up, but very different looking. At one point, I forgot that I was in Kazakhstan, as there was green grass on the lawns, large, plush trees on each side of the road that met over the top of the road to give a tunnel feel. It was so peaceful and pleasant to walk down this street (yes, I’m walking at this point). The area seemed to be for housing versus business on the other side, but there was still the smaller business in the bottom of the apartment buildings.

As in Pavlodar, we did encounter a homeless gentleman sitting on side of the road. Rylee asked if she could give him some change, then dug into her purse where she pulled out some change, then gave it to the man. The man was an elder Kazakh man with all of the signs of being homeless. Rylee placed some change in a cup and the man in a soft voice, and with a slight nod of his head, was thanking her in Kazakh. He talked for about 30 seconds and you could see the joy in his eyes as he spoke to Rylee. We nodded our heads and turned to finish our walk. Rylee after a couple seconds asked me what he said. With out missing a beat, I responded…. You are a beautiful girl with a big heart and thank you so much for………..the beer later! I told her I was joking as I could only make out the beautiful girl with a big heart part, while knowing in my mind what it was going for!

We reached the mall after the 1hour stroll around northern Almaty and found it a little less crowded than it was yesterday. This was good as we got to take our time and visit some of the stores we had missed out on the day before. Rylee was continuously looking at the ice rink, so we decided to let her go now versus later. Kim and I stayed on the side with Landen, while our little “professional” ice skater did her thing. She said since I was her coach, that made her a professional. My job as a coach is to watch her go around and when she comes by me she will stop and ask how she did and what I want her to do the next go around. We have seen a couple little girls that were very good here and they had either their Dad or a coach on the side doing this. It made her feel special, especially since she was probably the best one of the 5 or 6 on the rink. She had not fallen until I told her on one pass that she had a lot of people watching her. When asked how many, I told her 40 to 50.…that was it then, she was trying to watch people around the rink versus concentrating on skating. A few falls later, she was done….I must say that she gets up quicker than anybody on the ice…we think she is trying to avoid anyone seeing her on the ice since she is a ”professional“. All and all, she has really gotten to be a good skater. Too bad she lives in Hotlanta….

We again had diner at the mall (I had pizza along with Rylee and Kim had a baked potato) Landen had his cereal and milk. After eating, we continued the tour of the mall where we found a game room. To our surprise, Landen was not frightened by the rides and actually wanted to stay on the donkey ride Rylee was riding. They also rode a little car, guess who had to drive…Mr. Landen. After the game room, we also had another normal occurrence; we had a bigggg poopie diaper to take care of. He is regular! The night ended with a walk home that gave us a little more excitement. A man on a horse was flying down with little care about the cars going around him. The horse was white, like Rylee’s pony, and you could tell it was well trained for passage on these roads. I got one picture from far away, but you can tell what was going on. The night ended uneventful, as we gave Rylee and Landen a bath (still loves those baths) and went to bed.

I did hear on the news that the terrorist plot was to happen on the 16th with international flights from Europe (UK) to the US. We are so thankful for this being exposed and the arrest made, given the fact we would have been flying out that same day from Frankfurt.

Until tomorrow, Poka, Poka…

P.S. - Nana, sorry for getting cut off with you on the phone, our internet card ran out and the store was not open that late. We got a new one this morning, so we should be good to go again.

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