Thursday, August 17, 2006

Day 7 "The "final", Final Countdown" - A high...

Are you having fun?
Look at the birdie...
Family of Four
A view from above...





Wednesday, August 16th “Making the best of it”

Privet from Almaty, KA3ACTAHCKNN.

Well, if we thought too much about this being our “missed” travel day we would be going crazy (more so than we already are). We have been learning a valuable lesson in life….acceptance does not make your family weak, but overcoming makes your family stronger! While it is easier said than done, dealing with these “opportunities to make our family stronger” has been an experience we will take with us for the rest of our lives. We can laugh about “never leaving the country again” and “not being able to communicate with anybody here”, but it will be a long time before we plan another trip…if ever.

As for overcoming, we actually had a very interesting and fun day on Wednesday. The morning started out as many others, nothing on the schedule to fill the long hours of the day. We each had a little breakfast, a little playtime and the daily chores. I have blog duty, Kim has food and apartment duty, Rylee has watching movie duty and Landen, well he has demolition duty. Speaking of, he is great at his job of demolition. I will say it is very normal baby demolition and normal is so wonderful to us. One would never be able to tell he was raised for 11 months in a baby house and 2 weeks by us, because he sure does act different now. He has learned the art of “make a noise and see Mommy and Daddy run.” It is so funny to see that little guy figure out that there is so much in this world that he never knew about. He will ride in the stroller for hours and just sit back and enjoy seeing the world.

Back to the day, after the morning duties were taken care of, we received a call from Jenia around 12pm. We had asked earlier in the week “pre-P Day” about the mountains and what is there to do up there.… This was more of a general conversation, but we were interested as they are so incredible to look at. Jenia, in a wonderful attempt to make up for some of the problems encountered, wanted to take us up the mountain for site seeing. We had planned to take (what seems like the thousandth time) a walk to the mall for Rylee to ice skate, so this was something new and exciting. We agreed with little hesitation and packed up. If you know the Woodard’s at all (2 of the 4 and especially 1), we cannot just pack a little bag and go. We need time to pack for a weekend trip, even if it is a one hour outing. I must admit that on several occasions, as well as yesterday, we have been saved by what was packed.

Almaty is at the base of the mountains, which results in a 20-minute drive to enter the park. We were charged 200 tenge (around 1.50 US) for the carload of us, and then entered a guarded, gated entrance to the park. It was like visitation hour at a local jail, only this one charged you to enter. The drive was incredible and Jenia even slowed down to 30mph a couple times for me to capture it with a photo. As we traveled up, we passed some beautiful homes that Jenia said started around 1 million…I can believe it. We first stopped at the Ice Rink. This was truly a site to behold, even if it was the summer and no ice….you can always imagine. Rylee enjoyed the iceless rink, as she rented a scooter and took a few laps on that….. We took some awesome photos of the area and as I noted earlier, we needed to dig into the packed bags as it turned cold with in a matter of minutes. We went from the heat in Almaty to a cool winter day for GA and Landen was dressed for the heat. Kim had packed (oops, I let out who was the packer) him a change of clothes that included some pants she calls “onesy” or something like that. The fashion police on the spot would have arrested us, if we had not been in Kazakhstan. The main thing…he was warm. After a 30-minute stop at the rink, we decide to go “higher” on the mountain. The next stop was another interesting one as we saw horses and a Bercut. The horses were grazing on the grassy side of the dam. Yes, we were on top of a dam that had an incredible view of Almaty and the skating rink below. There were approximately 10 horses, 2 of which were small foals. Rylee wanted so badly to ride them, but we were able to talk her out of it very quickly….maybe the smell of the horse helped as well. Not our pretty and clean Scarlett! From the left side of the dam, you could see a small river flowing with hundreds of rocks laid out in the shapes of names of people that had visited this area. This was neat to see… We then came up on a Bercut bird. I think the spelling is translated correctly, but it looks like a brown eagle. The native Kazakh men used these birds for hunting. The bird had a “cap” that was placed over its head while the hunter went through the forest looking for fox. When a fox was spotted, the hunter would remove the cap and let the Bercut fly and catch the fox, then bring it back to the hunter. This seems incredible, but when you see the claws on this bird, there will be no doubt about it is ability to pick up and fly with a fox. I paid 200 tenge and got a picture with the Bercut on my arm with Rylee by my side. The owner had found the bird as a baby and raised him from then. He said the bird weights around 4kg or 9 pounds and has a diet of rats and small animals. Yes, another bird in our journey….. After the bird, we had Jenia translate the historical sign that detailed the dam itself. It was initially constructed in 1966 when the USSR controlled this land, then later renovated under Kazakhstan control. In 1972, a massive mudslide was heading for Almaty and would have caused massive destruction if not for the dam. What I had thought was over kill after seeing the small river way below, now seemed to be the perfect dam for this area. We left the dam area and started heading back down the mountainside, where we stopped to see the river flowing up close. You could see the construction going on in this area, but it was still quite impressive to view. Our journey ended around 2:30pm, as we were dropped off back at the apartment. This was the first time I can remember feeling as if we were on an enjoyable vacation as a family of four…about time.

The rest of the afternoon was spent playing with Landen and Rylee around the apartment. We had made plans to visit the mall again this evening for Rylee to skate, so we all packed up again and headed out around 5pm. Rylee skated for an hour, and then we grabbed some grocery from the huge store in the mall, and then went back to the apartment. We made the absolute most out of what was a mentally tough day for us….for that, we strengthened our family! Poka, Poka….

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