Winter in Almaty!

It's been a few days since our last post and the weather has really changed! Our first week here it was around 60 and sunny every day. Then on Saturday it rained and on Sunday it snowed. Today (Monday) it is still snowy and cold. We went for a long walk this morning and Chuck is still cold. Our driver Andrei says he will take Chuck to the Arasan Baths - a traditional bath house - to cure him of the cold. As for me, I think I had all the bath house experience I needed when I visited Hot Springs, Arkansas. We are having the chance to experience many seasons in Almaty within a few weeks!

Today Bryce is 11 months old! Also, today was visit #8 - more than halfway to the 14 visits required before petitioning for our court appearance. Of course, who's counting? Our visits on Saturday and today (no visits on Sunday) went very well. Bryce definitely has an idea of who we are now, and today he smiled when his caregivers handed him to me (Barb). He continues to have fun trying to stand up, playing with blocks, reading books, and driving his car. Today's fun also included knocking down our bottle of water. Today was the first day that Bryce was at all fussy. We think he was either tired or teething. He has 2 teeth on the bottom and we can see 2 teeth erupting on the top too. We'll have to find some teething biscuits. But in the meantime we tried the trick of distraction and it seemed to work OK. We are quickly finding out about toddler disposition and how they can change from happy to crying in about 2 seconds flat! He continues to be active and seems to crawl around more on each visit. He also continues to figure out the toys that we brought with us. What was new to him last week is old hat now! Really our visits are getting to be pretty routine, but never boring. We just wish we could visit more often - 1.5 hours per day is not much!

Other than our visits with Bryce, on Saturday we visited the museum of Kazakh musical instruments in Panfilov Park, where we had a guided tour (the tour guide spoke about 15 languages, I think) and saw a variety of traditional Kazakh instruments such as the dombra. Our tour guide also offered a concert of traditional dombra music. We had lunch from the food stalls - plov (see photo), manti (steamed dumpling filled with meat and onion), and pastries for dessert. After our Baby House visit we went to a grocery store called Silk Road City where we bought bread (borodinski), salads (carrot salad and rice noodle salad), and pierogies for dinner. They were all very good - especially the bread.

It was snowing on Sunday, so we did not do much. We visited the National Museum. The museum chronicled Kazakh history from prehistoric times to the present. There were especially good exhibits about traditional Kazakh life - traditional dress, art, even a yurt. We also visited an archaeology museum, although that one was very small - most of the artifacts were moved to Astana, the country's new capital. That was about all we did on Sunday, although we did go out for a unique dinner at the American Bar and Grill. It was quite novel to eat dinner at a stereotypically American-style restaurant in the middle of Kazakhstan. The burgers were pretty good, though!

This morning before our Baby House visit, we ventured out into the cold to walk to Gorky Park. The park is huge and has a movie theather, amusement park rides, a lake with paddle boats, and I'm sure more. Not much was going on in the winter weather, but it looked like it would be a beautiful place in the summer with all of the trees and flowers! On the way back to our apartment, we stopped at the food market for a doner kebab. Yum.

Another day in Almaty! We'll update again soon.