We're Back Online

Ok, as of this afternoon, we are back online and able to post from our apartment. I'll try to get you all caught up on the past couple of days. We got out of Kokshetau Sunday morning with no problems. As I mentioned in the short post yesterday, the flight was fairly uneventful. We got to Almaty at about 2:00PM, our driver picked us up, took us to the grocery store and then on to our apartment. We've got a few pictures of the place that are posted here. It's a nice place, quite a bit bigger than the Kokshetau apt. We are on the 4th floor again so we are still getting a little exercise climbing the stairs. Yesterday we went to the agency office here and took care of some more paperwork. Then we did a little more grocery shopping. Last night we met Patty and Alec and Teresa at Mad Murphy's Irish Pub. We had a nice dinner, the menu was in English and our waitress spoke English. Today Megan had her medical evaluation, the Dr was South African and very nice. He said he didn't see anything that was a cause for any concern although Megan should have a full examination when we get home, we've already got an appointment scheduled. Megan was pretty good, she doesn't like being poked and prodded. She cried some, it looks like our first pediatrician appointment will be quite the treat, I think she'll be doing a lot of crying. Anyway, tomorrow we go the the US Embassy to get her Visa and citizenship papers. After that we are free to come home, the only problem is there are no Lufthansa flights to Frankfurt on Thursday, so we will be out of here early Friday morning. Very early in fact, I think we'll be getting picked up at about 1:30am to catch our 4:00am flight.

Today after the medical appointment, our driver took us up to the mountains just outside of the city. There is a ski resort there and we actually took a chair lift ride partway up the mountain, took a couple of pictures and came back down, it was cold but fun. I can't wait to get out on the slopes when we get home.

Anyway, that's about it for now, quite a few pictures here since we haven't uploaded any in a couple days. None of Megan, sorry, but I think our digital camera may have finally bit the dust. I may try playing with it a bit more later but we may have uploaded our last picture from Kazakhstan.


Here is the living room of the new apt.


Another of the living room.


The bathroom.


The kitchen


Here are Megan and I walking into Mad Murphy's


Megan and me on the mountain at the ski resort.

These are some views looking down from the lift:









This is a huge skating center part way up the mountain, our driver told us it is the highest in the world. They do speed skating competition here. It was open for public skating when we came by, you can see all the people skating.