Our first week in Kazakhstan

Well, we've already been here for one week. Only three weeks left to go. Visits are still going good. We took an inflatable beach ball with us today to play with that he liked. The big hit now are his stacking rings. He can take them off the pole but, we haven't mastered putting them back on yet.

After our visit this morning, Mischa (our driver), wanted to take us to a convent that is a neat newer building here. There are "dorms" next to the church that the nuns stay at.

We really like our driver Mischa. He always arrives 5 minutes after he's supposed to be by to pick us up but, we somehow manage to always get to where we're going 5 minutes early. He loves classic rock so we've been listening to The Beatles, The Doors, Rolling Stones, Elvis, and the other day he was playing Johnny Cash. Much to Wayne's dismay (and probably Mischa's) I had to sing along to Johnny Cash. Wayne and I crack up because it seems he only knows one phrase "Okay, you're welcome" We got out of the car the other day and said "We'll see you in a little bit" to which he responded "Okay, you're welcome"

We're trying to eat in our apartment as much as possible. It seems like we make daily trips to the grocery store to get food & juice. This past weekend while we were at the grocery store, we were in the wine & beer aisle and ran across a nice kid who spoke a little English. They sell beer separately so, he was helping Wayne to pick out Kazakh and Russian beer. Then he helped me to pick out a bottle of Kazakh wine.

At the grocery store, there is literally a whole aisle dedicated to mayonnaise. Aliya said that the Kazakhs love mayo and they put it on almost everything. And the milk, well that's not sold in the refrigerated section but rather on the shelves. Really, the only thing we're using the milk for is cooking. We tried it with our cereal but, neither one of us was too crazy about it.

Then of course there's the bakery down the street & who could resist buying fun breads like this...