October 2

Sorry, no pictures for today, until I recover data from my computer (can I just say again: DAMN!!). We met Alex again this morning, and he took us to the mountains. We went into a state park-type area. There is an Olympic ice skating rink, which we're pretty sure was a training area for the 1980 Olympics, because there's no way they put the skaters all the way in Kazakhstan...? Anyway, it's a big rink, and people were skating there on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. The 80's pop music blaring out into the mountains added nicely to the ambiance. We parked at the rink, and took a short walk, up the road to the base of a huge, beautiful dam that doesn't actually have any water behind it, just the distant fear of the possible repeat of a freak mudslide 30 years ago. Some people were walking up the 800 steps of the damn. That might be fun someday..... Perhaps a little more fun if they didn't start at 6,000 ft above sea level. Instead, we just walked up there, looked at the view of the rink from above, then walked back down through the woods instead of the road. We continued down past the car a bit, to a restaurant housed in a series of yurts, which are connected by low doorways, so that each yurt makes a dining room with 4 or 5 tables. Yummy lunch, and then back to Almaty. Alex needed to make it a short day, because he was driving to Bishkek, Kyrgistan (where he was born). It's about a 4-hour drive. He has some business to do there on Monday. If he returns in time on Tuesday, he and Brian might meet with a friend of his who is an internet programmer, to see if Brian might work with him for some of his project ideas. Fun.

When we returned to the apartment, Natasha was still cleaning (she's the owner of the apartment, and comes on Sundays to clean). So we went up to the square, where we found "City Day" being celebrated. It was much like the San Rafael Farmer's Market, without the fresh vegetables. Lots of shish kebab stands (each with a wood-burning BBQ), and stands selling various souvenir-type items. There was even a little jumpy house, which Liam enjoyed thoroughly. In the center of the square, a fashion show was in progress. It was a very cool combination of traditional Kazakh dress, molded into modern fashion, complete with loud techno music, and 6 inch pointy pointy-toe stilettos. Of course the pictures are on my waterlogged computer.

In the evening we walked a few blocks to a Georgian restaurant. We actually intended to go to Govinda's, the Indian vegetarian place, but they were closed. Good for us, because the Georgian place was fabulous. We had a precious young waiter, assigned to us for his minor grasp of English. He was very sweet and eager, and when we left, he said "Thank you. I hope maybe I will see you again!"