Big trip to Big Almaty Lake

We are just back from a great day out, testing the Landcruiser's off road abilities and making our way to the Big Almaty Lake, a breathtakingly beautiful spot of turquoise water, snowy mountains, frosty slopes and wonderful clambering about on rocks.

 

After a short walk and picnic lunch, Husband decided to follow the example of some very hardy outdoorsy-looking people and jump into the turquoise water for a dip. They had got down to

 their speedoes and were half way across the lake. He stripped down to his pants, pranced about on the edge of the turquiose water, jumped in, almost had a heart attack, and with what looked like very primal instinct kicking in, ran as fast as he could out of the water, charged about flapping his arms for a while making a strange gasping noise and put his clothes back on. A few minutes later the hardy locals swam back to shore at a leisurely pace, calmly dried themselves off and got back into their shorts and T-shirts (we were all wearing our gor-tex hiking jackets). 

Then we drove a little further up the track to the Tian Shan Astronomical Observatory where you can stay in slightly basic Soviet rooms, but see the stars at night through a giant telescope. The whole place looks like something out of a James Bond set, hidden away in the mountains in Kazakhstan, slightly crumbling and next to this amazing lake. We will try to go back at night before the winter really sets in. 

It was brilliant. We finished the day with some mouthwateringly-good Shashlik kebabs at a well-known Georgian restaurant on the road back into Almaty. 

Boo hiss the evil landlady

So our nice, easy-to-work-with landlady has done the dirty, inserted a clause in the rental contract giving her the right to raise our rent arbitarily, and we have had to walk away from the whole deal. Gutted. 

And even worse, I now have to start house hunting again. I spent the morning with a new realtor looking at rank photos of rank houses, some of which I have already seen in real life and know that they actually look better in the pictures! 

We have now been here 7 weeks or so, and in the meantime, the other 70 families who have just arrived have been beavering away finding their ideal homes. So there really is a load of absolute dross left. 

However, there is absolutely no point in getting down about this tedious situation, and I know I am not alone in facing my challenges here. Yesterday, I met a girl who had her first baby here last year, and was telling how to take blood samples in the local hospital, they just shave the end of your finger off with a razor blade. Ouch. Apparently, in the no-expense-spared Kazakh hospital system, the urine sample containers they used were the cut-off bottoms of Tassay mineral water bottles!! 

On a less painful note, my friend L has hired a car and a driver called Victor to get around. Victor is young and keen but has no idea where anything is and speaks only Russian. She, I think, would rather drive herself but has not got a car. Victor comes with his own ancient BMW which has started recently to smell strongly of petrol. 

"Don't you think he should get that fixed?" L asked me, 

"I mean, aren't exhaust fumes supposed to be worse for you than cigarettes? What is the point of living out of town in the mountains if I have to sniff Victor's petrol fumes for an hour a day" she said, exasperated. 

On numerous occasions she and Victor have driven around for hours trying to find things like The Hyatt hotel (one of two large international hotels in what is, let's face it, a pretty small town). Yesterday, while driving into town,  Victor was playing some positively pornographic rap music that "made Eminem sound like a priest" and which quite put friend L off the "quality novel" she was reading. 

And on the bright side for now, the marvelous Alia (picture below) continues to be brilliant and our driver man Baktiyar (I love that name) remains a legend. 

Russki shopping lists

Having a nanny who speaks not a word of English is certainly not boring! Alia is proving to be a great buddy to have around - cheerful, chatty, a bit scatty but also affectionate, playful and pleasant. So far so good. She is also, thank goodness, a patient woman (must be something to do with having lived in soviet times), since it can be unbelievably drawn out having to communicate with each other with a total lack of common language. I don't think that on taking this job, she expected to have to use her reading glasses so much, as we pass the dictionary back and forth, trying to work out what the other wants to say!

Yesterday, while I was having a Russian lesson and the baby was sleeping, she went to the Green Market to buy some fruit and veggies. So before she left we sat down to make a list: I was armed with the Almaty International Women's Group's emergency food shopping translation list (laminated so you can keep it in your handbag), she with a pen and paper. We concocted a list and off she went. 

When I got back from the school run, there she was with her spoils and some unusual and un-ordered items. One of these was a bundle of asparagus which Alia found utterly baffling. "What is this?" she asked, picking it up and gnawing at one of the spears, "What do you do with it? Is it a herb?" I think she asked. It then transpired that the reason she was so intrigued about this vegetable was that it had cost me 30USD!! She was amazed that I had wanted to buy this (I hadn't!) I still don't know what it is called in Russian, it is not on the AIWC list, and neither, I believe, was it on Alia's list. I think I managed to explain that really if anything costs more than 10USD that we could live without it and she needn't buy it, we would wait until it was in season. 

Then we continued, I had a few things to explain to her, and so we laboured on with the dictionary, gesticulation and the odd word in Russian. At one point I looked up "Not easy" and explained that I realised that this communication was tortured, but that I was sure it would get easier with time. She nodded emphatically and then spent an age looking up a word herself (she has not taken the sticker off her reading glasses which says, in quite large writing, +2.5 , and which I am sure is making it hard for her to focus on the tiny print of my pocket dictionary). I spent the time sending a couple of long texts to friends, and then eventually she slapped the book down on the table, pointed at the identified word and pronounced: "Gail...... capable!". 

I am glad that she has the faith that my Russian will get there. Perhaps I should spend more time learning my vocabulary and less time writing this blog! 

From Glorious to Gopping Heights

It has been a good day: my first outing with the Almaty International Women's Association hiking group (not the same as the invitation-only ladies walking ensemble) for a bracing stroll through stunning scenery only 20 minutes drive from town. 

We were a mixed bunch of me and my mate L, American group coordinator ("only because everyone else left"...), French lady who knew this route, a Venezuelan lady, two guys from Zimbabwe and a Swedish man, some more french ladies, a Dane and a Romanian. And we all got along very nicely, using our multiple languages to fill in the gaps when someone could not quite remember the word they were searching for in a story. 

We set off in a convoy of 4WD cars, two or three hikers to a vehicle, and drove out of Almaty on the excellent road up to Chimbalak, the nearest ski resort to town. Passing the Medeu ice rink (the world's largest outdoor ice rink) on the way, we soon pulled onto a short, rough track and stopped. We were next to a tiny small holding, and there was a track leading into the magical landscape. It is spectacular, and it was very exciting for me, after all these weeks of looking at the mountains, to be finally walking on them.

We began with a short, sharp ascent, but then moved onto a nice smooth and steady uphill stretch with a stream running down one side, and wide expanses of scenery in front of us (an area known locally as The Sound of Music). Pottering along at a nice gentle pace, we stopped from time to time for water or take a group photo and let people get their breath. After crossing a stream, we came to a small but pretty waterfall, where there was enough bouncy moss to make a million Christmas wreaths. It misted over while we were eating our sandwiches and we quickly got cold, the temperature must have differed by about 10 degrees in under a minute when the sun vanished. 

Two and a half hours of pretty scenery, nice exercise and interesting chat, and we were all back with our entourage of cars and drivers, ready for the quick drive back into the city and the afternoon school run. 

As we drove in, we passed the end of the road for a house that we recently viewed. We had a bad phone call on Friday when our estate agent phoned to say that the landlady on the house for which we have been trying to sign a contract for nearly a month, has decided to include a clause giving her the right to raise our rent more or less when she wants (we had already agreed with her in person that she would fix the rent for a certain time period). We are not really prepared to accept this, since we are already agreeing to pay her a whopping amount of money every month, and don't really want her to raise our rent in a year's time, for us to either pay, or suffer the inconvenience of moving again. 

So we had started to re-consider some of the places we had previously viewed. One of which is this place, now christened Gopping Heights (because it is genuinely one of the most outrageously unattractive dwellings you have ever seen) but which we have not written off because despite its aesthetic, and let's face it, quality drawbacks, it does still fulfill many of our criteria for a house: large, big garden, view of mountains, enough bedrooms, roof etc etc! 

I had described it to L before we went, and I wanted her opinion on it. She later told me that she thought I had been exaggerating about its lack of looks before we arrived, but soon realized that I had been pretty straight. The question now is if we can embrace its vulgarity in an "ironic" way, and "make it work for us"... I think Gopping Heights may be a step too far. 

Cultural delights

This weekend we have taken advantage of the cultural delights on offer in the republic of Kazakhstan, a country where music is thought to remove evil from a man's heart (if played on the traditional instrument, the Qobyz). We bought tickets to the opera Madame Butterfly for Saturday night (husband and youngest daughter had a dinner/theatre date night together) and the ballet Sleeping Beauty on Sunday (for me and the two older daughters). Total cost for all our stalls tickets was less than $50. 

I have just returned from my first trip to the  Kazakh National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet named after Abai, and the performance of Sleeping Beauty was excellent. The theatre is delightful, a really charming place that is simple but not austere, well run but not stuffy and as a result is popular and full. 

Apart from a wildly

 expensive trip to see the Mary Poppins show in London's West End last summer, we have hardly been to the theatre in recent years, mainly because of where we have been living. In Thailand, there is little on. In Seoul, you have to book within about 30 seconds of the tickets going on sale or they are sold out (and given that most of the publicity is in Korean, you have a slim chance of even hearing about it in time), and if you do get there in time, you have to spend about $100 per person. 

The Abai Theatre is just six blocks down the road from where we live at the moment and we just got home in under 10 minutes at the end of the performance, having parked outside the front door. Yippee! 

I vow to thee my country...

We have been here 5 weeks and I guess the culture shock is beginning to bite. Even after all these different places, and knowing that it is going to happen, I never anticipate the effects of Culture Shock. 

So last week we had a few issues at home in our temporary apartment (which is very comfortable, there is no "camping" happening here!): our hot water was off (as previously detailed), our dishwasher had broken down, we received news that after our entire household which was safely packed up in Seoul at the end of August has still not left the Korean Peninsula (ie it will still be at least 8 weeks before we see it again, and this includes all our winter clothes), husband has been working until 10pm every night and most of the weekend, following a week of being away in Moscow. I was feeling like a single mum in Almaty: a place which I really don't know and have no mates. 

OK, it isn't all misery. I have started to find some great potential friends and hosted a successful first babygroup meeting, forced myself to go to a International Women's Group coffee morning and met a lovely German lady, we have seen real progress with the kids' Russian language (having 10 lessons a week is beginning to pay off), and even my Russian is starting to sink in. But this darn culture shock....

So we were having breakfast and B started to hum the English hymn I Vow To Thee My Country.

"Have you been singing that at school?" I asked. 

"Yes, we sing it nearly every day. That, or the Haileybury Song," she replied. 

So I went on to YouTube and found a version sung by a huge congregation and we all listened, and it took me right back to being at school (you can also listen at http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=7MG27Bwjal) . And normally associations with school just make me remember the terrible insecurity of being a teenager which is something I am very happy to have left behind, but this time I remembered only the beauty of the buildings, the cloisters, the dew on the rugby field and the damp cobwebs on bushes that you passed on the early-morning walk to breakfast in my Devon boarding school. And also the tremendous sense of friendship, belonging and fun that we had there. And the music of this great british hymn took me back to going to chapel every day (not in the sense of a religious re-awakening (!) but cameraderie. And I also remembered the day that a guy called Noel threw up from a hangover onto a guy called Dwarf's neck during morning service (or the other way round I can't remember) which in itself was disgusting and hilarious, but also saw the lid lifted by the school authorities on an outrageous alcohol distribution and consumption system in place at the school for the Saturday night socials and resulted in mass gatings for all sixth formers, several suspensions and I think, an alcohol amnesty for a while. All great British stuff.)

Anyway, this swarm of memories made me fill up with emotion and tears and I started snivelling into my cafetiere as I filled it with boiling water. A pitiful scene really, standing in my dressing gown, looking out at the hills of Kazakhstan, I vow to thee my country playing on the computer, in tears... feeling for all the world like I needed to cry out "I want to go HOME". 

Husband started to look a bit worried when he heard me sniffing back the tears, and I am glad to report that I am now completely over the whole ridiculous business. But it is strange what can bring on the water works. Seems that a good blub is all that is required to get the culture shock out the way. That, and a good tune by Holst!!

Precious things

There is not much I crave from home. I can nearly always find an alternative, or something local that I like just as much. But there is no substitute for Marmite on toast. And there is no Marmite to be had in Almaty. Recently, a friend of mine who was in London for the Madonna concert, carried a pot of Marmite from London to Surrey to Kent, then on to Paris and back here for me. So imagine our disappointment when B was getting it out of the cupboard for an after-school snack, and there was a sickening crunch of glass and gloop hitting the stone tiles of the kitchen floor.  We tried to scoop out the central bits, but it was full of glass and ended up having to tip it into the bin. Sob sob.