Today we flew from Karaganda to Almaty. Last night in Karaganda it snowed, but this afternoon in Almaty it’s 70 degrees and everything is green.
The taxi driver advised us against the house we had arranged to rent (which was supposed to be an apartment close to the city center, but which turned out to be an old house in a bad neighborhood), so he made a phone call and got us a 3-bedroom apartment on the 19th floor of an apartment building right in the middle of everything. This apartment is bigger than our house and has a view to three sides. It feels way out of our league but still cheaper than the a single hotel room in Great Barrington. Kids are loving the big windows with incredible views of the city from the 19th floor. Living big in Central Asia.
The courthouse picture has no people in it because Ania took the picture from the car as we were driving away. Seryek, our taxi driver, took a picture of the four of us in front of Regional Court #2, where we formalized Kostek and Marlena’s adoption in 2004. But then a guard ran out of the courthouse doors and seized Ania’s phone and proceeded to not only delete the picture Seryek took, but even went to the Recently Deleted folder and emptied it. Very thorough. “No pictures allowed” was his answer to our pleading, even after we showed him the picture we took in 2004.
Only 10 minutes after putting our bags in the apartment in Almaty, we ran into Raoul, a teacher and tourist from Spain. We first met Raoul at the top of Baiterek Tower in Astana, when he asked us to use his camera and take a picture of him. He told us where we could buy train tickets to Karaganda. He also told us that he tends to see the same people in different places. A few days later we found him in City Mall in Karaganda. Today we encountered him on the promenade in Almaty. So this time we got a picture of him.