Thursday, June 4, 2015

Spring Days

One of the days we were in England we went into Hexham and it turns out a spring fete was going on.  There was live music in a park, and plenty of food trucks, sweets, and activities for the kids.

Alex loved her horseback ride. Zoltan refused to go.  They both loved their face paint though!

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Peacocks!

The peacocks like biscuits ("cookie" to you Yanks ... well, um ... us Yanks)  It must be mating season because the two males with long feathers kept yelling at each other and shaking those tailfeathers

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Alnwick Castle

When we went to England, we were desperate to find a book long enough to keep Alex's attention for more than an hour because we didn't have enough space or weight to carry as many of her usual books as it would take to make the trip.  I thought Harry Potter would be the perfect complement to an English vacation.

She stubbornly refused to read it. In retrospect we should have had her watch the movie first.

The scene in the first movie where they have their first flying lesson?  Alnwick Castle, about 1.5 hours' trip from the hotel.  Turns out a Downton Abbey Christmas Special got filmed there too.

The place is impressive, with several smaller museums in various towers, the main State Rooms beautifully decorated, a library I could kill for, and for the kids a whole Knight's Quest area with costumes for dressup, activities to pursue (they made soap) and medieval games to learn to play. In addition, for the older and/or braver ones, a Dragon Quest that was like a tamed-down version of a haunted house but with the addition of riddles and games to solve to get the answer to the Quest.  And, finally, the broomstick flying lesson.  Because there must be a broomstick flying lesson. It went way longer than we expected so halfway through Zoltan got bored and tired and went to sit down.

Monday, June 1, 2015

Sheep

My dad knows a guy ... he's got some sheep. Well, he had about 700, then they all bear twins so now it's more like 1200 or something like that. The numbers are fuzzy. The lambs are fuzzy too.  While we were in England (yeah, the trip was practically a month ago) we got to visit a sheep and cattle farm. We had a blast!  The kids especially loved hand feeding a few baby lambs - normally the mama takes care of the babies but sometimes you get a bad mom, or something happens to her, so they hand feed.  Apparently sometimes they can convince a different mama to "adopt" a baby or two.  We also got a see a one day old calf. We also got to ask a lot of questions about their care and the operation of a sheep farm. Career #next?  

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Hadrian's Wall


You just can't spend time in northern England without checking out Hadrian's Wall. And it turns out one of the better sites is one of the closest ones, and of course we wanted to stick close to home for the first day (everyone needed a nap, you know, after the long, started-at-4-am-travel).

We stopped in the gift shop because that is also where you buy the tickets (clever, eh?) and Zoltan immediately fell in love with the swords.

It started raining as we walked the half mile to the actual site - it was a former Roman village on the wall plus a little museum - so we stopped in the museum in hopes the rain, rain would go away.  The kids found the dress up area then became little menaces to anyone who got too close as they might have accidentally hacked off an unsuspecting arm if it happened to fling itself into their swordfight. Thankfully, nobody was slain, or even maimed. By the time they got a little too boisterous, the rain had stopped and we went out to enjoy the site.

Friday, May 15, 2015

Ben Nevis

A long, long time ago Terry met a guy who introduced him to the Scotch of Ben Nevis distillery.  This stuff is rarely found outside Scotland. The first bottle was purchased in Edinburgh, if I remember correctly. The second bottle when we made the pilgrimage to the distillery itself.

The distilery won't ship outside the UK, and we can't receive liquids anyway.

In preparation for our trip to England we decided to try to order some Scotch and have it shipped to our hotel. But ... the web site doesn't have a place to enter a different ship to address than the bill to address.  When I tried calling I got a repeated busy signal.

And then I sent an email.  Through email, the manager? owner? really awesome guy who works there agreed to send it to the hotel where we will be staying and when we get there we can call him with our credit card information so he can be paid.  In the end I was able to work out with him a Paypal invoice that we could pay in advance, but in the meantime he had gone ahead and sent the Scotch so it would be sure to arrive while we were still in country.

And now the bottles sit proudly on our apartment waiting for the jet lag to subside so Terry can properly enjoy them.

Love good customer service.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

5 Pros and Cons on Astana

The New Diplomat's Wife is hosting a pro/con list of everyone's posts here. I figured I'd jump in.

Highlights
1. Winter activities.  If you can handle the cold (easy when you dress warmly enough), you can easily stay busy all winter.  Snowshoeing, ice skating, cross country skiing, snow fort building, all available for 6 months of the year.

2. It's a real city.  Everyone seems to think central Asia is a total backwoods.  We have Zara (although admittedly not Ikea). The opera is really good, haven't been to the ballet yet. Museums are few but not bad.

3. Pedestrian rights. When you walk into a crosswalk, the cars stop for you. Nevermind the car was trucking along at 30 mph 10 feet from the crosswalk. They will literally burn rubber to stop and avoid crushing you.

4. Fun architecture.  Where else can you give such a direction as "head past the pyramid, and when you get to the dog bowl turn towards the bread basket." (these are nicknames of buildings). The monument near our apartment puts on a nightly light show, as do several buildings.
Image result for astana pyramidImage result for astana dog bowlImage result for astana architecture
5. Indoor entertainment, especially for kids. The number of indoor amusement parks, restaurants with play areas, and even special treats like the indoor beach (sand imported from the maldives!) make the cold winter and hot summer much more fun.

Lowlights
1. Astana is like an island. The city is in the middle of the steppe, which is like an ocean of grasses.  The closest anything is Borovoe, 2.5 hours away, and it's a resort-ish town.  Basically you need to fly to get anywhere.

2. No cheddar cheese. In fact, no cheese of significant flavor. Food in general can be a challenge, epseically in the winter where of course nothing is fresh/local. There is a beef industry but I don't know what they do to these cows.  It has taken a good deal of trial and error to find meat tender enough not to stew.

3. Traffic.  There is little public transit infrastructure and all the lovely wide avenues means most things are just a bit too far away to walk.  The trip from our garage to Zoltan's preschool (less than a mile away) to work (about 1.5 miles away) takes 45-60 minutes if we leave the house too late. We could almost walk it as fast.

4. Pollution. In the winter they burn coal. You can smell it in the air, and some days look foggy but it isn't fog obstructing your view of across the street.

5.  The driving. This is related to, but separate from, the traffic problem. Many people drive like they just got their license (or perhaps never did).  The number of ridiculous, dangerous or just stupid things I have seen on the road ... just gotta shake my head. Of course this is a problem I find in Virginia too, just not quite so bad.

Friday, May 1, 2015

Leave it to the IRS!

Last week we received a letter from the IRS and a $1.00 check. Yes the decimal is in the right place, we got a check for $1.00.  Today we got the letter and explanation:  you see, we overpaid somehow, by $19.00.  We were assessed a fee of $18.00 for failing to pay the correct amount, and that left $1.00 to be refunded to us.

Speechless.

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Observations from outside Kokshetau

Kazakhstan had a presidential election Sunday April 26. I was one of the embassy folks who participated as an election observer. I'm not going to talk about the work now (or, quite honestly, ever), but the general experience was definitely something to write home about.

The region I was assigned to was around a biggish town outside the oblast (state) capital of Kokshetau.  The train ride from Astana was 4.5 hours to Kokshetau, then about 30-90 minutes by car, depending on where exactly I was going, to get to these little villages.  I have now taken the train three times to cities within Kazakhstan and have to say I greatly enjoy the rides.  The train carriages I have been in so far have all been a series of 4 person compartments.  In each compartment are, essentially, bunk beds - sometimes fixed, sometimes that fold out of the wall. Each passenger is given a featherbed/mattress, pillow, linens and a blanket. Usually I stretch out and read or do work, and the rhythm of the train often lulls me into a catnap. In one ride in one of the fancy Spanish trains we were given little toiletry bags with soap, a comb, toothbrush and toothpaste, etc

It turned out that one of the villages we went to was where our driver had grown up.  To get there, you drive until the dirt road itself disappears, and then you follow tire tracks through fields.  He told us when he was young they would go to the disco in the nearby town - a good 20-30 minutes away by car - by horse. I should note I still considered him young, so his story can't be more than 10 years old. In retrospect, it probably took the same amount of time to travel by horse as the car couldn't exactly speed down the not-road.

Several times along the way our headway was slowed by cows or sheep crossing the road. I really wish I had gotten better photos.

Kazakhstani hospitality was in full bloom all day.  In nearly every polling station where we stopped, we were invited to sit for tea and something to eat. Also in nearly every polling station where we stopped, the commission members wanted to take photos with us.  I would not be surprised to learn we were the only non-Kazahstani people some of these villagers had ever met.  Although only hours from the capital city, it felt remarkably remote.  Chickens, ducks and geese wandered around, there were small garden plots around most homes, and most villagers seemed to have cows and/or sheep and/or horses. One of the villagers mentioned that everyone had a dog, and they were working animals not pets.

All in all it was a wonderful experience and a chance to see part of the country far from the main tourist attractions (although actually geographically pretty close to some tourist attractions - forests and lakes and resort type holidays.)