Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

We are heading out in a day to Vietnam. Everyone is excited that school is done and we are going for another adventure. How lucky are we!! I just had a root canal, Dave got food poisoning and Kyla is getting a cold but we will be ready by Friday morning. Now they are predicting snow and the fog here has grounded a lot of planes but we hope and pray all goes well and we will celebrate Christmas and New Year's in Vietnam. Wishing you all a Great Christmas and a Happy New Year. Missing you all and looking forward to seeing everyone in the summer.

Happy Holidays, everyone

Greetings. We've been having trouble making posts lately, so here's a short one from Kyla. We'll be off the grid for the next few weeks, enjoying the sun and surf in Vietnam. Have a great holiday season, everyone; we'll "talk" again in 2010!

Here's a rendition of Jingle Bells corrupted by Kyla and her friends:

Dashing through the snow
On a pair of broken skis

Over the hills we go
Crashing into trees

The snow is turning red
I think I'm almost dead

I woke in the hospital
With stitches in my head

Ohhh...Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells...

(You'd expect that from Cody, but Kyla?)

Mukhtar Auezov

Myxtap (Moo-gh-tar) Ah-(upside-down ‘e’)-way-(ye)zov-(3OB).

Edna and the kids are posing with Auezov, considered the father of Kazakh playwriting. He is also credited with preserving and translating local histories and stories. He was the first writer to translate and introduce Shakespeare to Central Asia in the 1920’s. Why mention him on our blog? We live on Auezov Street, Almaty, Kazakhstan.

An Imbalanced World

The map above is one year old, but the data below represents 2010. The Corruption Perception Index can be found at http://www.transparency.org/ It's worth a glance if you have the time; if not, consider the following highly abbreviated report:

The least corrupt country in the world is Denmark. Unfortunately for Somalians, Afghanis, Burmese, and Iraqi's, their governments are at the bottom of the list: #175-178

#6 Canada

#22 USA

#105 Kazakhstan

#154 Russia

#154 Tajikistan (where we have a school)

#164 Kyrgyzstan (next door to us)

#172 Turkmenistan (6th from the bottom) A co-worker here in Almaty recenly transferred from Turkmenistan. He corroborates this report. His friend was pulled over by the police for having a dirty car. If he didn't pay the standard $50, he would have lost his licence for a year.

Kazakh police are angelic compared to at least 70 other police forces.

Another Random Sampling

We went for a drive out on the steppe and this is what we saw:
-these ladies are Turkish and Uzbek; they set up a fruit stand on the side of the road in the-middle-of-nowhere. They sleep in blue tarp tents for a few months at a time.

-this guy was trying out a new toy at an abandoned airport. It's a good place for training; check out the horizon--no obstacles!

-socks and potatoes for sale on the side of the road.

Halloween 2010

Edna and her co-worker organized Halloween in our gated community this year. Trick-or-treating is unknown in this country except in enclave "villages" like ours. So we had a "compound party." Families from Poland, France, Russia, Canada, The Ukraine, The States, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tunisia and Korea attended. We had a barbeque in the parking lot. The food was exotic and extremely ethnic; ironically (or not) the hot dogs and the s'mores were very popular. That's Cody in the Spiderman costume.

Gorky Park

There's a Gorky Park in nearly every former Soviet capital city. These are our friends on the ferris wheel in Almaty's version of Gorky.

Here's Cody trying the 'drawbridge rope' in the park.

Stalin and Lenin's statues have been replaced.

Cotton candy: ubiquitous fair 'food.'

Cody's friends at school have begun calling him 'fanta.' He's rarely seen not wearing something orange, and the soft drink "Fanta" is his favourite.