No soap in Kazakhstan

In the greatest of ironies, one of the things we didn't have for about 12 hours was soap! My colleagues had done a very nice thing in buying a few of the basic essentials to make us comfortable like napkins and breakfast foods, etc. But since we arrived at 3am, we didn't make it to the store to buy other things for several hours. Not a big deal, except Malcolm found his bubble container, but I had to explain to him that we didn't have soap to put in it. "No soap, Kazakhstan," he went around dejectedly repeating. Of course I assured him we would buy soap ASAP. Later that first day, we walked about a mile and a half to the nearest store (the university is on the outskirts of town) and were able to buy all of our favorites like tvorog, cirok, sour cream.. what a dream! After that, we had enough small change to ride the bus back to the university/apartment.

So far everything has been great. The university staff is very welcoming and helpful. Our apartment is nice, though it has taken awhile to get used to it. It's not unlike a European apartment, which of course is not all that much like an American apartment, so there were a few glitches to work out. We figured out that to get hot water we had to let the tap run a really long time. The internet still isn't fully functional, though I'm not sure why (at work I have full access, though no skype.. but skype works at the apartment).

Since we arrived on Sunday, we had to wait until Monday to really get things going. Monday (yesterday), we were able to meet up with some people from the university and go grocery shopping at a nicer store in a big fancy mall. We also got cell phones and a new toy saxaphone for Malcolm (we had to leave his old one at home because we were afraid it wouldn't travel well). Essentially we can get anything we could possibly need here in Astana, though the prices are somewhat high. We paid about $50 each for cell phones that are super basic, bottom of the line.  But they're everything we could possibly need at this point, and they should work in Russia as well. Malcolm's sax was around $7, which isn't bad since it's sturdy and made in Italy (apparently there are a lot of Chinese goods here but not the quality control that there is for Chinese imports into the US.. which I find kind of funny/hilarious).

As for the travel/arrival (working backward), things were amazingly and pleasantly uneventful. Our connections were totally fine (I was worried because we only had 1 1/2 hours in Chicago and Istanbul, which didn't leave a lot of room for error). Turkish Airlines is really swank, so we were really comfortable. Malcolm slept 9 hours of the long leg, and did well on the other legs as well. When we arrived, immigration and customs were no problem at all (I had been anxious about that as well). We did lose Malcolm's car seat, however. Hopefully it will come soon. He's been riding in the vans without a car seat, which is perfectly fine as far as he's concerned. There are no laws here requiring car seat use... and in fact when were explaining to the lost luggage claims people what we'd lost, there was some confusion (they kept thinking we'd lost a stroller). Later one of the women from the university explained that most people in KZ think car seats are "those things that Westerners sometimes have." I'm not overly worried about it. Riding in the vans seems fine, and we'll do a lot of public transport, so it will likely be a non issue.

Anyways, all is well... and we'll have picture to post soon so you can see the lay of the land!