Boredom in Kazakhstan....

Hi everyone - this is Kevin making an entry. Teresa is on her second cold and is currently napping. The cold weather seems to be hitting her hard. I've been lucky so far (knock on wood)!

We both went to the baby house for the visit this morning, where both of our kids were able to visit. However, they told us that we wouldn't be able to visit them this afternoon or all day tomorrow. All of the kids are kinda sick, so they wanted to give them a break. Madden has heavy breathing, and Jackson seemed a little calm today (though it could have just been tired from all the normal running around he does!) Unfortunately for our travel partners, their son (Carter) was sick this morning, so they'll have 2 and a half days in between seeing him.

So we've got lots of downtime here, in addition to the normal downtime. We've been able to get online pretty easily - we buy what's called an I-card for connections, and it's a little less than $1 an hour. It's only 28.8k speeds, but that's good enough for most things. We've watched lots of movies so far - all of the Lord of the Rings (which our partners have also watched), Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development... we're halfway through the Star Wars series. Thankfully we brought about 50 DVD's, so we should be OK on entertainment for a while. Surprisingly, we haven't played the travel Scrabble or Yahtzee that we brought yet - probably in the next couple of days we will.

3 more couples (well, 2 couples and a single female, we don't know if she's bringing anyone) are coming into town today. We're excited about it as it's someone new. We'll be able to show them all around town like we're experts! We're actually going to try and take them out to "Kamelot", the restaurant that we went to on our first night here. Good food, if you can figure out what you're ordering. I think I'll go with "Night Hurricane" again - basically just meatballs in spicy red sauce. Why is it called Night Hurricane? Who knows - but it's a pretty cool name. Sounds like a super hero. You do have to be careful though, Troy ordered what he thought was vegetable soup, but it was basically melted butter with some chicken broth - must have been a mix-up. The waitresses have to look at the English menu then flip back to the Russian menu. Everyone seems to know Coke or water (no gas - carbination!) though, that makes it easier. Oddly though, we've run into things not being available. We'll try and order something, they'll shake their head and say "Nyet". We're assuming it means it's not available, and not just that it's something they don't recommend.

The elections were held here yesterday. The current president is going to win with something like 90% of the vote. Our driver told us on the way back home last night about it in his limited English... "Nazerbyev - President"... I asked if that was good or bad, and he replied "Nazerbyev - NYET!" We've heard lots of things that are questionable - government workers being "told" to vote for the current president; reports that if someone doesn't show up, their vote counts towards the current president; and one of the opposition leaders "committed suicide" about 2 weeks ago. Of course, he had 2 bullet holes in his chest, and one in the head, so you have to wonder about the autopsy on that one.

So while people seem to want a change, there are also lots of people who see how much improvement has been made in this country. The economy has grown significantly over the last 5 years, and the standard of living is higher here than most surrounding countries. People seem to know that there is corruption in the government, but they seem to be willing to accept it. Of course, not having a strong independent media also probably clouds a lot of things. The U.S. is in a delicate position - while they want to encourage free elections, they don't want to push too hard on the democratic elections, as there are significant oil reserves here. Also, it's a key country strategically - still closely aligned with Russia and China, and a significant Muslim population not that far from Iraq and Iran. The best way to summarize is a comment from a businessman who's done well lately - "We know that Nazerbyev has issues, but his government is supporting business. As long as the government stays out of business, then business will stay out of government, and everyone is happy". So it's an odd sort of place that this country is in. They truly are at a crossroads (especially with the growing Kazak nationalism vs. Russians), and the next 10 years will greatly determine the future of this country.

So, that took up about 30 minutes.... off to find something else to do!