Good coffee….in Petro!

So I guess I need to take back a bit of what I said about the coffee in this town. On a recommendation we walked down to a coffee shop on Constitution Ave this morning and it was actually pretty good! I had a caramel cappuccino which I would definitely recommend. The chocolate cake was good as well.

The wait staff don’t speak English so there was a lot of pointing to the menu and grunting but we figured it out.

It is on the same block as the Italian restaurant.

Sightseeing in Petropavlovsk – Google map

I was going to put up an overall Google map of the things we’ve found here in Petro but it would seem Jennifer at Convergent Paths has done it for me. Hopefully she’ll add some of the additional locations we’ve found to it.

Great list of Kazakhstan Adoption blogs

You may have seen this in the comments but in case you didn’t, Jennifer M maintains a really good list of Kazakhstan adoption blogs at lotsofkazblogs.blogspot.com.

Kazak’s don’t like diet…anything

One of the most striking things when you land in Kazakhstan is that every woman under twenty-five is tall and model thin. So imagine my surprise when I realized that there are no diet soft drinks to be had anywhere. If fact there is no “diet” anything. Normal, sugar laden drinks are everywhere but nothing with the word diet on it – in Russian or not.

Very strange…I smell a conspiracy here somewhere.

So if diet is your thing, I’d suggest you bring your own if you come and visit Kazakhstan. But of course with luggage weight limits being what they are you can’t  do that either. So no good coffee and no diet soft drinks. I’ll keep my eye out for what else is missing and perhaps we can get to the bottom of this.

Meet Jennifer Darya

So after much debate we finally decided on a name. Jennifer Darya is the one that won out even though it wasn’t even on the list at the beginning. Her name will officially change after our court appearance. At that point they will apply to get her Kazakhstan passport in her new name.

Some more pictures:

This Borat thing might have some truth behind it

When the movie Borat first came out I pretty much assumed that it was based on a made up version of Kazakhstan. Even though I’ve never actually seen the movie, even the trailer was so over the top that there was no way that it was real.

I spotted this poster on a shop today here in Petropavlovsk so now I’m not so sure…(in all seriousness I haven’t seen a single person wearing one of these since we arrived…so I doubt the shop has a lot of customers for them)

The Real Kazakhstan

The Theoretical Kazakhstan aka Borat

Signs of the Apocalypse

If it wasn’t enough that Kazakhstan runs on instant coffee, today I spotted instant Espresso in a grocery store.

If this isn’t a sign of the Apocalyse I’m not sure what is. Granted if you’ve ever had a coffee at a gas station pretty much anyplace in the US, instant Espresso likely tastes like heaven in comparison.

Petropavlovsk Airport

The Petropavlovsk Airport (PPK) isn’t much to talk about – just a single concrete strip and a terminal building that is obviously from the Soviet days. Apparently Air Astana flies jets from here to Astana but if you are coming from Almaty you are stuck with an aging turbo-prop courtesty of SCAT Airlines. Of course if you were Madonna I’m sure you’d just come in on your private jet…oh to be so lucky.

Here it is on Google maps:

Video Skype from Kazakhstan

Given the up and down nature of the Internet connection here at the Hotel Skif, we hadn’t really tried to do a Skype video conference with home as of yet. Also the timezone isn’t really conducive to it as the only real overlap is early in the morning eastern standard time unless we drag ourselves out of bed really early.

But we gave it a shot on Saturday night and Sam was able to connect with friends back in the Boston area. I was surprised how good the connection quality was…so we can call this test a success. You can in fact video Skype from Northern Kazakhstan.

Samantha catches up with the news at home

Wikipedia on Petropavlovsk

The Petropavlovsk page on Wikpedia is pretty weak but there is in fact one. It doesn’t say much other than:

Petropavl (Kazakh: Петропавл), also known as Petropavlovsk (from Russian: Петропавловск, not to be confused with Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky) is a city by Ishim River in North Kazakhstan Province of Kazakhstan close to the border with Russia, about 350km west of Omsk along the Trans-Siberian Railway. It is capital of the North Kazakhstan Province. Its population is 193,300.

It was founded in 1752 as a Russian fort extending Russian settlement and influence into the nomadic Kazakh territories to the south. It was granted the status of city in 1807. Petropavl was an important trading center for silk and carpets until the Russian Revolution of 1917.