Kazakhstan Adoption

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.

Shopping in Petropavlovsk

Before we left for Petropavlovsk, we really had no idea what is and is not available to buy locally. We have since found out there were things we really didn’t need to bring and our balancing act with baggage weight would have been easier.  Toiletries – bring only the the little sample sizes.  Once you get here, you can buy just about any mainstream brand of shampoo, conditioner, lotion, toothpaste, etc. you want.  No need to cart multiple weeks’ worth with you.

The Blue Mall which is within walking distance of the Skif Hotel and on the way to the Baby House is like a farmer’s market on the street level where you can buy fresh and dried fruits, vegetables, nuts, cheese, sandwich meat, baked goods, etc. etc.  For those who are doing their own cooking, there is a large fresh meat section.  On the upper levels of the mall, you will find kiosk after kiosk jam packed full with toiletries, clothing, shoes, kids toys and clothing, kitchen stuff – the list goes on. It appears that each kiosk is individually owned. The prices are all very reasonable.

So save your luggage weight allowance for stuff you cannot find here.  It would have been really helpful to have had this information when doing our packing.

Hotel Skif – Floor Plan

As I’ve mentioned before, I was pretty frustrated when we were planning out trip over here that I couldn’t find any information on the Hotel Skif (given that it is the the main hotel that is used by adoption agencies who are working with the Baby House). We had to take it on faith that it would be adequate and that the rooms would work for us.

I found this floor layout for the second floor (the only floor that has western style rooms from what I have been told) on the wall this morning. So if you are planning a trip, at least this will tell you where your room is assuming your agency will tell you which one has been reserved (which they should – make sure to ask). We’ve got 201 and 211 for this trip which are the two largest.

Keep in mind that the current Internet wireless attenna is pretty much in the middle of this diagram on the first floor so the outer rooms have no usable WiFI within the room – you need to go out into the hall.

Kazakhstan beer

We have been partaking of the local brew for the last few days. It actually isn’t bad.

Perhaps the coolest thing we’ve seen is the pull top beer cap:

Pictures of Petropavlovsk

I haven’t posted a lot of pictures of the city of Petropavlovsk so far so here are a bunch to catch me up.

The one thing that might not come out in the photos is how dirty the streets are – there is mud everywhere. It is no wonder the locals always wear black. Anything else and you’d be changing clothes multiple times a day. I was pretty amazed about the mud actually. Even where there are proper curbs and sidewalks there is nothing growing in the boulevard except some weeds or random grass. For the most part it is just dirt – or when it rains mud.

They do have street sweepers out all over the place right now sweeping up the dirt. It really doesn’t help….

Found the wood playground…sort of

We had heard rumor of a wooden playground towards the end of Constitution Street (the pedestrian walk down the middle of the city) so this morning we set off to find it. There are a lot of playgrounds in Petro but they tend towards rusted metal installed over mud so we’ve been avoiding them so far and sticking to the indoor variety. This time we were hoping for a more modern style playground for Sam to play on.

We did end up finding it way down at the end of the street (about a 30 minute walk from the hotel – GPS: 54.873641,69.123852) but unfortunately it didn’t turn out to be anything that Sam could really play on. As you can see from the pictures it wasn’t exactly what you could call safe. So we are still searching for a decent playground.

Found a chocolate shop

We found a pretty good chocolate shop today and loaded up on sugar. It is right across from the bakery I posted about a few days ago (GPS: 54.866002, 69.142828‎). Worth a stop in if you have a sweet tooth.