Here Starts Central Asia: Turkestan, Kazakhstan

After Almaty I headed southwest to the small city of Turkestan, much closer to Uzbekistan. The main draw here is the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yassawi, a poet and mystic who greatly influenced the development of Sufism in Central Asia.

Other than the mausoleum, Turkestan was a small Central Asian town with a lively bazaar, and a mix of mostly Uzbek and Kazakh inhabitants.

This is where my tour of the Peace Corps volunteers of Southern Kazakhstan began, as I had been given the contact info for a volunteer living in Turkestan.

He was staying with a local Kazakh family with three rowdy, bratty kids who had great fun talking with me in Kazakh. It was a good intellectual match. I found I could sustain a conversation with them much longer than I could with adults, particularly if the 2-year old was running the show.
At a certain level, kids can really be great language teachers.

24 Hours to Europe: Almaty, Kazakhstan

Here we are in the heart of Asia, surrounded by deserts and mountains, living in the city farthest from any ocean, yet we can hop on a bus and land in Europe in about 24 hours. Don't believe me? Try making the trip from Urumqi to Almaty.

Say "Kazakhstan" and if it conjures up anything, it will either be images of endless steppe or silly Borat jokes. However, the city of Almaty is a major financial center and has been built up into a wealthy, beautiful, clean, ordered, and distinctly Western city.

Since I started studying Kazakh language, if people have any clue what the language is, the first thing they ask me, "So have you been to Kazakhstan?" Last May holiday, over a year after I started learning Kazakh, I finally got the visa stuck in my passport and braved my way through the harry border crossing. My roommate Logan was with me for a couple days, en route to Kyrgyzstan.

Almaty is a great break from China. Not speaking Russian, it was a difficult city for me to get around, but it offers the perfect respite to weary China-dwellers.

Here Logan and I are enjoying real European-style pastries, something both of us were agog over after learning to ignore the bizarre Chinese renditions of western sweets. Sometimes they look tempting, sometimes they look like alien life forms, but they are never good. (See last year's birthday cake, exhibit A. Picture complements of Fausto.)

We could relish the simple pleasure of something that looks the way it's supposed to look, smells the way it's supposed to smell, and tastes the way it's supposed to taste too.

As good as the selections were, we did not spend most of our time in Almaty eating. For the most part we were running around trying to accomplish all of our traveling errands. We were lucky to have the company and guiding of Saule, a friend who lives in Almaty. She also tried to take us to some of Almaty's sights, such as a vista from a mountain just outside of town, but, well.... You can see the view we had that day.

Almaty is not just European in look and feel, it's European in prices as well. So, because of limited time and budget and a desire to speak Kazakh, not learn Russian, I headed south pretty quickly.

Easter Brunch: Urumqi

Your own traditions and holidays often become more important than they would otherwise be when living abroad. Since my age hit double digits, I haven't cared much one way or another about Easter, but this year Logan and I threw ourselves into hosting an Easter brunch and egg-painting party.

We cooked up a huge batch of pancakes and a couple versions of scrambled eggs, along with some local breakfast staples like yogurt, fruit, and nan.
Our expat friends were happy for a leisurely American-style brunch, and our local friends seemed happy about everything except the pancakes. Once the eggs came out, everyone became totally absorbed in egg-painting and it made me wonder ... why don't we paint eggs all the time?

A couple of Logan's local friends were forever confused by our morning party, not being familiar with the local tradition, and every time we held a party at our house after that would ask "Do you mean eight in the morning or eight in the evening?" Good thing they asked, at least.