Hotel Eurasia Almaty

... no course options appeared. Amazing, I thought. After two weeks of running to the Registrar’s office, waiting for her to open my courses, and running back again when I still could not register, on the last day of registration, 30 minutes before registration closed, I finally succeeded in registering for all my courses. Of course, this whole process was made even more interesting by my flaky internet access. Officially, we are not supposed to do ...

... new language – English in the US and Russian here in Kazakhstan – they are more comfortable speaking their cultural language. The children of the immigrants either have a home knowledge of their family’s cultural language and speak that at home with family, or they cannot speak their cultural language, but can understand home conversations in their cultural language. Members of this latter group not infrequently wish that they ...

... on having to get past the Kazakh/Russian guards at the Uzbekistan Embassy before we could get our visas. This took two days, a lot of face time at the guard's door and as much charm as we could muster with only our phrasebook Russian. We were told by several people that we'd need to 'pay' the guards to get past them. The 'system' of writing your name down to enter in order is obviously corrupt. The order of your name on the list will have no bearing ...

... night roommate, from those two nights that I slept in the dormitory. Her name is Joo-Hee. She is a Korean exchange student, from a city just outside of Seoul. A lot of Korean exchange students actually study at KIMEP. They make up such a large percentage of the exchange students here probably because the president of our university, Mr. Bang, is from Korea. Other Koreans come to study at KIMEP for their full undergraduate education. One girl I met ...

... border by sunset. We decided to look for a cheap hotel, and stopped a taxi. Out stepped the chief captain of the morality police and the head of the region and demanded to see out passports. Uh ohhhh. They were drunk and ended up convincing us to go to dinner with them at 1am, drink vodka and sample the local food. They were clearly attempting to be nice, but one always got the sense that they were after Ksenia the russian girl who came with us.We ended up sleeping on his couch ...

... northwards out of town.

Eventually found a decent place to stop beside a river (not as idyllic as it sounds, there was rubbish and horse **** everywhere) and chilled out playing cards and enjoyed a cracking dinner of Dolmio and pasta and then watched as the brightest stars I've seen in years illuminated the skies around us.

... im Büro gesessen, jetzt wissen's alle.

D** Friseurbesuch ist imm** wied** ein Erlebnis. Ab** ohne wirklich Russisch zu sprechen schaffe ich des doch imm** wied** den Laden mit ein** mehr od** we***** v**nünftigen Frisur zu v**lassen. Jedes Mal wissen die Friseurinnen nicht so wirklich wie sie mit meinem Hemdkragen umgehen sollen, meist wird ** nach innen gefaltet, heute wurde ich ganz einfach darum gebeten doch bitte das Hemd auszuziehen.

... class Motorway
Overnight Park Usually a little more than a $ if not included in the room charge.
Worst Roads China provincial and roadworks.
Best Roads China Expressways and Malaysia Motorways
Diesel Most expensive- Rural Aus, Cheapest so far- Kazakhstan ( 60c ltr )
Parking Meters Since Singapore-Nil
Car Washes 6, but always need one ...

... verehren. In der Schule muss auch jeder Schüler diese Heldenlisten auswendig lernen. Auf die Frage, was die Helden denn jeweils so heldenhaftes gemacht hätten bekam ich die Antwort, dass es halt starke Herrscher waren, die halt stark waren und Stärke ja der Stärke halber als starkes Vorbild angesehen wird. Außerdem waren die Helden stark. O-Ton: "So wie Napoleon, Hitler oder Stalin." Bei dem Gedanken an meine Hochzeit fiel's mir dann natürlich auch ...

... ich entschied mich mal wieder für den gesunden Menschenverstand und gegen den sportlichen Ehrgeiz. Echt doof, wenn man nach fünf Stunden Aufstieg vielleicht 500 Meter vor dem Gipfel umdrehen muss. Meine neuste essenstechnische Errungenschaften sind diverse kleine Teig-Fett-Hackfleisch-Spezialitäten, die der nette kleine Laden im Nebenblock anbietet. Das eigentlich erzählenswerte daran ist, dass man diese Teile in Plastiktüten verkauft bekommt und auf ...