Forward with Ilham!

The U.S. isn't the only country holding presidential elections this fall. Azeris went to the polls today to elect a new president. Well... that isn't exactly true. Today some Azeris went to the polls to vote in a presidential election. The main candidate and predicted winner is the incumbent, current President Ilham Aliyev. The question of the day has been not who would win the election, but how many people would actually go out and vote.

Why has everyone been so sure that Ilham would win? Certainly, it's not his snappy campaign slogan, "Forward with Ilham." There are several reasons. First, the president is actually quite popular here. Azerbaijan's economy is growing at a whopping 25% per year, thanks to its growing oil exports, and the government has recently raised pensions and government salaries nine-fold. There has also been huge investment in infrastructure (schools, roads, hospitals) that has pleased many Azeris. Additionally, the "main" opposition parties have boycotted this election. There are 6 other candidates, in addition to the president, but none of them are considered to be major political players and none seem to have staged anything resembling a campaign. Finally, the government has undoubtedly skewed things in its favors. There has been an effort to shorten the campaign period (campaigning only started a month ago) and new restrictions on candidates, so that they can only post their posters in official places (such as the bulletin board shown here) and inside of buildings.

Polls just closed a few minutes ago and the city has been a little rowdier than usual this evening. A pro-government victory parade just went by our window and there has been quite a bit of car honking. But no major surprises are expected this evening.

It's no King Burger

Like King Burger in Almaty, Baku has its own share of fake American fast food restaurants. Tonight I had dinner at Pizza Hat, for example. The pizza was actually pretty good... probably better than Pizza Hut.

Ismayli

Last week, I traveled out of Baku to a town called Ismayli with Amy, my friend and the director of American Councils here. (American Councils organized my trip to Azerbaijan-- found me a host family, arranged my visa, etc.) It was the end of Ramadan last week, so Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were national holidays. Ramadan is a month-long Muslim holiday, during which people fast from sun up to sundown. My host sister was fasting and I felt bad that she would cook me breakfast, lunch, and dinner and then not eat with me!

Ismayli is located about 3 hours west of Baku, past the desert and out in the lush mountain region of Azerbaijan. It was really beautiful. Amy spent 2 years there as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English and we stayed with her host family. We spent 2 nights and one full day there. The full day was the official holiday marking the end of Ramadan and involved a lot of feasting. Her host mother made a big dinner for the holiday (pictured here)-- plov with chestnuts and lamb, and salad. And we spent most of the day visiting Amy's old friends from her time there. At every house we visited, they put out a big spread of fruit, dolma, bread, tea, sweets, and various other homemade goodies. Four houses and eight hours later, I just couldn't eat anymore, so I went home to digest, while Amy continued with her visits. I think I'm still full from that day!

The view out my window

This is a picture of the view from my bedroom window here. It might give you a very small glimpse into what Baku looks like. While Almaty was very green and lush this spring (once the winter snow melted!), Baku is actually a very dry, dusty place and is surrounded by desert. There aren't many green things growing here. As you can see, there is a large construction site right outside here. There is a ton of construction going in Baku, as both the government and private companies build all sorts of new buildings. They work 24/7 on the construction site here by my window, making it sometimes difficult to sleep at night. They are making great progress, though. When I arrived two weeks ago, it was just a big hole in the ground! Beyond the construction, there is a statue that marks the local metro stop and behind that a large building, which is the city train station.

I'm in Azerbaijan!

After a nice summer in the U.S., I am back in the (former) USSR! I am in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, for the next 5 months or so. Azerbaijan is located on the Caspian Sea, bordering Russia, Georgia, Iran, and Armenia. It is rich in oil reserves and also produces most of the world's caviar. Baku is a city of about 2 million people located right on the Caspian. For other fun facts about my new location, you can check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku

I arrived here on September 19th and have spent the past two weeks finding my way around the city's old narrow streets, learning the bus routes, getting used to the local food, and getting started on my research here. I'm happy to report that I'm settling in nicely. Although I get lost nearly every day, I have only resorted to eating at McDonald's once so far. Yes, there is a McDonald's in Baku! No more King Burger for me!

I am living with a host family here. They are incredibly nice people, which has made the adjustment much easier. There is a father and mother, as well as two children-- a son, age 24 and daughter, age 21. The mother and father speak mostly Azeri (a Turkic language that I don't speak!) but the kids speak English. There is also some scattering of Russian thrown in. We have a two room apartment here, plus bathroom and kitchen. The family lives in one room, while I have the other room. Three meals per day are included in my rent here. I'm sure I'll discuss the food in another posting later (so much meat and potatoes!)... regardless, it's nice to have people cooking for me.

I have had lots of adventures here already and will tell you about them in upcoming posts... to be continued!

Heading home!

For anyone that isn't aware, today is my last day in Almaty... at least for this trip. I'm heading to Europe tonight for 3 weeks of vacation. Neal and I will be traveling in Italy, Croatia, Romania, and Germany. I return to Berkeley on July 2. Fear not, there will be more travel blog posts in the future. In addition to this Europe trip, I am also scheduled to spend 10 months in Azerbaijan and Belarus between September 2008 and June 2009 doing more dissertation fieldwork. No doubt there will be many more adventures to blog about. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to getting back to the first world and being back with friends and family!

Getting Around

I've been meaning to post this for months. It took me a really long time to figure out my way around Almaty. It wasn't hard to get my bearings. The city is at the base of mountains and from almost anywhere in the city you can look up, check where the mountains are, and know what direction you're headed in. Nope, the problem was that there are no street signs! Or at least, not many.

To be fair, some intersections are marked with street signs-- maybe 25% of them. (See the top picture.) However, the signs often mark not just this intersection, but also what street is coming up next. Unless you already know, it can be hard to figure out which street you're actually on. Moreover, these signs are written in both Kazakh (on top) and Russian (bottom). So if there are signs around, the problem is that there is too much information!

Many intersections have no signs at all. (See middle picture.) In this case, you have to either keep walking to the next intersection, which might not have a sign, or poke around the buildings nearby. Sometimes they're labeled with the full address (see bottom picture) and sometimes not. All this can leave you wandering in circles for hours trying to figure out where you are, whether it's where you're supposed to be, and (if not) how you might get where you're supposed to be.

This is all complicated by the fact that many of the street names were changed after the fall of the Soviet Union to be more Kazakh and less Soviet. So Astronaut/Kosmonot Street became Baytursinova, Soviet Street became Kazybek Bi, October Street became Tole Bi, etc. And in case you haven't guessed, most of the streets sound the same to the untrained ear. How many times did I end up wandering around Kabanbay Batyr Street when I was supposed to be on Karasay Batyr or Bogenbay Batyr or.... you get the picture.

My Kazakh Television Debut

This morning I woke up early and headed to the Khabar television station studios to be on television. No, my television appearance wasn't because I've gained such notoriety or fame... and it wasn't to discuss my research. I was on a game show! My friend is a producer for the Kazakh Lotto and asked me to come to today's episode to be in the studio audience. It was an odd hybrid of the lottery and The Price is Right. They sell lotto tickets for this during the week and we, as the studio audience, received free tickets so we could follow along and look interested. Just like the regular lotto, they drew numbers, called them out, and showed them on the bottom of the tv screen. And, drawing from The Price is Right, they had lots of flashy lights, an enthusiastic studio audience composed entirely of retired people and college students (and me), and they had the prizes on the studio floor-- including a couple cars. I'm pretty sure they showed me on tv, because they kept putting one of the cameras directly in front of me. So I made sure to smile and look excited and engrossed in my lottery card, even though I didn't actually quite understand the rules of the game. Unfortunately, I didn't win (as far as I could tell), but I guess that is ok. What would I do with a brand new car here anyway? The half hour live broadcast included several rounds of lottery drawings, a performance by a famous Kazakh musical group, and an official presentation of a million dollars to a woman who won the lotto a few weeks ago.

Kyrgyzstan

This weekend was a holiday weekend here, in celebration of Victory in WWII Day (May 9th). I went to Kyrgyzstan for the long weekend with some local friends. There were 30 of us who went, 25 Kazakhs, 4 Italians who live in Almaty, and me. We stayed up at a camp in the mountains outside of Bishkek (the capital of Kyrgyzstan) that had a dormitory/hotel and a cafeteria.... and electricity most of the time (except midnight til morning) and hot water rarely. But no worries. It was a nice change of pace from city life in Almaty and the mountains and views were beautiful. The trip took about 6 hours each way (or would have without unexpected delays), including the hour it took to cross the Kazakh-Kyrgyz border, which we had to do on foot.

When my friends invited me on the trip, they explained that it was a retreat and that each year they do this annual trip and pick a "theme" for the trip. There turned out to be two themes this year. We played a lot of games and the theme of the games was the movie "I am Legend." The group was divided into 3 groups and were told that there was a virus on the loose, threatening to destroy humanity and we had to develop an antidote. Each game was supposed to be a step towards successfully developing this antidote, culminating in a big scavenger hunt on Sunday morning. We were sent on all sorts of crazy tasks to collect ingredients and supplies and then had to build a fire in an abandoned building and use the ingredients to make a stew-- i.e., the antidote. This was followed by a blind taste test, and the tastiest stew won. You'll be happy to know that my team was named the winners of the competition... no thanks to me! The instructions for the scavenger hunt were given in Russian. By the time I translated the instructions and pieced together what we were supposed to do, the rest of the team had taken off running and I ended up chasing after them trying to catch up. So, for example, we were instructed to gather between 2 and 4 kg of wood for the fire. But I didn't understand the word for "fire wood" so I took off running to gather something... but wasn't sure what! I had to look around and see what the rest of the team was looking for in order to follow along. Or otherwise, I understood the instructions, but didn't believe that I had correctly understood because it didn't make sense. So when we were instructed to tie ourselves together before setting off on the next task, I assumed I had misunderstood-- until I looked down and realized the guy next to me was tying some shoelaces around my wrist to link me to himself!

The second theme of the weekend was reflecting on what it means to be the "main character" in life. In other words, what it means to be yourself instead of being constantly judged by others. There were a few evening activities designed around this theme, including a presentation on an Italian singer whose songs were about such topics.

Overall, the weekend involved games, hiking in the mountains and a lot of group singing. These two activities were often combined, as we would hike into the mountains, play a game, and then someone would pull out a guitar and we would all sit around and sing, and then hike back. At one point on Saturday they suggested that we sing American spirituals in honor of me, as the American in the group. It was a different kind of vacation, but it was a fun time and I met some nice new people.

Various Adventures

It has been a while since I've posted. I have been alternatively busy (with research or otherwise!) or tired for the past couple of weeks. Here are a couple of pictures from some of my various adventures last weekend. On Saturday, I went up to Kok Tobe, which is a cable car that runs from the city center up into the lower foothills that surround the city. There is a park up there to walk around (including a zoo and a restaurant) and some overlooks that provide great views of the city as well as further up into the mountains. Last Sunday was Easter in the Orthodox faith and I attended an Easter service at the St Nicholaus Cathedral. Here are some pictures from outside the cathedral, waiting for the bishop to arrive, as well as inside during the service. Unfortunately, I couldn't capture on film the beautiful music (chanting and hymns) and the smell of incense that filled the sanctuary.

National Library

I am now the proud owner of a Kazakh library card! On Friday I went to the National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan to see if they had any useful material for my research and to figure out how things work. I have never seen such inefficiency. First, I went to get my library card. The woman at the registration desk took issue with the fact that I had a US passport and that it was written in English. (Her: "Why is this passport not in Russian?" Me: "Because it is an American passport." Her: "Why do you have an American passport." Me: "Because I'm American." Her: Deeply skeptical look in my direction.) I also knew that you needed two passport-sized photos of yourself, but had heard that they could take those photos there at the desk. The woman refused to do that, saying only Almaty residents can have their pictures taken there, and sent me down the street to get it done. Phew, that process in itself took about an hour.

Then I got to the fun part of figuring out how to find and check out books. Kazakhstan has the closed stacks system, so there is no option of browsing through books on the shelf. First, you have to go through metal detectors and get a slip of paper from the security guard. This slip of paper must be signed and stamped by a librarian before you can leave the library, supposedly guaranteeing that you haven't any stolen books. Then you have to *buy* slips of paper (at 1 tenge, or less than a penny, per slip) to order books. Once you find the book you want in the card catalogue, you have to fill out these slips (one slip per book) with the appropriate information and give them to the librarian, who goes and finds the books for you. For no apparent reason, you have to write the book's information twice on the same slip of paper and you have to wait at least an hour for them to return with your books. Once you get the books, you aren't allowed to take them out of the library, but you can either read them there or photocopy them. Naturally, you aren't allowed to do the photocopying yourself. You have to pay for the librarians to do the copying for you, and there are only two librarians that do copying. Are you confused yet? I was.

After figuring this all out, I was so exhausted that I didn't actually get any research done. I had to come home and take a nap.

Snow

Today is April 17th and it snowed almost all day. Ooof. It is weird seeing snow accumulating on green leaves and spring flowers. Suddenly, I'm not so excited that the city turned off everyone's heat, and I'm regretting my decision to leave all my warm winter clothes at home last week. I could really go for a pair of mittens and my warm hat right about now...

Back in the USSR

I have been absent from blog-land for the past couple weeks. (I was going to say that I have been "conspicuously absent" but that is probably an overstatement.) As most of you probably know, my dad passed away two weeks ago and I went back to the U.S. to be with my family for a little while. I don't really feel like talking about the terrible-ness of the past two weeks. Suffice it to say, yadda yadda yadda, I'm back in Almaty now. I'll continue to update the blog periodically with insights and adventures from Kazakhstan as they come... though I sadly think I have lost the blog's biggest fan.

There have been a few improvements here while I was gone. First, Almaty is in bloom! All of the leaves have come out on the trees, the grass is green, and flowers are popping up. All of this green stuff makes the city a lot prettier, and is going a long way towards covering up the dirt and pollution. In a recent study, Almaty was rated the world's 9th dirtiest city... right behind Baghdad. Second, they finally have turned off the heat in the apartment buildings! Heat here is centrally controlled (I have no idea by whom) and there is no way to adjust the heat up or down inside your single apartment. Before I left two weeks ago, the outside temperatures were in the 70s every day and they were still pumping heat into all of the apartments. It was stuffy, to say the least. They have now turned off the heat and things are more comfortable, although the weather forecast for Friday is snow and highs in the 30s.

An Exquisite Delicacy

My nice apartment came with promises of good cable television and DSL internet. It took a few weeks for them to get connected, but they have finally arrived and they are awesome My cable tv includes all of sorts of programming from Kazakhstan and Russia, with a few English-language channels thrown in as well. So I now get CNN, Fox News, BBC World, as well as an American movie channel and an American tv channel. The American tv channel is great, but would be even better if they didn't show American Idol reruns 5 times per day.

My DSL internet is also working, so I am no longer stuck using an expensive dial-up connection. The DSL took some patience to hook up, and required me to stay home most of last week waiting for the technicians to arrive, then eventually spending 2 hours on Wednesday morning at the central office of Kazakh Telecom (the communications monopoly), where they finally got the connection working. The Kazakh Telecom experience was amusing in itself. The strangest people kept wandering through the waiting room, including a guy who at 10am was walking around with a bottle of whiskey and some coffee, and came back 30 minutes later conspicuously hiding the whiskey bottle in his jacket and looking rather guilty. (For the record, I suspect that he actually worked there.)

All of this is a roundabout way of getting to my point. The DSL modem that we purchased was made in China and came in a box that advertises its selling points in English. Most of the points are standard-- high speed, convenient to use, safety features, etc. But one of the points advertises the modem's "Exquisite Delicacy: Fashionable outfit that meets modem heimish trends." I'm not sure what "heimish" means, and I had no idea that a modem could be exquisitely delicate. This is obviously a case of something getting lost in the translation.

Happy Nauruz!

While most of you are celebrating Easter this weekend, Central Asia is celebrating a holiday called Nauruz. Nauruz has its origins in ancient Persia and Zoroastrianism and honors the first day of spring or, in the ancient calendar, the new year. So while many of the holidays here are really leftover Soviet holidays (like International Women's Day), Nauruz is a chance to celebrate being Central Asian... with all the kitchiness that comes with that! There are many traditions associated with this holiday that are followed in the villages, including a ritual housecleaning for the new year, and certain customs of visiting friends, family, and neighbors. Here in the city, though, the main event was a big street festival yesterday. They shut down several main streets and the city set up a huge block party on one of the central squares. There was a stage with Kazakh musical performances all day, they had yurts set up and big inflatable replicas of "traditional" Kazakh things, like musical instruments and camels. And of course, there were lots of people dressed in traditional Kazakh clothes for the occasion. The crowd spilled over into the adjacent park, where some people had set up shashlyk (kebab) grills and were selling food and souvenirs. Because the holiday fell on a Saturday, the "official" state holiday is on Monday, so I get another three-day weekend. Woohoo!

Sundays

Sundays are my favorite day of the week here. The whole city slows down, and there are noticeably fewer people on the street. I'm not sure where everyone goes, though I have heard that a lot of people just relax at home, while others go skiing, ice skating, or hiking up in the mountains right outside the city. And certainly are out walking in the parks or other public spaces in the city. It's great to have one day a week when I know I couldn't do research even if I wanted to!

The best part about Sundays is that the traffic jams disappear, and with that, also disappears the need for drivers to honk their horns. Almaty drivers love to honk. The light turned green? Honk! See a pedestrian in the street several blocks ahead of you? Honk! Another car is turning into the lane next to you? Honk until they honk back! Sitting in traffic and going nowhere? Lay on the horn! All this honking can give you quite a headache 6 days/week. On Sundays, though, the streets are empty. As you can see, the view out my window this afternoon shows not a car in sight. Come Monday morning (Tuesday this week because of the holiday), the entire block will be filled with 2 lanes of cars each way sitting (honking) in gridlock. But today, the loudest noise is the cable car going by every half hour. Not so bad!

Happy International Women's Day!

Today is International Women's Day. This holiday was invented by the Communists (actually, originally invented in New York) to celebrate the achievements of women. (For more on the history of Women's Day, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women%27s_Day) At this point, it is a semi-major holiday throughout the former Soviet Union and mostly involves giving flowers, chocolate, and perfume to mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends, etc. Basically, it is Valentine's Day and Mother's Day all wrapped up into one. Although the holiday is officially today, March 8th, the long weekend started here yesterday. It seemed as though no one was at work yesterday, but instead running around to buy gifts for their family members and friends. Kiosks selling flowers cropped up across town (see the picture) and the streets were filled with men carrying cakes and flower bouquets. Since it falls on a weekend this year, the official state holiday is Monday so businesses and government offices are closed officially until Tuesday. I'm a little out of the loop, though, and only found that out last night... I'm still trying to figure out if they observe Daylight Savings here...

The students at the National Conservatory put on a free concert yesterday afternoon in honor of the holiday. One of my friends here is an ethnomusicologist from UCLA and is affiliated with the conservatory, so she invited a couple of us to attend with her. The performances varied a lot, but were all really excellent. I was so impressed! One student played a Bach piece on the organ, another one played the accordian, a choir sang an African American gospel spiritual, and the orchestra played Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Also included were several pieces of traditional Kazakh music, performed by students dressed in "traditional" Kazakh costumes. In case some of you have been puzzled by the "national" costumes I have brought home from my travels, I caught one of these traditional performances on camera. See, people actually do wear them on select occasions!

I've moved (again)

Just a quick note update on my housing saga. I gave the bathroom sink-less apartment my best try for a week and then decided to ditch out and find a new place. Perhaps the last straw was the cockroach infestation, but I will spare you the details on that one. So on Saturday, I rented a new apartment--my third apartment in four weeks. I then wandered the city looking for enough ATMs to put together the cash for a month's rent (which also involved calling my banks to find out when their business day ended so I was no longer over my daily maximum withdrawal), wandered the city further looking for the exchange points with the best exchange rate (so I could change the Kazakh tenge from the ATM into US dollars required by the landlord), and packed and moved my belongings into the new place. Phew, it was a long day.

Now I am living in a very comfortable apartment with almost all the modern amenities of home. In short, it is amazing. The apartment is in the city center, a block from a nice grocery store, in a neighborhood that feels more like a European city than Soviet or Central Asian. Of course, my electricity problems continue to plague me. Within 2 hours of moving in, the electricity blew out in the apartment and it took about a day to get that back up and running. But it is all fixed and life is good.

Research Update

My mother suggested that I post an update on how my research is going. Perhaps she thinks that I am not working hard enough, or wanted to distract me from complaining about my living conditions. In any case...

For those of you who don't know, I am working on a dissertation on political protests in non-democratic regimes. In particular, I am interested in how these regimes respond to protests, what laws are in place regarding mass demonstrations, when protests are allowed to occur, etc. And I'm looking at this question in 3 post-Soviet countries: Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Belarus.

In a nutshell, research is going well. It was slow to start off, because it took a while to identify who I might want to interview, how to contact them, and what institutes and libraries are available. I have made a lot of progress on that front. Last week, I had four interviews with journalists, people involved in protest issues, people who know people, etc. And they all gave me the names and numbers of other people to contact. So by Friday afternoon, I was reading the newspaper and realized that I have the cell phone numbers of several important people they were quoting. Score one for Jody. I also attended a press conference/round table on the subject of fraudulent contractors. Last year, hundreds of people invested money in the construction of new apartment buildings (and for new apartments) that never ended up being built. It has been a major issue in Kazakhstan recently and the subject of several protests. The meeting was attended by some of the defrauded investors, lawyers, representatives of the government, some of the investment agencies, and members of the press. It didn't resolve anything, but was interesting no less. They ran out of extra seats, so I sat in the place reserved for the tax police. I was a bit worried about doing that, because no one wants to get on the bad side of the tax police, but luckily they never showed up.

This week I plan to do more of the same. I will call the people who were suggested to me in last week's interviews and try to set up meetings. I also want to hit up the National Library and to see what types of resources they have. And in the meantime, I am doing background research (online, newspapers, etc) to get more information on the protests and issues that have been mentioned to me as important. I am still trying to track down the key people for my research (government officials, protest organizers) but I am getting closer to them and should be able to pinpoint and contact them within another week or two.

Home Un-Sweet Home

On Thursday evening, I got a phone call from the people I rented my apartment from, informing me that their mother was returning from Moscow and wanted her apartment back... by Monday. But not to fear, they said, it's only a couple days notice, but they worked that I could move to their husband's aunt's extra apartment. So Friday I came and looked at the place and Sunday I moved over here into the husband's aunt's extra apartment. Apparently this sort of thing is pretty common in Almaty and there are all sorts of horror stories going around about people getting kicked out of their apartments on very short notice.

To make a long story short, this other place is definitely not as nice as my last apartment and I'm a bit peeved about the situation. When I visited the place on Friday, it seemed fine. Very poorly decorated, for sure, but what can you do. Upon closer inspection, though, I realized that I overlooked certain key details. Perhaps my favorite one is that there is no sink in the bathroom. As you can hopefully see from the picture, there is a toilet, washing machine, and (old) shower. There is even a mirror above where a sink would be. But no sink. So all this leaves me brushing my teeth and washing my hands in the bathtub. Additionally, the refrigerator is horrendously old and runs so loudly that it kept me up last night. It sounds like a plane coming in for a landing and can be heard throughout the apartment. The stove doesn't appear to have a pilot light, so I apparently have to light it myself... the very thought of which freaks me out. To add insult to injury, the people who lived here last took the toilet paper with them, though they were nice enough to leave me some straws in the kitchen cabinets. I could go on, but I'll restrain myself ... Though if it matters, the bed is too small for me (I'm only 5'2"!) and really uncomfortable... Ok, really I'll stop now.

In the end, I never did figure out how to change the lightbulb in the last apartment. But as of this evening, I can't get the tv to work here, so my technology problems appear to be following me. Excuse me while I go check out the classified ads to look for a new place to live...

How many grad students does it take to change a lightbulb?

For about a week now, I have been living with no light in the kitchen of my apartment. The day after I moved in, the bulb in the kitchen lamp burnt out and I haven't managed to replace it. Not for lack of trying, either. I've been carrying around this burnt-out lightbulb in my bag every day for a week and have stopped at every grocery store I can find to try to find a replacement. I have tried three separate stores and they all claim to carry this particular bulb, but are currently out of stock. (I somehow doubt this... It seems unlikely that there is a rush on lighbulbs across Almaty this week...) In the meantime, I have been cooking dinner in the dark. Sometimes I turn on the tv in the kitchen for extra light. I suppose this is a new twist on the old joke-- Instead of "how many grad students does it take to change a lightbulb?" the real question is "how long does it take a grad student to figure out how to change a lightbulb?"

The good news is that in the search for a new lightbulb I have discovered a new grocery store close to my house. This supermarket was recommended in my guidebook, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Last week I went to the intersection it was supposedly located at and even walked a full block in every direction looking for it, but to no avail. I finally found it today. It turned out to be hidden behind several rows of kiosks and food stalls and has virtually no name on the front of the building. But it carries a huge selection of US products (ShopRite brand!) and the prepared food looked very good. No liver cake in sight-- Hooray!!

Consumerism at its best

Like any good American, I spent Sunday afternoon at the mall. I met a few Kazakh friends (yes, friends!) at a mall food court and we got lunch at a take-out place called King Burger. No, that's not dyslexia speaking, it was actually called King Burger and not Burger King.

The idea of a mall is pretty novel for Central Asia. Kazakhstan has been experiencing some pretty remarkable economic growth in recent years, thanks to investment in its oil resources and a growing banking/finance industry. This has fueled the growth of a Kazakh "middle class," which in turn has spurred a demand for Western goods and Western lifestyles. And so was born the Kazakh mall...

There are actually several malls around Almaty. The biggest and newest is the MegaCenter, pictured here. It has a movie theater, an ice skating rink, a climbing wall, and a food court, in addition to dozens of luxury shops and a huge grocery store. It is a pretty surreal experience, especially because the halls are filled with janitorial women-- about one woman every ten feet or so-- who continuously mop the floor to get rid of the mud and dirt tracked in by us shoppers. They sort of scurry after you as you walk down the hall... making them the closest thing I'll ever have to a maid. (By the way, I'll save a full discussion of the omnipresent mud for another day...) Anyway, so MegaCenter and the other malls around get packed on the weekends with new middle class Kazakhs who fight over parking spaces for their Toyotas, Land Rovers, and BMWs. Just another part of the American dream exported to Central Asia...

Zenkov Cathedral

The weather was a bit nicer and warmer today. I think it even got above freezing-- balmy by recent Almaty standards. The 2 inches of frozen mud melted from the sidewalks for at least a couple hours and it was finally almost pleasant to walk around a little bit. I ventured to the big Green Bazaar, about 3 blocks from my apartment and bought some oranges. I also meandered into Panfilov Park to get a look at the Zenkov Cathedral. It dates from the early-1900s and, according to my Lonely Planet, is one of the only pre-Soviet buildings left in Almaty. (Most of the others were leveled in a series of earthquakes around 1910.) It is also made entirely of wood, including the nails.

Liver Cake

I have found feeding myself to be a bit of a challenge here. This should come as no surprise, since I often have this problem when I am in a new place. Every meal presents a new set of questions: Where can I buy food? What does this word mean on the menu (or on the side of the box)? What is least likely to give me food poisoning? So for the most part, I have been subsisting on pasta, cinnamon buns from the local American-style cafe, and sometimes actually get a full meal if someone invites me out to dinner.

Tonight I decided to try something new-- I stopped at the local supermarket to buy some of their prepared food to reheat at home. After much deliberation, I ordered a slice of something that labeled "pechonochniy tort." I wasn't sure what that meant, but I know that "tort" means cake and "pech" means to bake, and the whole thing looked a lot like lasagna. I figured a "baked cake" that looked like lasagna couldn't be so bad, right? Well, I was halfway home, carrying my slice of "baked cake" when I realized that "pechen" actually means liver and I had definitely just ordered liver cake for dinner. Ouch. The liver cake is in the trash now, and it's looking like another night of pasta for me.

On the bright side, I managed to get 5 liters of water at the store, so I at least won't be thirsty for a while.

By the way, I have absolutely no idea why the picture here is sideways. It must be a glitch in uploading the image to the blog, but I can't figure out how to fix it...

Home Sweet Home

Hello everyone! Here are a few pictures of my apartment. Some of the pictures are blurry, unfortunately, but hopefully clear enough to get a sense of the place. I'll be living here for at least the next month. I think it's a pretty nice place by Almaty standards (and my grad student budget!) but it is taking some getting used to. The apartment belongs to an older, retired man and his wife. The wife is in Moscow, but until I moved in on Monday the man was living here. So I am very much "subletting" the apartment. This is a one-room apartment, meaning that there is one main living room, a kitchen, bathroom, and main entryway. It turns out that the kitchen gets decent light (even though it has been cloudy/smoggy since I arrived!) so it is a cheery place to get some work done.