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.