Republic Day

Republic Day celebrates the day in 1991 that Kazakhstan declared itself a sovereign republic. There is a second holiday in December which celebrates its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union that same year.

Tom had the day off (as did our driver) and we took a long walk to see some of the city and neighborhoods, we met John and Gigi for lunch at a pizza place with an internet café for quick check of emails. Then after a quick nap at home had dinner out with a nice Kazakh couple that Tom has met through a business connection. Tom has made it a point to keep us busy socially so I will perhaps not have as much time to think about wanting to be home as much. It does help in ways. We had dinner at Pomodoro, a small Italian restaurant not in any of the guide books owned by Giorgio, a local legend who set up the first Italian restaurant here in 1993, returned to Italy a few years later with his new Kazakh bride, then returned to Almaty three year ago to cure his wife’s homesickness and a widely-reported homesickness here for his cooking. It was a terrific meal and went a little way towards helping us forget we are far from home.

By the way – I keep writing Veronika and I think I should mention now that I have been calling her Nika (“Neeka”) most of the time, it works and she generally responds to it.

She has a few English words so far……..up, down, hello, good bye, all done and she calls me momma and Tom papa. She has a lot to say in Russian and some of it we understand.
She also loves to sing with me my Tumbala song – I hope my mom, bubba and Aidan will appreciate that, it is a lullaby I have always loved. My grandmother and mother of course know all of the words, I sing the same four words over and hum the rest and now Nika does also as does Aidan.

We are now checking out the markets and malls in town and maybe we will actually buy something, up until now we have not made a real purchase of any kind. We also are planning on sight-seeing a bit this afternoon. This city has an amazing backdrop of snow-capped mountains and we plan to take a cable car to the top of one ridge and see what is going on there. What tourist books there are do not give much detail about the sites and city. So we’re going on word of mouth and we will report back in a few days once we have had a chance to explore more.

For now we are together and well, longing for our number one child and home, but thankful that the process will soon be done. We are in the final stretch of waiting for Veronika’s passport and exit visa. On Wednesday, we should have the exact status on when it will go to Astana to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then be sent overnight to Almaty for our two days of US Embassy processing. Fingers crossed all of this will take place in time for us to depart as planned in the early morning hours of November 9th.