SHANNON: Good Evening. We had an excellent day. I forgot to mention yesterday that I moved rooms which is a huge deal to someone who has been living in the same hotel room for a month. I upgraded to the deluxe suite. It has a large bedroom, living room, dining room and 2 bathroom areas. It wouldn't necessarily seem like much to an American, but it is the nicest hotel room available in Petro and considered very expensive to the Kazaks due to their low incomes. I did confirm with another interpreter that her father is a Doctor and makes about 200 US dollars per month. That is much more money than the average citizen makes. Yes things are cheaper here, but not so much cheaper that it would be easy to live on that small amount of money.
MIKE: Shannon and I had a good day. The driver took us to the Russian gift shop because that stuff is cheaper here than in Almaty. The Kazak gifts are cheaper in Almaty so we will get some of that stuff there. Then we bundled up and took a long walk around town. We were out for about an hour and it had to be around 5-10 degrees. I think Shannon was impressed by here San Diegan father. The town is certainly memorable. The street cleaning is done by hand with shovels and brooms and more than half of the workers are older women. The buildings are all large old housing complexes that appear to be over 50 years old and certainly have not been touched in years. Its hard to imagine how people can exist here in another 20 years when there is no infrastructure. However, the people all dress very nice with a lot of pride. The coats and hats are just like you would imagine in northern Russia. But the women are often in high spiked heal shoes.
Tomorrow Shannan gets another treat, we are going out to a resturaunt for lunch. The food will not be any different, but the scenery will be. She has become very sympathic to her grandmother who eats the same food with the same people every day in a retirement center. There is only one entre here that I can eat and I am tired of it after the second night.
The real highlight is seeing the kids. However I experienced something that Shannon mentioned before that will stay with me. When we went to get Rachel from her room I went in and the kids immediately started to mob me and were yelling Pa Pa. I would take any of them, but we couldn't have gotten two better ones. They are already connected with their Dadushka(Grandpa).
