Day 21 continued

The trip to the bazaar today was fun. Last time it was HOT. Today was comfortable, but even more crowded than last time since it is a 3 day weekend and many people from nearby villages came into Shymkent to do shopping today.
I did find the prized Kazakh souvenir- a doll sized model of the traditional Kazkh cradle. The cover is used in winter and a lighter one is used in summer to keep the bugs out.

I saw a full sized one in one of the souvenir stores, but this one will be good for dolls. It is still fairly large so I only got one and the girls will need to share. They are very colorful and it does rock. I was also able to get what I needed for the escort so my shopping should be done. I have to start packing and make sure I can fit all my souvenirs in my luggage.

Since it is the weekend and I didn't post much yesterday, I will continue with things in Shymkent and other random thoughts. One neat thing is the blogger sign in page in russian.

When you sign in the blog appears in english, but the log in page is all russian!

The milk is also strange. You can get fresh regular milk, but it is in rinsed out pop bottles or you can bring your own container and they will fill it for you. Since I can't be sure what kind of milk it is, i bought the stuff at the store. It is good for 6 months! It tastes kind of like milk, but different. I'm not sure what they do to it, but it does not taste like powdered milk so ???? I assume from the cows on the box(yes box) that it is cow milk.

Of course, I have to post my favorite snack for when I am missing the US. Nacho Dorritos(in Russian of course)

There are many different kinds of ice cream bars here. I ususally get these at the grocery store next to my apartment. They have all benn good, except for one which was just strange. It was vanilla ice cream with poppy seeds in it covered with a carmel coating with sesame in it-weird.

I ran out of listerine mouth wash and went to get some other type. I had my choice as best as I could figure out between Daisy flavored, pine branch and nut flavor or pine cone and honey suckle flower flavor. I chose pine cone and honey suckle thinking it surely could not taste like that, but it does. Very strange, but it works well.

This is the girls favorite swing at the baby house(the red one). I looked at Target on line and they have one just like it except it is Winnie the pooh. I will be buying them one as soon as I get home. They will probably decide they hate it now, but maybe they will play with the box.
I keep trying to get a good picture of the mountains. Today you could see them fairly well, but they don't show up great in the photo. This is on the way back from the bazaar.

You can see the mountains in this picture. Also there is some of the new construction that seems to be going on everywhere here.

Since I have been here, they have been working on improving the area. The are restuccoing/plastering the nearby building. They also put up the edging in the alleyway about 2 weeks ago.

However the big event was yesterday, they decided to pave the alley way. As you can see this was a big event and a lot of the neighbors came out to watch. There are a lot of alleys in town, but very few are paved. The government owns the alleys and yards and sidewalks. They decided this year to invest in cleaning up the outside areas in town.

In the distance is one of the banks next door. It has a nice little park area with benches and roses out front. Every morning, a park employee using a twig broom sweeps these sidewalks.

The grass out front has automatic sprinklers in it that water the grass every day. The grass is rather scraggly, but they work hard at it. One day while I was waiting for my ride, I saw 2 guys on each side of the street with hand scyles cutting the grass. They worked their way down the street doing all the yards as they went. They stopped occassionally and took out sharpening stones to sharpen their scycles. Very old method of cutting grass mixed in this very modern neighborhood, but it explains why the grass doesn't look very even.

On the other side of my apartment is another bank and seems to be ATM central. This is early Sunday morning, but ususally there are groups of people waiting for the ATMs. There is a constant flow of cars and taxis dropping people off and picking people up. It is considered rude to take someones picture here without permission so it is hard to find times to take photos of these places.

They take their rain gutters very seriously here. they line all the streets and almost none are covered. they are over a foot across and about 2 ft deep.

Here is another view of some of the grass outside my apartment (hey it's the weekend and no pictures of the girls so you get what you get!)

This is one of the typical roads in the city. The center divide is usually filled with trees or roses or some ornaments. The blue banners have recently been put out all over the city. They represent the Kazakhstan flag. On the way to the baby house each day, you see the government park? employees on the edges of these roads sweeping them with the twig brooms. Cars are going by at 60 mph and they just walk down the edge of the road sweeping and all the cars seem to swerve and miss them. I have one of these ladies on video tape as we drove quickly by.