winter wonderland

i have a real knack for missing out on the best east coast snow storms. i spent the past three winters bitching endlessly about how lame the weather was, too warm, not enough snow, etc. so then i leave the country and philly gets slammed with two blizzards that each dump more than a foot of snow on our house. d'oh!

on the other hand, the winter here is taraz (while mild this year according to the natives) is still much better than the average philly winter. we've had a bunch of snow storms in the 6 weeks we have been here. none left more than a foot (pronounced "30 centimeters" in kazakh) but we got about 6 inches (14 cm) yesterday and it's been snowing since we woke up this morning. that was seven hours ago. i'm not sure how much more we will get, piled up on top of the snow from yesterday. during othe past six weeks here, there could be more net snow here than i'm missing in the states.

luckily, we've never had enough to cancel our orphanage visits. they don't seem to cancel anything because of snow here. yesterday, i told our translator about how whenever a snow storm is forecast, everyone runs to the supermarket to stock up on food. "why do they do that?" she asked. my question exactly.

meanwhile, almost everyone i know in the mid-atlantic feels compelled to tell me about the snowstorm that i'm missing at home. they roughly fall into two groups: those that say "i bet you're sorry you're missing this!" and those that say "you're lucky to be missing this!" it's a pretty good test of how well these people know me.

useless things i learned in kazakhstan 2

there's a major prejudice against chinese-made goods here. when we were in the clothing portion of the bazaar earlier in the week every seller tried to emphasize that the clothes were made in turkey. what they really were saying is that they weren't made in china. and what that really means is that the clothes aren't bad quality.

earlier in the trip one kazakh told me that most of the stuff in their stores are made in china. "they are not good quality, like you get in the u.s." pointing to my coat. when i showed her my coat's "made in china" label, she said "did you get that here?" she was genuinely surprised when i told him that almost everything in stores in the u.s. is made in china as well.

i'm not sure whether this is just a stereotype about chinese products or if the chinese really do dump off their worst crap into the central asian markets. in the u.s. people grumble about how everything is chinese made, but few think that the label automatically means a cheap crappy product. in the u.s. just about everything is made there, whether really good or really bad.

the weight dilemma

one of the many annoyances we have to deal with here is the fact that noz jr.'s weight is apparently a state secret. we asked how much he weighs on the first day we met him, six weeks or so ago. and we have asked again on a regular basis ever since. they keep telling us we will get it eventually, but so far at least this "eventually" has never come.

i have a few ideas on how to solve the problem. there are these older women who sit on the streets of taraz and sell little packs of chewing gum. a few of them, including one not too far from where we are staying, has a scale and charges people a few cents to be weighed. i'm thinking of asking her how much she makes from weighing on the average day and then pay her that amount to rent her scale for one of our two hour visits to the orphanage. but my russian and kazakh abilities are way too limited to describe this plan to her. without a translator, i'm not sure if it's feasible.

another idea is to get a big bag of sand. we bring the bag with us on the visit and then hold noz jr. in one arm and the bag of sand in the other. mrs. noz would scoop sand out of the bag until i thought the bag and the boy each weighed about the same. then we'd take the bag to the lady on the street and pay her to weigh it. unfortunately that plan depends on my ability to accurately guage when things i'm holding weigh the same. also, i am aware that it didn't work for indiana jones.

they don't just turn anything into vodka here

in turkestan there was a big statue of abu nasr al-farabi. there's another statue of him just a few blocks from us in taraz. before i got to kazakhstan, al-farabi was one of those philosophers who i had heard of and was vaguely aware that he had something to do with bringing ancient greek texts to the islamic world, but didn't know a whole lot more.

i'm still far from being an expert, but i am pretty sure that the famous muslim philosopher wouldn't have wanted to be immortalized as a brand of cognac.


likewise, when we visited turkestan it was probably the most religious place i have encountered since i got to this country. the mausoleum of khoja ahmed yasavi attracts pilgrims, so i suppose that makes the area around it cater to a more religious sort. but that doesn't stop the locals from making turkestan brand cognac. they even have a sketch of the famous mausoleum on the label. plus the sketch is from the side that was designed to look like the word "allah" in arabic.

classy! and at 150 tenge to the dollar, turkestan is the best cognac two dollers and thirty cents can buy.

ugh

in 2008 i alluded to how bryant gumbel may have screwed up our efforts to adopt. today i was told that this tabloid story about a person that i never heard of might be causing problems with our current project.

as frustrating as this is, i must admit i am impressed by the sheer variety of pitfalls we have faced in this process.

pooches

taraz is overrun with stray dogs. when we walk around outside, they are everywhere. well, everywhere except in front of my camera when a pack is on the move. it's pretty common to see groups of 8-12 moving through the streets. but everytime i have my camera out and ready they suddenly aren't around. the best i could do is the above photo of a pack of strays sunning themselves in the unseasonably warm weather yesterday.

more often i see them running through the streets. which means that whenever i pick up some huggies in the supermarket, i expect a pack to start chasing me through the aisles. it hasn't happened yet. maybe it would if i wore a panty on my head.

another thing about the yasavi mausoleum in turkestan

one visit to the mausoleum equals one-third of a visit to mecca. in 2000, mrs. noz and i went to the great mosque in kairouan, tunisia. one visit to that site is said to equal one-seventh of a visit to mecca.

being non-muslim, i'm not allowed to go to mecca. but i wonder if there are other places in the world with some kind of mecca exchange rate. by my calculations i am 47.619047619047619% of the way to a hajj. that's almost half-way! not bad for a heathen. can i do the whole thing just by visiting other sites around the world? or would i have to go back to turkestan or kairouan to top off my current total?

the bumpy road from turkestan

last night, after spending the day wandering around the amazing timurid mausoleum of khoja ahmed yasavi, i found myself in a car on a foggy rutted icy mountain road, driven by an extremely aggressive driver who would avoid potholes by violently jerking the wheel from left to right, often veering into the other lane as cars came straight towards us. on the radio blared a bad dance remix of "i will survive". i kept thinking: this is why i love traveling in the developing world.

i think mrs. noz was less amused.

useless things i learned in kazakhstan

the first letter of kazakhstani license plates indicate where the car is from.

A is for almaty city
B is for almaty province (but not almaty the city)
D is for aktobe province
H is for zhambyl province (which includes taraz)
X is for south kazakhstan

i've also seen C, N and S, but i don't know where they are from yet.

and for some reason kazakhstani license plates use latin characters, even though boththe russian and kazakh languages use cyrillic.

to turkestan!

we're off to turkestan tomorrow. except we've been in turkestan ever since we arrived in central asia. this whole chunk of the world, basically former soviet central asia, northern afghanistan and western china was once known as turkestan.

tomorrow, however, we're going to the small city west of here that is also called "turkestan". technically its full name is hazrat-e-turkestan, which means "the saint of turkestan". the saint in question is khoja ahmad yasavi. his giant mausoleum is in the town and that's what made the place a major pilgrimage destinations after his death. i guess all those pilgrims got tirds of saying "i'm going to hazrat-e-turkestan" and shortened the name to just "turkestan", even though odds are that's where they probably were before they even started pilgrimming.

it's like if brussels changed its name to "the capital of europe". and then, after a while, everyone just started callin it "europe". which, i suppose, is sort of like what they do in cairo.

whatever it's called, we're going tomorrow. (to turkestan, not brussels or cairo). so there.

propaganda works

that's what i'm learning from this trip.

not because of anything the kazakh government is doing (though they do have their propaganda). no, it's because of the way our family and friends are reacting to the photos of our orphanage visits here. they keep commenting to our photos about how happy noz jr. looks, how often he smiles, how comfortable we seem to be in handling him, et cetera.

during our visits there are uncomfortable moments and noz jr. isn't always happy or smiley. during those moments we tend not to pull out the camera. and in those rare instances that we do catch a cranky baby on film, we often don't include those pictures in the dispatches home.

all they're seeing is the highlight reel and so they're convinced it's nothing but highlights. with a little trick photography and/or photoshop, i bet i can convince everyone that i can fly.

ipad

once again i've missed all the hype over here in kaz, so maybe i'm not fully understanding all of its wonderful features.

but basically the ipad just looks like a really big harder-to-carry iphone/ipod touch. right?