It’s the wind, not the cold . . .

Right! This has become Mike’s mantra on his walks to the Ramstore. Well, let me tell you, sometimes it’s the wind AND the cold, all wrapped up in one miserable icy package.

The reasonably nice weather went as quickly as it came. We had planned to have Zhanara take us back to Duman on Friday for some entertainment for the kids, dinner and to see the ice sculptures again. If we thought it was cold after the circus, we were sadly mistaken. After nearly getting blown away walking up the sidewalk to Duman we all headed inside and went straight to the paddleboats at Tim’s “encouragement”. Hope was reluctant at first, but after giving it a try, we found ourselves back at the boats 3 times that night.

Enjoying the paddleboats



They also rode the little kiddie ride there and went in the climbing/jumping play area. Both the big kids had a ball and went on each thing a couple of times before we went home.

The kiddie ride

The play area




Are you done yet?

While they were in the boats one of Grandfather Frost’s helpers (we decided it must be a helper because Tim thought someone was just pretending to be Grandfather Frost!) came by so we took the kids’ picture with him. Looks like this will be Matt and Hope’s first picture with Santa.


After we finished in the boat/climing play area they also tried out some of the other rides there, including the monster truck, Tim’s favorite from Chuck E. Cheese. Tim and Hope liked it, but as you can see, Matt did not enjoy his first ride experience.


As we found out when we got home, he was getting sick again and probably didn’t feel to great. We all had some dinner there, and not just pizza and burgers this time, because we had Zhanara to help us with the menu. Hope and Matt ate up a storm so I had to wait until we got home to really have much to eat. Tim ate up the fried meat and potatoes that the rest of us thought was pretty bad. In the last couple of days, eating hasn’t been an issue for any of the kids. After dinner it was time to leave because Duman was closing early for a private party.

The tree outside Duman

We headed outside to look at the ice sculptures and get some pictures. As Tim said, it was like the scene from Rudolph where the big storm comes and the trees and animals all get blown away. That’s basically what you get when it’s -8 C (18 F) and then add some strong gusty wind on top of it. (I can’t even imagine, nor do I want to experience, what it was like here last New Year when it was -45 C.) No one wanted to stay out long, least of all Tim who was screaming and whining that it was too cold and windy and his face hurt. Of course, as soon as he saw that they finished the ice sculpture that was also a slide, he had a miraculous recovery and went down the cold ice on his inappropriately clothed bottom 3 times while I tried to get pictures.

The ice slide
Tim coming down the slide

We all decided after 5 or 10 minutes that we couldn’t stand it anymore and I couldn’t get any good pictures anyway because the wind blew the camera too much so we headed home. Poor Matt had a fever again when we got home so we put him to bed and the big kids had their Chupa Chups (a brand of lollipops) and went to bed.

We did get a great bit of good news from Zhanara – all our documents are ready and Irina was picking up the visa while we were at Duman. Now we won’t be sweating out Christmas day wondering if the visa would be ready by the end of the day for us to leave for Almaty the next morning. We considered trying to go to Almaty Christmas Eve and having the SOS clinic appointment on Christmas Day, but decided that it was too hectic to save just a day and that the Almaty team will most likely get us through the Embassy to make our December 29 flight (at least we hope so). So we are going to spend Christmas in Astana and go to Almaty the morning of the 26 as planned.

Tim insisted on a picture with the "Statue of Liverty"