The Waters of March

It rained in Astana late last week for the first time this year, but today, March 27, there is a new layer of snow as the long continental winter reasserts itself.  The clouds thickened yesterday morning.  The snow began falling heavily by noon and so continued into the night.  Such is spring on the frozen steppe nearly a week after the Vernal Equinox.  What else should one expect when one is living at the same latitude as the northern tip of Newfoundland?

View Over the Frozen Esil' River on March 20

But unlike the snows of February, this new snowfall will not last.  Daytime temperatures hover near freezing now.  Bare spots had begun appearing in the blanket of white before yesterday's March surprise, and for the first time this year, birds could be heard singing in the branches of the trees in Presidential Park.  The Sun now warms the skin and is setting after 7pm in this land of perpetual daylight savings time.

Last week was the spring holiday of Nauryz.  With the Embassy closed for three days plus a couple of days' leave, I rested without guilt for a full nine days.  Winter here is tenacious and hard, and the coming months will bring long hours of work with the coming of the Astana Expo and other events that will bring many a Washington visitor.  The week of Nauryz was a time to rest up and rest forward, a time for the first long walks of 2017.

With the coming of spring also comes the first hint that my time here will be ending.  I arrived in Astana two and a half years ago today.  I remember standing on my balcony sometime after midnight after my Embassy sponsor had dropped me at my new home.  I looked out on the Akorda Presidential Palace and the Esil' River and wondered how I would survive three years in a new job in a city where I knew no one.  "May these years go quickly," I thought.

Fast forward to last September 23.  NN and I had just landed back in Astana after five weeks in the US.  I felt conflicted.  On the one hand I felt ready to call an end to the work career right then and there.  I am tired, and my new home in Maine beckons.  The policies of the new administration in Washington are at odds with my beliefs and values.  All of this tells me it's time to go.

At the same time I never want to leave.  I said to NN that day last September that for as long as there is ice and snow on the ground, my time on the frozen steppe is as eternal as the Astana winter.

And why, as tired and opposed to new Washington policies as I am, do I not want to leave?  In part it's the knowledge that this will be the end of my overseas life, over a dozen years that have seen me living in Moscow, Tashkent, Bucharest, and now Astana, the fulfillment of a lifetime dream to live and work in countries where Russian is at least a second language.  It will be the end of a time that freed me and let me at last live the life I was born to live.  But more than anything else, I don't want to leave the people I have come to know and love.  I have family here.

On that night in September 2014, my apartment seemed cold and empty, devoid of life and love.  Now I joke that it's the young women's hostel of Astana.  First there was NN whom I met in my first week.  By December she was my official member of household living in my guest bedroom.  Then there was UE, my dearest friend whom I came to trust in everything.  I didn't even realize that at some level I, like many, was in love with him until he was taken from us far too soon, leaving me and dozens of others bereft and lost.  I cried more than at any time since my Mom died ten years ago.  The day UE and I paddled a kayak up the Esil' River with NN walking along on the embankment will always shine out as my best day in this country.

My Happiest Day in Kazakhstan

And through UE there came LB, LN, MU, TN, and many others.  Through NN there came XP, who spent many a night sleeping on the living room couch.  I could go on with a list that would stretch to two dozen or more, all of whom have filled my apartment with laughter, tears, and life.

Later, just one year ago, there came LT, my young soul sister who reminds me so much of myself at her age with the difference that she has an inner strength at her age that I did not.  LT now shares the second bedroom with NN as we work to secure her future.  I have linked my life and fortune to hers.  And with LT there came her most wonderful Mom LO who could be a role model for us all in her acceptance and caring for her daughter.  Together, NN, LT, LO, and I have created a family.

During Nauryz week we took long walks, shared lazy meals, and supported LT as she prepared for the TOEFL exam.  When she took the exam last Saturday, we all went with her and were as nervous as she was.

That's why I don't want to leave.  Astana has become home, and now the coming of spring reminds me that the time to go, still some five or six months distant, will come quickly.

But there is also hope.  Before yesterday's snow, we had already seen the first light rain of this year.  The waters of March and April are coming and bring a promise of joy and continuation.  As it was with Bucharest, I have put down roots here that I will nurture and cherish in the years to come.  I will be coming back.  More than that, I am seeing to it that part of my Astana life goes with me and puts down roots in the US.

My last winter in Astana has ended, but the seedlings tended through the long winter will soon bear fruit.  Spring, summer, and the future beckon.  The love goes on.

* * * * * * * * * *

The Waters of March, written my Antonio Carlos Jobim and performed here by him with Elis Regina, is my favorite Brazilian song.  "The waters of March close the season and bring the promise of life in your heart."

Eclipse

I've been in Bangkok this week for a regional conference on environment, science, technology, and health (ESTH) issues.  As such conferences go, it was not a bad one; there was reason to escape from Astana for a few days.  Add to that the escape from winter to the tropical climate of Thailand, and it was not a bad few days even if I saw little other than my hotel room and the conference hall.  Well, add to that the first massage I have had in years.  In fact, make that two.  The first one on the evening of my arrival was so good that I had to go back for another on my last night.


Due to flight schedules, I actually arrived in Bangkok Monday evening, March 7, even though the conference itself did not begin until Wednesday.  That meant I had a day to luxuriate without a care.  I've been in Bangkok before such that I was not intent on spending the day as a tourist.  Rather, like any sane woman who has spent her winter as an icicle in Astana, I went shopping, finally finding those hair care and other products that are not be be found on the steppe and that can not be shipped through the diplomatic pouch.  Just sipping coffee in the shopping mall with no particular schedule to keep was a mini-holiday.


A partial solar eclipse on March 9 was an added bonus.  A friend at home in the US reminded me of it; otherwise I might have missed it altogether.  The eclipse was only 40% in Bangkok -- one would have had to travel further south to Indonesia to see it total -- but there it was, the Sun clearly reduced to a thick sickle as it rose on Wednesday morning.  I took a minute to watch it through mylar glasses before running on to my conference.


Partial eclipse.  That's a rather apt description of my life in Central Asia.  A Washington colleague asked me during an evening happy hour how the assignment in Astana has been going.  I answered, “Professionally it's wonderful.”  Then, lubricated by the first margarita I had tasted in a couple of years at least, I blurted, “But personally it's been a disaster.”

That blurted admission also explains why, other than overwork, I have written so little here.  As Thumper says to Bambi, “If you can't say something nice . . . don't say nothing at all.”  

Yet, with apologies to Shakespeare and John Steinbeck, this has been my winter of discontent.  I've already listed the reasons in The Last Thing on My Mind; repeating them here would just be tedious and tiresome.  Yet, I do need to say plainly one thing I only implied last October: 

No single or divorced woman born when Eisenhower was President should accept an assignment as an FSO in Astana.  

She might be OK if she's committed to living in a monastery as far as intimate personal life is concerned, but for the rest of us, Astana is a disaster.  Hear my warning written here in black and white:

• If you had an intimate relationship before leaving the US, it will not survive the eleven time zone separation;
• If you fall in love while on R&R at home in the US, you will awaken one frigid winter morning in Astana to find it was an illusion no matter how passionate your words expressed across time zones may have been;
• You will find no eligible men among the expats in Astana, and local men will see you as official, foreign, and unapproachable;
• If you, a 20th century woman, take the plunge of trying OKCupid, you will receive a quick 21st century introduction to the art of the romance spam . . . with some spammers being more sophisticated than you might imagine.  After all, who but a spammer would engage with a woman on a dating site who is looking for a date on her next R&R to the States that is still months away?  Also, you will wonder why so many guys listed on hikersingles.com seem to have only the faintest interest in hiking.

Have I made myself clear?  Do not come to Astana unless you are prepared to be alone, for that is what you will be.

Having finished my rant, I hasten to add that all the mitigating circumstances I listed in The Last Thing on My Mind still apply.  Of these, the most important is friends.  The nature of my work is such that my network is smaller in Astana than it has been at previous posts, but it is those close friends, in particular NN, EU, BL, and ET who have seen me through the isolation and hard times.  Also, although work involves the usual overwhelming mix of competing State Department priorities, I have now been in Astana long enough to see that I have and am making a difference.

An Earlier Total Solar Eclipse in My Life:  March 7, 1970

I quietly passed the midpoint of my three-year assignment to Astana in early March.  If my Astana assignment has been an eclipse, then it has been a partial one much like the 40% eclipse in Bangkok this week, not the total eclipse that applied to much of my early life.  I'm in the dark umbral shadow as far as the intimate life is concerned, but the warming rays of friendship pull me through.  And just as the Moon moves on, uncovering the Sun, so too will this Astana assignment move into history.  I've reached deepest eclipse.  Personal life, intimate personal life included, will get better.  With some luck the long, frigid Astana winters will help preserve my youthful looks for another year.

And so, if you should happen to know of an eligible bachelor who is willing to wait through the time and distance for just another year and a bit, here's my personal ad:

A Hiking, Biking, Snowshoeing U.S. Foreign Service Officer, Temporarily in Kazakhstan but Hailing from Maine, seeks a life partner who --

• Has a pulse. 

• Loves the outdoors.  Doesn't have to be a fanatic but must enjoy hiking, backpacking, showshoeing, cross country skiing, kayaking, bicycling, and/or canoeing.

• Loves mountains and the state of Maine.

• Loves the night sky far from city lights; thinks that viewing the August 2017 total solar eclipse from somewhere near Yellowstone is a neat idea.

• Has a passport and likes to travel . . . perhaps even to Central Asia?

• Wants to visit as many of our U.S. national parks as possible.

• Is politically a left-of-center liberal Democrat, perhaps even a European-style socialist.  

• Likes Pete Seger, folk music, folk festivals, and the singer-songwriter tradition that started in the 50s & 60s.

• Believes in the power of words and letters to keep a relationship alive at a distance.

March 13 in Astana:  Spring Coming Soon?

End of rant.  Promise.  Spring will come to Astana, and this partial eclipse will have its end.

Meanwhile, to my Circle of Friends, I offer the following song by one of my favorite singers, Mary McCaslin, in tribute and thanks.  Mary's words apply.  Without my Circle of Friends, I would have curtailed and packed out of here months ago.

A Central Asian Little Christmas

Christmas and New Year's brought with them the first respite I have known since I arrived in Astana at the end of September.  From a U.S. perspective, the city has had a holiday look to it since mid-November.  There was never any question but that this would be a white Christmas, and the white snow cover and holiday lights helped to brighten the short days and long nights.

The run-up to the holiday weeks were busy.  I returned to Tashkent for the first week of December for the US-Uzbekistan Annual Bilateral Consultations and for a series of side meetings on everything from water management to biodiversity.  The direct flight from Astana to Tashkent isn't even two hours in duration, but the difference in climate makes it seem as though the distance between must be much greater.  When I landed in Tashkent, I was greeted by green and brown.  There was little in the way of snow.  The temperature must have been +4-5C, which felt so warm in comparison with Astana that I spent much of my time without a coat at all.  The stores had fresh lettuce, which must be nearly worth its weight in gold in Astana if it can be found at all.  The week was a good one, and I got to spend two evenings of free time with my friends E1 and E2.  At the end of the week, however, I was ready to return to the cold.  Tashkent may be warm, but it is easier to breathe in Astana in many senses.

At the American Corner in Karaganda

Even Christmas week saw me in motion.  On December 22-23 I made a lightening two-day trip to Karaganda, Kazakhstan's fourth largest city.  Again I was in non-stop meetings on everything from methane gas to HIV/AIDS to ecotourism.  I also spoke at the city's American Corner.  The subject?  Hubble Space Telescope (HST), of course!  Wherever I go, that's what people want to hear about when they learn that I worked on HST.  Then I watch their interest wander as I begin talking about Fixed Head Start Trackers and quaternions.

Karganda has a holiday look as it also celebrates
the 80th anniversary of its founding.

The Embassy closed two hours early on Christmas Eve, and I rushed home to cook.  The Embassy had found a local supplier of turkeys, and I had bought a 15-pounder.  Between the turkey, side dishes, and desserts ranging from fruit cake to pumpkin pie, I had my hands full in the kitchen.  It was a small Christmas party the next day in comparison with those I used to have in Bucharest, but there were nevertheless seven guests at my table.  Hindered although I am by work and travel, I am nevertheless slowly beginning to make friends.

Christmas at Robyn's

The Embassy was closed both Christmas Day and the day after.  That being Friday, I had a four day weekend.  Bliss!  I felt I was on vacation with the extra comforting knowledge that Washington was on vacation too.  

The following week we were closed again for New Year's Day and the day after, thereby giving another four day weekend.  I did nothing special for New Year's other than talk with friends via Skype, but it was wonderful just to get a rest at last.  The best part of Skype that evening was seeing my granddaughter bounce up and down on my son's lap.  Watching her as the clock struck midnight in Astana was better than watching any ball drop.

It's also time that I introduced my young friend NN insofar as it is with her that I have my best memories of the holiday weeks.  She's 22-years-old and in her fifth year as a university student.  We met in my first week in Astana when I was wandering from one shop to another in the nearest shopping mall looking for facial powder.  NN was the saleswoman on duty in the shop where I finally made my purchase.  An ethnic Kazakh from a provincial city, she wanted to improve both her Russian and her English.  We exchanged telephone numbers, and the rest, as they say, is history.  

So there we were on January 2, NN and I, tramping through the snow in Pyramid Park across the street from where I live.  It was a cold but sunny and beautiful day, and we laughed uncontrollably as we walked on top of the snow, at times falling through where the snow surface was soft.  When we fell through, we had snow up to our knees.  Although I've seen no blizzards here, the snow comes every few days and doesn't melt.  It just keeps piling up.  At one point in our walk, NN tried doing a hand stand, and I responded by trying to do cartwheels.  We lay in the snow and made snow angels.  For a few minutes I, too, was 22-years-old again with a fun and excitingly new world at my feet.  (I'd post a few photos from that day, but I'm having fun using an old film camera and need to find where I can get the film developed in Astana!)

On Snowshoes for the First Time

I had one other social outing on the 3rd, this time with the Astana Outdoor Club.  This assignment is the most sedentary one I have had since joining the State Department, and living across the street from work doesn't help.  Although I'm riding my bicycle on rollers indoors, I have to make an effort to do so.  I signed up with the Outdoor Club almost as soon as I arrived, but due to work and travel, so far I've only been able to participate twice.  On January 3rd some two dozen of us headed out on snowshoes under a full moon on a frozen river outside Astana.  The temperature was about -15C, but as long as I kept moving, I stayed warm.  My only real problem was that my glasses first steamed over and then froze over completely.  I had everything I could do just to see the person in front of me.  We hiked on the river for two hours and then adjourned to a cafe for shashlyk.

It's now January 10.  Tomorrow I'm off for a week of TDY travel to Almaty.  The work year has begun.  As I return to working long hours, I am reminded of a New Year's greeting from a U.S. friend.  She wrote simply, "Be well and have a wonderful year as you begin to close the book on a very exciting career."  It is the first written reminder I have received that the official part of my work life is drawing to a close in a few short years . . . even as I tramp on frozen rivers, romp in the snow, and make snow angels like a 22-year-old.

Best 2015 wishes to all!

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Urgench

I'm drinking coffee out of my own mug that bears the state seal of Albania.  It was a gift from a special mom in Tirana over two years ago.  The coffee came from my own stove-top espresso maker.  The dishware is my own, and it's Sunday.  That must mean that I'm back in Astana, my home-on-the-steppe.  Not only that, this is HHE-day, the first time I've had my own dishes and cookware, not to mention bedding, winter clothes, and photos, in three months.  For any Foreign Service Officer, the day one receives her household effects (HHE) is a veritable holiday.  This is my Christmas in November.  Given that the ground is covered by a light blanket of white and the Esil' River is starting to freeze over, it might as well be the end of December.

Two weeks ago today I was in Bucharest.  No, dear Bucharest friends, I don't mean that I came and went without seeing any of you.  I mean I was in Bucharest mentally and time-wise.  You see, the cell phone that I use as my alarm clock while traveling is the phone that I used in Romania.  It's still set to Bucharest time, and I'm not changing it.  I look at that phone and think about what you must all be doing at this time of day.  Since I knew when I arrived that the time difference from Bucharest to Astana is +3 hours, I just made a +3 hour allowance when setting the alarm wake-up time.

So there I was two weeks ago, stretching and yawning after the alarm began playing Eric Anderson's Violets of Dawn at 7:30am.  That's my wake-up song.  TN, my assistant, was to come at 9:30am, and we were to go to the airport to catch our flight to Almaty, Kazakhstan's large southern city and former capital.  I had lots of time to pack my suitcase and enjoy an unhurried breakfast.  It was only after enjoying my first cup of coffee that I did a double take.  The clock in my kitchen said 9am.  I checked my Astana cell phones.  They also said 9am.  I had only 30 minutes to get dressed and throw clothes into my suitcase.  What had gone wrong?  I checked my Bucharest phone again.  It was now +4 hours from Bucharest to Astana, not +3.  Then it hit me.  Romania had gone from daylight time to standard time that Saturday-Sunday night, and my Romanian cell phone had automatically adjusted.  Kazakhstan is on standard time all through the year, and thus I am now an hour further away from Bucharest friends than I was when I arrived.

So there I was, foiled by what I thought was my good sense of time zones.  Somehow I got downstairs just as TN and the Embassy car arrived to pick me up.  When we got to the airport, we learned that our flight was an hour and a half late.  If I had known, I could have stayed on Bucharest time for the morning after all.

By mid-afternoon we were in Almaty.  What a difference there is between Almaty and Astana!  It was so warm that afternoon that I could walk around with my jacket unzipped.  The air pollution was palpable, reminding me of New York City in the 1960s, but the Tien Shan Mountains could still be seen through the smog.  We checked into the Holiday Inn and looked for our U.S. colleagues who had come for a workshop on seismology.  When we found them, we sat together for an hour to go over last-minute organizational issues.  Back in my hotel room, I discovered I had forgotten to bring panty hose.  I inquired at the desk and was given directions to a nearby underground mall where I bought the most expensive hose of my life.  For three pair I paid about $90USD.  That extra hour time difference between Kazakhstan and Romania had acquired a monetary value.

I woke early on Monday morning in an Almaty that had changed dramatically overnight.  Snow covered the ground and continued to fall.  We must have brought the Astana weather with us, and it was time again for the winter coat.

The seismology workshop had its formal opening.  Everything was going smoothly.  After lunch I left our U.S. colleagues in the capable hands of TN and headed back to the airport.

The Top of my Head Peaks
Through in the Back Row

The flight to Tashkent took an hour and a half, but by my watch it was only 30 minutes.  Crossing into Uzbek airspace, we had moved one time zone closer to Bucharest.  The plane had rolled up to a stop, and we passengers were collecting our things and heading for the exit doors.  Before I could get there, however, I found that I had arrived not in Tashkent but in the Twilight Zone.  The voice over the public address system was that of a flight attendant, but could there have been a trace of Rod Serling in the words, "Robyn McCutcheon, the VIP bus is waiting for you?"

In all of my flights in and out of Uzbekistan in 2008-10 (see I Wish I Was in the Land of Cotton), I had never been met as a VIP.  I wasn't sure I wanted to start now, but I had little choice.  Once in the bus, I hurriedly checked my hair and makeup.  When the bus got to the VIP lounge, a Reasonably High Personage was there to meet me and usher me through entry formalities.  In the freshest and most official voice I could muster, I settled into diplomatic talk about the importance of the Aral Sea conference I was about to attend.  It really was important, after all, no matter how much I was yearning for a nice bed and a good night's sleep.  An hour later I was checked into my hotel in downtown Tashkent, a city I had left in 2010 and did not think I would see again.  Yet here I was in old familiar surroundings.

My escort having departed, I stepped out of the hotel to be met by my good friends F1 and F2.  We spent the next three hours in a cafe, catching up and marveling that fate had brought us together again.  For those hours I was no longer a VIP but just Robyn.  For the first time since arriving in Astana at the end of September, I felt entirely relaxed and at home with good friends.  For those hours the loneliness of the distance to loved ones in Romania and in the US receded.

* * * * * * * * * *

Where was I?  I started to write this entry in early November, and here it is, the last day of the month as I again sit at an airport boarding gate.  I'm writing long-hand in my travel notebook and have no idea where I left off in the draft that sits incomplete somewhere in the Internet universe of web journals.  So let's presume I was on Monday and had just collapsed into my hotel bed in Tashkent after my reunion evening with F1 and F2.  (Amazingly, post-fact I see that my guess as to my stopping point was correct!)

On Tuesday morning my next flight touched down in the Khorezm region of Uzbekistan.  The ground is frosted with patches of white, but I hear another passenger comment that it's salt, not snow.  We are in Urgench.

Ours was a charter flight filled with diplomats, international aid workers, water management specialists, ecologists, and journalists.  As we pulled up to the terminal, we could see men and women in traditional Uzbek clothes waiting to greet us.  The women were holding round loves of Uzbek flat bread, known to Russians as lyepyoshkas.  Everywhere there were TV cameras, microphones, and reporters with notebooks.  There were at least as many of them as there were of us.  It would be that way for the next two days.

As we descended the stairs to the tarmac, enthusiastic young greeters waited to sort us onto buses by language.  The route from the airport took us down the main streets of Urgench past gleaming white buildings and green parks.  Everything had a proud air of newness.  In less than fifteen minutes we were at our hotel.

Urgench

Within the hour we were on our way again, first to an oncology center and then to a urology clinic.  Both were so new that one could still sense the smell of fresh paint.  It is no secret that the disappearance of the southern portion of the Aral Sea -- that portion that is on Uzbek territory -- has had a huge negative effect on the people living to the east of what was once one of the world's largest inland seas.  The salt we had seen at the airport was blown there from the dry sea bed.  Dust storms carry salt and agricultural chemical runoff hundreds of miles.  An island in the middle of the Aral Sea had once served as the site for Soviet biological weapon testing.

NASA Imagery Documents the
Disappearance of the Aral Sea

Our next stop was outside the city where dozens of young volunteers stood holding trees next to pre-dug holes.  Our task was to plant the trees, shoveling dirt over the roots and watering them with pre-filled buckets.  There was a showtime air about this Uzbek Arbor Day with many camera shutters clicking, but the enthusiasm of the volunteers was genuine.  All hope is gone that the southern Aral Sea will return, but these volunteers were doing their part to hold the soil in place and break the winds by planting thousands of trees.  They may have been part of a show for this one day, but their work would go on without us.

A Tree Grows in Urgench

The rest of that day went to tourism in the ancient but now largely reconstructed city of Khiva, the capital of a once independent, powerful Central Asian khanate until it fell to the Russian Empire in 1873.  It was my second time there, my first visit having been with my son in 2009.

The next long day was taken up by the conference itself.  As I listened to one presentation after another, I couldn't help but think how little had changed since I left Uzbekistan in 2010.  If anything, the predictions had become more dire.  Late in the evening, after a ceremonial dinner featuring stars of the Uzbek operatic stage, we all rode a bleary-eyed special charter back to Tashkent.

Khiva

Thursday morning saw me on a flight to Almaty, where I arrived at the seismology conference just in time to deliver closing remarks.  The loop back to Astana closed early Friday morning, but the week was not yet over for TN and me.  From morning to evening, we escorted a U.S. visitor for a day's worth of official meetings.  Only when we waved goodbye to her at the airport at 8pm that evening was our week over. . . .

Well, not really over.  Saturday was taken up by my writing reports on the Aral Sea and seismology conferences.  Sunday was the day to catch up on all the work e-mails I had missed while traveling, and Monday dawned to a new week and new tasks.

If my readers wonder why I write so little in this web journal, my description of this one week should give a clue as to why.  Not every week involves that much travel, but many do.  (I am finishing this draft while between sessions at yet another conference in Uzbekistan.)  All weeks are intensely busy, and the concept of a weekend break is fuzzy at best.  My hopes for a slowdown center around the New Year holiday.

Meanwhile, temperatures in Astana have dropped to -25C, and the winds are sometimes so strong that I have trouble walking.  The Esil' River has long since frozen over.  The howl of the nighttime wind is louder than anything I have heard in my life before now.  Safe in my bedroom, I pull my blankets about me and listen.  It may still be fall by the calendar, but in reality, the long Kazakhstan winter arrived some weeks ago.

Have I Mentioned It's Cold and Windy Here?

Just like the NASA astronauts returning from the International Space Station, I've been taking my first steps in the steppes of Kazakhstan. My first four weeks have been full of ups and downs, ranging from blues and loneliness to the exhilaration of new experiences and discoveries as I find time to to venture beyond Embassy walls.  In short, life is normal, following the pattern that I now recognize from my three previous foreign postings.

Have I mentioned it's cold and windy here?  Let's see how many times I repeat that over the coming three years.  Astana is at the same latitude as the northern tip of Newfoundland, which should put things in some perspective form my friends in Maine.  It is about -5C, about 20F, this morning, and yesterday's light snowfall is not melting.  The Esil' River is still flowing, but the pond in the park across from my building is frozen over.  The wind penetrates right through the winter coat that kept me warm in Bucharest.  I haven't switched to the Canada Goose parka that I bought before leaving the US, but I will soon.  Halloween is still a week in the future, and from all appearances it will be a white one.

Baiterek Tower in the New City

Well, O.K., it hasn't been entirely December in October.  The wind and cold have had the upper hand only about 75% of the time.  A week ago we had an unexpected Indian summer that lasted 3-4 days.  The thermometer rose all the way to +15-18C, and I spent Saturday and Sunday on long walks.  On my own two feet, I'm slowly learning my way around the city.

Astana is an amazing mixture of dazzling modern in the new capital and old Soviet from the days when this was a small town known as Tselinograd at the center of Khrushchev's somewhat misguided push to open the steppe to agriculture.  (Think of the U.S. dust bowl of the 1930s and you will have a sense of why cultivating grasslands might not be a good idea.)  I live in a complex called HighVille in a new part of the city.  About a forty minute walk or a fifteen minute bus ride away is the start of the old town.  Even in my short time I have found a hairdresser, electrologist, and a cosmetologist.  They are all in the old town.  I have also done much of my shopping in a Soviet-era mall called Evraziya, in the process making friends with a young woman in a cosmetics store who is in her final year at the university.  Her major?  Nuclear physics!  She is working in the mall on weekends to make extra money.  I wonder how often in the US I might find myself buying facial powder from a future nuclear physicist?

Evraziya Shopping Mall

On the streets and in the stores I'm hearing more Russian than Kazakh even though signs tend to be in both languages.  Television has both Kazakh and Russian language channels.  The largest supermarket chain is Ramstor, the same chain where I used to shop in Moscow.

In my first days here, I had to acknowledge that my Russian had suffered over the past four years while I lived in Romania and the the US.  Fortunately, it's been returning quickly.  It has just been a matter of getting out of the Embassy.

View from Top of Baiterek Looking Toward
Presidential Palace and Esil' River

Now there's the rub: “getting our of the Embassy.”  This has been a very busy month.  The learning curve hasn't been a curve at all but rather a vertical, almost a technical climb up a rock face with the summit still out of sight.  My start here reminds me of my start on the Russia Desk some ten years ago.  There are so many issues and events at play that one can easily be sucked into spending all one's time feeding the e-mail dragon and never getting out of one's cubicle.  In my darker moments I think that giving electronic communication to the State Department, where our business is the diplomacy of words, was akin to giving drugs to an addict.  No amount of electronic communication ever seems to be enough as rings of e-communication feed upon themselves and suck us, the humans, into them.

Those are the dark moments.  Then I remind myself that I'm a woman of a certain age who has little left to prove but who has decades of experience behind her.  In the end, I will tame the dragon.

Esil' River Waterfront

Meanwhile, I sit in a plane that is about to land in Almaty.  Tomorrow I assist at a conference on seismology; on Tuesday I fly off to Uzbekistan for a conference on water issues.  I'll return to Astana only on Friday and collapse into an exhausted heap on Saturday.  As our planed descends, I fasten my seat belt and put my seat back in the upright position.  My first foray out of Astana to the wider Central Asian horizons is about to begin..

My First Week in Astana? Why, It Was a Gas!

I have been criticized by at least one long-time reader for sometimes making jokes or other comments that are science- or engineering-based that no one else gets.  I hasten now to add grounds for such criticism by stating immediately that all-in-all, my first week in Astana was a gas.  It just happens that the gas involved is not a gas that one usually associates with a good time.  Rather, it was CH4 (methane), a warming greenhouse gas, that dominated my week right out of the starting gate.

Balcony View with the River Esil and Presidential
Palace in the Background

I arrived in Astana at 2:30am on Saturday morning a week ago.  Middle-of-the-night arrivals and departures are the norm for Central Asia, something I got used to during my two years in Tashkent.  The Foreign Service (FS) has a good tradition of assigning a social sponsor for every new arrival, and L.I. was waiting for me just beyond customs.  She took me to the apartment that will be my FS home for the coming three years.  My bed had already been made, the usual FS welcome kit of supplies was unpacked, and L.I. had thoughtfully stocked the kitchen and refrigerator with enough food to get me started.  I finally crawled into bed at 6:30am.

Up in the early afternoon, I became better acquainted with the apartment.  The furniture is standard State Dept. issue that we are all used to, not so elegant but well made and functional.  I had gotten unused to it during my year in the US.  Some of the kitchen appliances and other creature comforts are top end.  I'm still not used to the electric stove, and the refrigerator is hidden away to blend in with the cabinets.  The guest room comes equipped with a huge stall shower and a toilet that has space-age controls that I still haven't figured out.  The master bathroom has a whirlpool instead of a normal tub, a bidet, and a personal two-person sauna.  Like most of Astana, the building is only a few years old and was built to impress.  After just a few days, however, I came to realize that Soviet-style instant aging has not been stamped out fully.  Some creature comforts such as the centralized vacuum system just don't work right.  The electrical outlets are in unusual places, and there is not enough lighting.  The computer-based front door lock is still there, but it doesn't work and has been supplanted by a more traditional set of dead bolts.

Living Room

L.I. came later that first Saturday to take me to a reception in honor of the person I am replacing.  The next day she took me shopping.  I seemed reasonably well rested and ready to start the work week.

Kitchen

Then Monday and a whirlwind came.  I can safely say that this has been the most challenging starting week I have had since being on the Russia Desk ten years ago.  There was scarcely time to complete all of the normal check-in activities before having to come to grips with the fact that a Washington group would be arriving on Tuesday for a series of meetings related to the Global Methane Initiative and coal mine methane emissions.  There is no reason for any FS officer (FSO) to expect an easy start, but in retrospect I realize I made a mistake in allowing myself to be talked into attending a Monday-evening reception that destroyed all hope of an easy jet lag recovery.  Getting home from the reception after 9pm and only getting to bed after 11pm, I had my first night of jet-lagged sleep that saw me wake up before 3am.  That was the way it was to be for the rest of the week, just 3-4 hours of sleep per night followed by a caffeinated struggle to stay awake through the day as I accompanied our Washington group to what otherwise would have been very interesting meetings.  Instead, my entire goal was not to embarrass anyone by falling asleep at the meeting table.  My body was steadfastly proclaiming itself to be on the U.S. East Coast.

Guest Bathroom

Another Monday shock came when I inquired about my unaccompanied air baggage (UAB) and household effects (HHE).  I had packed out of Washington in mid-August in full expectation that this early pack-out would allow enough time for my UAB to arrive in Astana before I did.  (When I was posted to Tashkent, both the UAB and HHE had arrived before me.)  Thus I was stunned by the cheerful reply to my question as to the whereabouts of my UAB:  "Why, it's in Baltimore!"  That is as far as it had gone in over a month and a half.  I was told that it was good news that the shipment could now be expedited and might arrive in Astana in 2-3 weeks.  I shuddered to think that all I had brought with me in my suitcase were light summer clothes.  I was already coming to understand that early October in Astana is more like late November or early December in Washington.  Thank goodness the skirt I bought on the way to the airport in Istanbul was a long one made of wool.  It was the warmest article of clothing I had until a colleague saw me shivering in my light fleece jacket on the way to work.  The next morning she had loaned me one of her own jackets, more appropriate to the season, until my UAB arrives.  Once again I had experienced both the down side and then the brightest side of our service.  We do look out for each other in our small communities sprinkled around the globe.

My Guest Bathroom Toilet Requires a Users' Manual

On Thursday, one member of the three-person Washington group failed to show up.  His colleagues told me that he was quite sick and had stayed at the hotel.  In fact, they said, he should not have been at the meetings on Wednesday.  I then recalled how this one member of the group had been at pains after each meeting to get physically close to me to give me a quiet, almost whispered run-down of the meeting's significance and what he was hoping to achieve in the next meeting.  I had been thankful for the explanations at the time, but now I started to worry.

Master Bathroom Tub Is a Whirlpool!

I finally slept through the night for the first time on Friday.  I had made it though a very busy first week.  I took a walk into the city on Saturday to stretch my legs and get at least some exercise.  As I walked out of my building, I was greeted by the strong wind that Astana is famous for.  Even with the borrowed jacket, I was cold.  It was snowing lightly.  I was out for about three hours, in the process buying a hat and some groceries.  After getting home, however, I realized I should not have gone out at all.  Sure enough, I had the beginnings of a sore throat, chills, and a full head that just got worse through the night.  Today I have almost no voice.  I have another Washington group arriving in mid-week, but I'm realizing that I will need to stay home on Monday in hopes of getting over whatever I may have picked up during this week that was, most likely, bequeathed to me during discussions of methane.

A Sauna for Two

So that's the way it was during my first week in Astana.  It wasn't the easiest start, but a year ago I got quite sick at the end of my first week working in Washington while also dearly missing the life I had left behind in Romania.  When I first arrived in Bucharest in October 2010, I had considered my assignment to Romania to be part of a career-ending disaster.  In both cases, my first impressions were the opposite of what I would feel when the time came to leave.  As I shiver in the cold and with a cold and miss close friends and family, I remember that I've been through this before.  

Another Balcony View Toward Pyramid
Palace of Peace and Concord

With a faint smile and looking forward, I affirm again that why, of course, my first week in Astana was a gas.  The new adventure is only beginning.