Day 2

entrance 

Presidental Park 

fall colors

Dear Readers,

The second day was half filled with business and Almaty sight seeing with my grandma and aunt. I have my own apartment here in Almaty, and when I turned 18 I had a choice to stay in America or to go back and I would have my apartment. But I decided to stay in America. Oh, boy!  I know that wasn't grammatically correct, you see for the past two day's I've been confused majorly between two languages. I'm still in the Eussian (half russian half english). So if I misspell or say something funny, that's because I'm completely blanking on how to say it. :D So anyways, I had to sign papers to give the apartment ownership to my grandmother. After we were done with that we drove around, since it was slightly raining here we couldn't do anything outside. My aunt took us to a Mini-Bazzar. I absolutely love those. Here we don't have packaged food in boxes that are frozen and processed,  you don't even know if the blueberries are real or just sugar colored corn syrup, which is a fact I found out today, in all those muffins and cereals.  So the Bazzar is like a Farmer's Market, fresh fruit and meat and all kinds of goodies are there to buy. Then we visited another church near by,  Orthadox. There where my day was made even happier. My grandma whispered in my ear "God loves me." & "He loves everyone." I don't know what that means but I was too happy to hear her speak of God so openly without me asking. Praise be to God! Thank you Dear Jesus!

Later in the afternoon we went to a huge park called "The Presidential Park" it was founded by the president Nasarbaev. It was very beautiful especially all the fall trees; I've been feeling as though I'm in a book. Where all the pages are filled with those yellow and orange colors of fall. Where the leaves fall on the ground as the wind blows. Where your cheeks turn pink and the sound in the distance of a Mag-Pi (big black and grey bird) singing is heard. There was a wedding there and the couple were dancing in the soft rain. There was a the biggest fountain I've ever seen!  In KZ after it rains mushrooms pop up everywhere from the ground so you can see people walking around in the grass collecting mushrooms. So neat! You can smell the mushrooms. Don't worry they are the safe kind, as my dad gave me a concerned look. :) Oh! The funniest thing about my grandma. She love walking with my dad. My dad doesn't speak Russian, but my grandma insists on speaking to him in Russian. She would be walking and chatting away about the weather and asking him questions. I think it's hilarious, so funny. My dad just nods and smiles. I think she likes him. Well here are some pictures:

{the church we were at}

{the bazaar}

{That's all Foundtain, from where I'm standing it's even bigger, it's not on during winter}

First Day In Almaty....

Dear Readers,

My first day in Almaty; full of memories and leaves, beautiful fall leaves. From our outside window I could see a line of trees that are showing their fall colors. Most of the leaves here are yellow, bright yellow! They fall from the  branches and dance their way down to touch the ground. The weather, couldn't be better, in 60's. We walked in Panlov Park. The park I used to walk as a little girl with my dad. At lunch I got to see my grandma and aunt. We haven't seen each other in 7 years. It was filled with many hugs. We ate a big lunch, Borsh which is a beet soup, one of my favorites,  cow's tongue, which sounds absolutely gross but it was good. There were fish eggs, which I just couldn't bring myself  to eat. I never knew they were fish eggs when I was growing up so I ate them just fine, but then I came to America and I found out what it really was. Then we all went walking at park and there were many weddings going on, the Kazak/Russian brides looked really pretty. Today was a good day. This morning I didn't feel jet lagged,  but now at almost seven p.m  I am about to fall asleep. Oh! I'm in love with Russian Squirrels! They are just the best. I saw two today.  Here are pictures from today:

outside our window...

walking in one of my fav. parks..

Famous Church..beautiful..

there were a lot of doves that were fed/ the picture only shows one section

this one is my favorite picture/ The birds were spooked and went flying up  very low..they circled around and round. It was really neat to see so many birds and so close. 

There is my buddy!! He's the best! ...Those ears.. Adorable!

One of many weddings. I thought she looked really pretty. Two words came to my mind. Snow White.

Krasivaya=Beautiful

Safely in Almaty...

Yay! After a loooooooooong trip. 8 hours on a plane from Houston to London, then 8 more from London to Almaty. With an several hours in between at airports! We got into Almaty at 12am, with so many russian's around me I was beginning to feel really excited! The officers at Almaty are very serious looking not a smile would be seen on their faces. We don't smile like Americans with teeth, we simple stretch out lips to give a soft smile. You always know who are the Americans, their smiling from ear to ear. :) That's how I felt as we stood their among many russian. I told my dad to stop smiling or we would look suspicious to the Kazak Officers, jokingly. :) I felt like a true American smiling to everyone I see, and I couldn't help it, I was back in Almaty! My previous home city, where I grew up, where God brought me up as child! The weather was cold, but not freezing, just perfect, I thought. It was around upper 40's. As I stepped out from the airport doors the familiar smokey smell of Kazakhstan, that I remembered, filled the air.

I was starting to get confussed between Russian and English. How can people do it? I guess it takes practice to get comfortable switching languages. That's what I need to keep on practicing. I get on Russian grove then I forget how to say things in English and I start speaking with a strange unknown accent. Essian= when you mix russian and english together. (my own definition) :) I have a picture from us going to Houston  I couldn't download the rest of pictures from the iphone, so they will have to wait.

24 hour Trip Begins....

Dear Readers,

Friday, the first day of my travel. I am packed and ready to head out; my bags are at their limit. Yesterday, we went to Target and got to buy things for the orphans. We made over 50 zip-lock's of goodies. Stickers, bouncy balls, socks, toothbrushes, lip balm, pens, pencils, coloring sheets, silly bands, etc. We can only make so much, for I'm taking a carry-on  with all the baggies, which is a backpack. Amazingly everything fit in it! :)  I also found "Father's Love Letter" in Russian! I was so excited! I'm taking a bunch of those with me. If you don't know what that is look it up on youtube and put in "Father's Love Letter". It's  one of my favorites!

I'll try to post some pics on my airport "Hello's".

Ashleigh

Trip to KZ

Dear Readers,


Wow! What a month? It flew by without me even knowing it! So here we are four 
day's away from my dad and I flying to KZ, Almaty. I am excited to see what God 
has in store for us. The trip there is going to be 24 hour travel. I can already predict
we'll be exhausted when we get there late at night, Saturday. I will try my best to
post some photo's of my travel on here, but I'm still not sure what the internet will be like. Thank you for some of you that have written to Vova. I do have some
updates on his situation back there. He is still in orphanage and it's been hard to 
find a job. The last job he had was being a security guy at the orphanage, but he 
soon quit because of older kids verbally abusing him. Continue to pray for him.
Your letters will be encouragement for certain. Kazakhstan is heavily Muslim 
populated  country, but the interesting thing is they let Christians worship and have
a church there freely, God's faithful provision. People ask me what is one thing 
you would like to get out of this trip. I pray that God will use me any way He desires
to bring others to Him. I will be seeing my grandmother there too. I pray God will 
open her heart to Him as I give her a Bible. I can't save her, only God can, I just 
pray I'll be a useful vessel while I'm there. 


Hopefully I'll be writing to you soon!


Ashleigh

Hello From Vova

Dear Readers,


Only couple of weeks away from leaving to Kazakhstan I was hoping to start a countdown...but unfortunately I couldn't find an automatic countdown box..thingy. If you know of one let me know ;] It's going to be bitter sweet as I travel back, a challenge for sure. I got a really happy e-mail today from Dere, a  picture of Vova! :] For those of you who have written to him, he got all of you letters and it encouraged him very much. Thank you, again! For those of you who haven't had the chance to write to him, you still have time. You are more than welcome to write to him and send me the letter I will personally give them all to him. Just make sure it's not to long. for it will take a while to translate. Get the letters to me by October 10th, if  sent later I won't be able to get them to him early, if later then I can mail them which will take a month or so to get there, if in one piece. So this is your chance! :) For those of you who are like "Why don't you just e-mail them?"  Good question, e-mail's just get to Dere and money is need to print things and so on. Their system is not so much advanced. Anyway! All that to say here is the picture-

If there are misspelled words, I apologize, to be blunt I was lazy to go back and double check but also on a hurry! :)