Marius' adventures and thoughts in Kazakhstan

And we're back!!!!! You can't imagine how happy I am about it. :) Trip summary in numbers: 2 persons, 9 days trip to Uzbekistan, 5 cities visited (Taskent, Sarmarkand, Bukhara, Urganch and Khiva), 30 hours spent on overcrowded buses, 40 hours on various trains, and close to 10 hours more in various cars (taxis, marshrutkas etc.), for a total of 80 hours spent on the road, covering over 4000km, 4 nights on buses and trains and 5 in various hostels, over 1000 LTL spent for the trip (out of which 400 LTL for the visa alone, around 250 LTL for transportation, 120 LTL for hotels, and remaining on food, sightseeing and some souvenirs).

Probably to your dissapointment, in this entry I will not talk about all my adventures in Uzbekistan nor I will upload any photos from the trip yet (and we have made over 400 of them, many really good ones). I will try to do it slowly in the nearest future, after sorting out the photos, and devoting one blog entry for each of the cities we visited (cause they were all pretty different and many different adventures happened in each).  All I can say now is that it was definately the most exciting and adventurous trip I had in my life! :)

In this entry I will only shortly tell the interesting story of my Bachelor Thesis. As most of you know, I am currently a 3rd and final year student, thus I have to write a Bachelor Thesis this year, either alone or with a partner. Already during summer I decided to write it with Peteris, because we were both going to Kazakhstan together, so it would be much easier to work and communicate for us. Our first deadline was yesterday, October 27th, 13:00 Riga time, when we had to submit our thesis topic proposal.

The fun started when we understood that we will have to submit our proposal in Uzbekistan in whatever internet cafes what we find there, because of our trip - our visa was from October 19th to October 29th. OK, we will manage somehow, we thought. And so we tried, visiting internet cafes every evening after sighseeing during the day in Taskent, Sarmarkand, Bukhara and finally Khiva. Internet was really slow in most places, for example in Khiva the “fast DSL” was around 30 Kb/s on average, even though it was written 512 MB/s on the sign and we were the only customers.

So, we are sitting in the early morning in some old building internet cafe in Khiva, waiting for 30 minutes for our emails to load, and enjoying the nice view outside, when BAM - Peteris reads an email from Diana Pauna, SSE Riga prorector - YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO WRITE YOUR THESIS THIS YEAR. Why? Because of the new policy in school, students with too many failed courses cannot write the thesis. Peteris has 4, thus he's out and will only do it next year. Peteris goes outside for a walk to reconsider his life values or at least his plans for the upcoming year, while I start thinking what to do!!! I am left “on ice” alone! I don't want to be alone! :D And I cannot do anything from here with such internet! What is more, we were stuck in Khiva for one more day than planned, because of the inconvenient transportation options (Khiva is a far away small city in the middle of the desert, after all). Even with slow internet, I managed to write 2 emails: one to Diana Pauna asking whether at least I am allowed to write it (I have 3 debts), and another to Igors Grigorjevs, explaining the extreme situation and asking whether he would like to write the thesis with me (I discussed this option with him long time ago, before deciding to write with Peteris, and he to my knowledge is writing it alone something about education, which I like). I also write messages to my dear friends Reda and Julia, who were the only ones that got my SMS messages from Uzbekistan, and I got theirs. I asked them to call my dear friend Ineta, who is in Riga, and ask her to make sure that both Diana and Igors replies my emails TODAY, because deadline for thesis proposal is already on Monday. Thank you once again Reda, Julia and especially Ineta for your help!!!

So, on Sunday morning, after 18 hours of Urghench-Taskent train, we are back in Taskent. Of course, the first thing we do is go to internet cafe. First, I read the email from Diana - yes, you are allowed to write your thesis. However, no reply from Igors! And its 7 o'clock in the morning in Riga now! And I need to dig out Igors out of the ground to get his reply, even though his phone is switched off! BIG thanks once again to Ineta and Harijs Rokpelnis, who helped me a lot to TRY to reach Igors in any possible way. However, as we found out from his flatmate, Igors is in France, with no phone to reach him!!! FUCK !!! (sorry for swearing, but that's exactly the worded I shouted out at that moment) PLAN B - my good friend Danielius, who is now in Honkong, is online in Skype. He was almost one of those I considered to write the thesis with. I talk with him. I don't like his field (finance, stocks), he doesn't like mine (decision making/economic psychology). Better write alone on something you like than with someone on something you don't like, I think. So I wish him good luck, and we rush to the Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan border.

Another 17 hours or so by bus and on Monday morning we are back in Almaty. Exhausted, hungry yet happy. I take Peteris recharger (mine is still broken), my laptop and rush to internet cafe. I have 7 hours until the deadline to submit the proposal, alone. Its just one page, but two things matter hear - if your topic is rejected, thats it, you are only allowed to write the thesis next year. If its a conditional or full pass, even then you cannot change the topic afterwards, just slightly change the research question. Thus its really important. I decide not to risk and take the topic that was sort of commented to be ok by one lecturer, the one which we planned to write together with Peteris about after some considerations. 1 hour before deadline I am finished, just before submitting give it for review to my dear friends Julia and Jana (both graduates of SSE Riga), thank you especially to Jana for your valuable comments! And thanks once again to Ineta who helped to print the the proposal and submit a hard copy as well, as it was also required. My proposed thesis Title is “Consumption vs Investment: Choices of Low-income Households in Lithuania.”  Its a research in the field of economic psychology and decision making, applying theories of rational choice, bounded rationality, intertemporal choice and discounted future models. The research question is: “How do low-income households in Lithuania decide between consumption and investment type goods?” Now, I am just waiting for the answer from Degree Committee, whether the topic is ok.

Whom is to blame for such a story? Firstly, me of course, for being not responsible and not planning this ahead of time. But also, I would put a slight shadow on our prorector, too, who didn't inform ANY of such students as Peteris in advance about their situation. I am sure some of our coursemates will find it out only after the submission of the proposal. I asked Diana in the email why she didn't inform earlier about this, and her reply was: “Dear Marius, I agree that I should have gone through all the student lists in early fall and should have corresponded with all on their different cases. I guess here I definitely have some room for improvement. Wishing you all the best, Diana” Wonderful :) Hope you liked the story, and wait for impressions and of course some photos about Uzbekistan.

P.S. Interesting fact of the day - if you would gather all the golden teeth of Uzbeks it would be more gold than our national gold reserve. Its Peteris' comment and it can be very much true!!! Every second person there, even young ones, have at least half of his mouth stocked up with golden teeth. Any explanations? I still didn't get whether its because of their teeth problems or some kind of culture/fashion/status/showing off thing.

When I came to Almaty I thought that it was the middle of nowhere. I thought wrong. :)

Our trip to Uzbekistan is going great, after succesfully crossing the boarder (around 6 hours, 7 passport checks and many other adventures), we already have been in Taskent, Samarkand and right now I am writing from a gods forgotten internet cafe in the suburbs of Bukhara. Internet is very slow here, nor we took the wire for uploading photos, thus photos will only come when we come back after some days. Lots of photos. As well as detailed descriptions of every city that we visit, each of it very different and unique  - only when we come back. As for now - we are alive, happy, still have some money and continue marching deeper and deeper into the desert! Next stop - Khiva!

P.S. : My russian is exploding! Getting replies from locals like “vi naverna iz rasiji?” is quite a compliment. :) But its even better to pretend to be a russian from Taskent, which worked a few times already, cause then you get 8-10 times cheaper tickets for museums and various other sites, just because you are from Uzbekistan. Otherwise - foreigner fees. :) 2 scenarios: 1: “Vi at kuda?” “Iz Litvi i Latviji.” - “3800 sum, pazalsta” 2: “Vi at kuda?” “Iz Tashkent.” - “400 sum, pazalsta” 

P.S. 2 : Me and Peteris have agreed not to take shaving equipment with us and not to shave for the whole trip, just for fun. Of course, as Peteris is blond and I am not, it has much greater effect on me than on him. You will notice it in the photos later. :)

P.S. 3 : Interesting fact of the day - we are as rich as never here in Uzbekistan! 1 LTL is 500 SUM, and the problem is that their largest banknote is 1000 SUM, which is actually quite rare and most of them are 500 SUM banknotes! Thus our wallets are quite fat now, imagine having 200 banknotes with you in your backpack, pockets and wallets! :)

Yesterday me and Peteris, after many adventures and hours, finally managed to get the Uzbekistan visa. First, we paid 100 dollars for the invitation letter (each) to the traveling agency. It took around a week. Then, after 2 hours of waiting near the entrance of Uzbekistan embassy (at least they had benches, not like China’s embassy, but I imagine waiting like this in winter outside), we found out that we can only pay in dollars for the visa, thus we rushed to the nearest bank to change dollars. When we already got in to get the viza, we once again found out that we need something more - fill in an application form with a photo, which we of course didn’t have - travel agent didn’t inform us about that. But a brilliant idea came to our minds to tear apart our dormitory cards, that is, to tear out our photos from that document. They are easy to replace anyway, and they do it for free. :)

So here we are, with visas in our hands, full of optimism and excitiment, leaving today in the evening to Uzbekistan! The visa will last for 11 days, thus we plan to spend a total of 13 days on the journey. We are taking a 6 p.m. train from Almaty to Shymkent (a 500.000 population city in southern Kazakhstan), together with one uzbek girl Saya and her father, who are from Tashkent (capital of Uzbekistan). She lives in the dormitories. She helped us a lot, for example arranged that we would get cheaper unofficial train tickets, so we will actually get a 2-bed kupe for just 2500 Tgs each (50 LTL) for a 16 hour ride! We should arrive at Shymkent at 10 a.m. Sunday morning or so, and then Saya’s dad will take us all with his car which he left there to Taskent, which is just near the border, 100km away from Shymkent. And from there we will be on our own, just the two of us, with plans to see not only Tashkent, but also Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and maybe something more! Just me and Peteris, because all other exchange students have student visas (we have business) and had much, much bigger problems leaving the country, thus they are going around Kazakhstan, heading west to see Taraz, Turkistan (said to be most beautiful city in Kazakhstan) and Aralsk (near the drying out Aral sea). Don’t expect much internet connection in this country, so I announce an autumn break for the blog. Wish us luck! :)

So so so, the week of mid-term exams is over for me. So I will devote this hopefully short entry to exams. I had 3 of them, one on Wednesday and two on Thursday: Consumer Behaviour, Leadership & Motivation and Advanced Marketing.

All of them lasted between 1 hour and 1 hour and 15 minutes. All of them contained some kind of case, which was almost absoultely not connected to the questions, followed by some open ended questions. Only in Leadership and Motivation questions were actually ABOUT the case, in Advanced Marketing, for example, it was so: a case about Coca-Cola, and then such questions as: what can Coca-Cola do to increase its market share through customer value, satisfaction and retention? Its basically a theory question, for which you didn’t need ANY information from the case. But who cares anyway, there weren’t that bad actually.

What is more? They were EASY. Damn easy. Of course, its related to the fact that 2 of them are about Marketing, and I am also taking Marketing Communications class, and they all are related to a big extend, thus many theories and models overlap, so its easier. And many of the basics are already known from Marketing courses we had back in SSE Riga. Still, doesn’t motivate to learn very much, cause we already knew that you can’t expect a hard exam here, at least from our lecturers. On average me and Peteris studied for about 0.5 - 1.5 hours for each exam (throughout the semester) apart from attenting lectures. Oh, just I read several chapters of the Consumer Behaviour book some week or two ago, because its interesting and its the only book I got from the library, and the only thing I have to read (P.S. now I got a package from mom with “Verslo klase” magazine, my favourite one, so I read that). Me and Peteris were even so damn arrogant that we decided to play a game of Age of Empires 2 for 1.5 hours just before the Advanced Marketing exam, instead of rehearsing the material. :) All I want to say by this is that low requirements DO NOT motivate to study!

On the other hand, I cannot say that I am not learning anything here. On the contrary, I am very satisfied with the new concepts that I learn in Marketing, and that all the 3 marketing related courses are related, thus its easier to get the big picture and also really remember and understand everything. Thus, don’t worry dear family, I am learning here, and learning a lot, even though I don’t study. Maybe its even better this way, to have easy exams. Cause these exams just asks you to remember some general concepts, but those are the most powerful ones, and actually after a few months of any course its only those few concepts that remain in your head! Then all the students would see studying years more like holiday, less stress, less depression, less suicides - happier and more people - higher GDP! :D

Yes, today I, as a Teaching Assistant, was helping the lecturer to supervise 2 mid-term exams of Marketing Research course. That is, make sure that nobody cheats, as its a bit complicated for the lecturer to see all the students, when there is almost 40 of them in each exam, packed closely together in a small classroom. It raised a lot of thoughts and emotions in me, that is why I decided to write about it.

First exam at 10.00 . Feeling a bit nervous before the start. The lecturer (his name is Vladimir, by the way, he is from Ukraine, around 55 years old, a bit similar to my dad, just with a small beard and much more grey hair.) explains the rules - 60 minutes for 50 questions (half True-False, half multiple choice), no mobile phones, no books/notes, no cheating. Penalty for cheating - 0 points from the exam (very soft, I would say, in some other courses here its at least Fail for the whole course, while this mid-term counts for only 25% of the overall grade. In SSE Riga its much more strict - you are kicked out from school with no questions asked. And it works.)

Exam starts, I am sitting in front of the class watching them, just like the lecturer. There are some of my friends there, too, coursemates from other classes. And guess what - after some time I start noticing a few students copying answers from the ones sitting next to them. What do I do? Nothing! I thought I would, but I just can’t! Even though I don’t know them, and even if I never will, as I am here just for another 2 months. I still feel myself on the student side, and would feel terrible being a “stukach”. Yes, I would definately not HELP them to cheat, that is, I would not ACT against my duties and rules, but doing nothing, that is, INACTING, is so much easier, although just as bad. What do you think? I will not change the system anyway, and what will it change if this one or two students will fail or get through? Do I really care? Should I just do it because of the principle, the value? I think SSE Riga has given me this value - no cheating. But now I see this case as a drop in the ocean of cheating and corruption of Kazakhstan, and just don’t have the guts to do anything. Or simply don’t care. Exam ends, everything is fine.

The second exam, 11.30 . This class seems a bit more calm, though I can’t stop noticing one guy from the first row peeking all the time to the girl next to him. He is very nervous. Again, I don’t do anything. The girl leaves earlier, and as soon as she leaves the guy starts “spitting out” answers like hell - 20 answers in 2 minutes or so, without even reading them, and afterwards sits doing nothing for the remaining time, nervously pretending to be proofreading (not very well, though). Clearly, he saw them from the girl. After he submits his paper as well, I check his name. The girl’s name I knew already, she is my teammate in Consumer Behaviour and Marketing Communication classes. This time I can’t be silent. After exam is finished and everyone leaves, I tell the lecturer I have a big suspicion. We check the works of this guy and the girl, compare them - bingo, they are completely the same. However, the lecturer tells its not enough evidence, I should have told it during the exam. Now all he can do is just ask the guy to retake the exam one more time.

So here I am, being a “stukach”, without the guy knowing about it. Its definately easier to hurt other people when you don’t see it directly. For example, its probably easier psychologicaly to drop a bomb from a plane on 100 people than to shoot them with a rifle, don’t you think (sorry for a strong example)? Do I feel better now? Do I feel like I have done my duty? Do I feel like I changed anything? No I don’t! Its just a drop in the ocean. It won’t change the system. All it changed is the grade of mid-term for this guy, his values won’t change either, and in the end he will pass the course anyway, without getting much knowledge about it and not caring about it. So was it worth it? Yes, probably it was, if all the Teaching Assistants would report all such cases, probably it would change something for the good. But it is very unlikely to happen. The penalties must be made much more strict, like in SSE Riga, than something might change. Students will start thinking whether its worth it. By the way, final though, would I have done it if it would have been vice versa? That is, if the girl who is my friend would have done it instead of the guy? No,  I would definately remain silent.

For the end, just an interesting fact - here in KIMEP there is a requirement that all exams must be graded in 3 days! Do I think its good? No! Of course, its good for students, in SSE Riga we often get annoyed waiting more than a month for exam results to come, but think about the lecturers as well! Grading 100 exams in 3 days is just insane! And whats the point? Students can wait, its not like they will die by not knowing the results so early.

I hate waking up early! As promised, today we went to check out the Tamgaly Petroglyphs, the famous budhist paintings on the rocks, a site included in the UNESCO heritage list, which are around 100km west of Almaty. But it ain't no highway from Vilnius to Kaunas, such distance in Kazakhstan takes almost 3 hours. And not because of the traffic jams, there are no. Because of the roads and the bus that we had. Check out the bus photo. Old school style. :) Forget about sleeping - we were jumping like frogs inside it.

The paintings themselves actually weren't anything too impressive. We had a guide who told us about them, but in the end it was just simple budha paintings on the rocks, nothing very interesting. However, I very much enjoyed the trip itself, as the nature around was very beautiful. In general, I am starting to understand that there are 2 types of Kazakhstan I am experiencing: life of KIMEP (university) and the REAL kazakhstan, which you see when you travel outside Almaty. That is, the endless steps, rocks, mountains, hundreds of sheep and cows herding, and real kazakhs on horses. The second type is what I came here for, and I want to have it as much as possible. Although the first one, living in dorms and university life, is also very interesting. Next week is the week of mid-term exams, so nothing very interesting will be going on. Oh, maybe just the fact that I will be “stukach”, supervising students in Marketing Research exam, as one of my Teaching Assistant's duties. Even though in the end I lost hope to defeat the Kazakhstan biurocracy, and I will not get any salary for it, I am working as a volunteer. Sad, but its still worth it - I enjoy it and its a very interesting experience. For the end, there are 2 more photos - one with me on the top of the rocks near at the Tamgaly site, near the river, and second - very interesting houses we saw on the way there, its like a small restaurant near the road. As you can see, the weather here is still great - sunny and warm, possible to be with T-shirt during day time. Well, at least if you are climbing up, which makes you hot. If you are standing then you definately need a sweather or a jacket. :)

P.S. Congratulations to my dad once again, who is having his 50th birthday today!!! My present is arriving by KazPost, be patient. :)

Another very exciting weekend is taking place, and its not even over yet - tomorrow we are going to Tamgaly Petroglyphs, a very famous historical place about 100km west from Almaty. There are thousands of ancient carvings and paintings on the walls, which are several thousand years old, and it is one of the two places in Kazakhstan that is included in the UNESCO list. About that I will write tomorrow, while this entry is about Friday and Saturday.

The first interesting thing on Friday was our first basketball game, which our team played against another university, Turan. It was a friendly game, but still very exciting. We lost by around 20 points, but I think we played really well, just we need some time to get to know each other better. We don't even know each other's names very well yet, but it seems that the other guys in the team are really cool and we should become good friends. We already plan some partying together. :) And next week we will already have our uniforms ready, can't wait for it, cause it will be my first ever official sport uniform. Oh, and Peteris decided to join the team as well, he also played in the game and did it really well. But we still need to play the game against each other for our bet. :)

After the game, a party was awaiting for us organized by KIMEP students, this time outside KIMEP campus, in an old cinema's premises. It was a HUGE one - hard to say the number of students there, but I think it was around 300-500. When me, Charlses and Peteris came there, we saw huge lines (Kazakhstan biurocracy - you needed to show your ID when getting the ticket beforehand, but with the ticket you still need to show your ID again. Simply waste of time.), so we went for a few beers in a nearby bar. After that we came back, though to our surprise party was far from being in full swing yet - there were all kinds of performances on the stage, some small competitions etc. Though nothing too interesting. It reminded me and Peteris our trip to Stockholm and the famous/legendary banquet-party there - somebody on the stage shouts ANYTHING, nobody cares what, and the whole crowd goes shouting as well. Like in some rock concerts. Anyway, we had some fun dancing and saying hi to other students whom we don't know. Yes, its getting more and more confusing these days - all the time we are approached by some guys and girls who say “hii, Peteris, hii Marius, kak dela?”, though we have NO idea who they are! Yes, its hard to remember all the faces when you meet so many new people every week, not to mention the names, which are so hard! For example during the party we spent some 1 hour outside just chatting with one girl who was with us in the opera last week, but both of us just couldn't remember her name! We still don't know it! :) And this happens all the time. We came back at around 4 AM, and slept long, as always. I still enjoy not having any business in the mornings here. :)

Half of Saturday I spent sleeping, but the other half was much more exciting! We were invited to join some girls (among them Nurshat and Banu) to go to the mountains, where grandmother of one of these girls owns a little restaurant. We were just spending time in an open tent, having all kinds of dishes again, but this Kazakh dinner was even better, as it was in the nature in the mountains! We ate very tasty soup, salads, tea, and finally shaslyk. LOTS of shaslyk. :) Yummy! Below is one photo with us sitting near the table, you can see the pile of shaslyk on the table.

So tomorrow we will be going to see those Tamgaly petroglyphs, and next week is the week of mid-term exams, so we should start studying a bit soon. And after mid-term exams me and Peteris will be going to Uzbekistan!!! Can't wait for it. :) Oh, and me and Peteris are starting to get concerned with our Bachelor Thesis - we need to submit our topic proposal until October 27th, so we will have to decide that next week, before we leave for travelling. I will keep you informed what did we decide upon. :)

As I previously was an active member of the Student Association myself, for me it was personally very interesting to observe the Student Government elections and how they are happening in another university, namely here in KIMEP. So this entry is devoted to tell you the specifics of KIMEP university Student Government elections, and how they differ from SSE Riga.

What first striked me is the BIG posters that everyone makes. And I mean it, BIG. By walking around the campus you can see posters and banners hanged between trees or on the walls from A4 paper size up to 4×6 meter size!!! Imagine 4×6 meter size banner in our school of a presidential candidate! It looks like it would be elections to be Kazakhstan's president! I don't even try to guess how much these posters costed. But KIMEP students are rich, cause tuition fee here is very big - around 7000 dollars per year. So I guess they can all afford it, but still. Many of them also made flyers, which they distribute even door to door in the dormitory! Yes, we were calmly having our supper with some guests (my “saltibarsciai”, by the way), when a bunch of guys came with flyers saying “vote for us, vote for us”. Direct marketing, so to say. Nothing much else was happening throughout the week, except for one candidate who made a free tea stand in the KIMEP Grill (cafeteria). Immediatelly reminded me of Henrijs and Marten and their free sandwiches last year. :) Or our famous politician V. Uspaskich and his concert with helicopter dropping free ice-cream (read something like that in newspaper long time ago). Cheap tricks, in other words. So, to conclude, candidates were not very creative.

Today, however, was the final day, on which presentations took place. The system is such: president candidates not just together with vice-president, as in SSE Riga, but also with 5 or 6 (don't remember) so called Senators, basically additional members of Student Government.  However, in presentations only the president makes a speech. There were 5 candidating teams in total, and each president made a 10 minute speech, without any powerpoint (as in our school). It took place in the Great Hall, which could host probably some 300 students, but even though there are close to 5000 students in KIMEP, only around 50-80 were there to listen to the presentations. And I heard that usually only 10% (!) of students actually vote. This tells a lot about how much the students care about it here, and it is closely connected to the very bad reputation of Student Goverment here. Everything was in russian, but I had a few girls around me to help translate things I didn't understand.

Regarding the candidates themselves, I must say all of them looked really serious and strong. The overall view is much stronger than in SSE Riga, where, in my opinion, every year there are just 1 or 2 really strong candidates, and you can feel it from the very beginning. But I think this can be easily explained by 2 reasons: firstly, the size of our school is more than 10 times smaller, so simple statistics say that to be equal for every 1 strong candidate in our school KIMEP should have 10 strong candidates. :) Secondly, in SSE Riga its always first year students who candidate, while here, as in most big universities with 4 years of studies, candidates are much more mature and aware of the situation and problems of the university. Although they were far from perfect and they told a lot of bullshitting, all of them were concentrating on what they will do, what they promise, or what their plan is (for example, they will make Wi-Fi internet etc.). Although it once again reminded me of my good buddy Henrijs (our current SA president) - they were all concentrating on satisfying primary (basic) student needs - internet, car parking, dormitory renovation, cheaper prices in shops etc. First level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you know what I am talking about. :)

Tomorrow will be voting, and I already picked one candidate that I will vote for, which seemed the most serious for me. To sum up, I really enjoyed observing the elections, its a very interesting experience. Hopefully it wasn't too boring for you to read about it, as most of you are probably much less interested in it than I am. :)

Sunday was indeed an interesting day. We started off going to Medeo one more time (it was first time for Peteris, though), just to climb up the same 841 stairs once again. There were 4 of us: me, Peteris, Nurshat and her good friend Banu (a kazakh girl as well). I sometimes call her Balu, like the bear from the Maugli book :) Anyway, what happened this time is that the weather got really bad when we were on the top! It was cloudy and foggy already since morning, but later it started raining, which doesn't happen very often here in Almaty! Nevertheless, we still had fun. And what really amazed me is how mountains look in autumn - with all the yellow trees. Never seen that before, and it looks amazing! Below is the photo of me and Peteris competing (as always) in running up those stairs. As they say, its important to participate (compete), not to win, thus I will not mention who won. :)

It rained the whole afternoon, which we spent sleeping. Interesting point - rain reminds us of home! Yes, whenever it rains here, I think of Vilnius and Riga, cause that is the common autumn weather in these cities. :)

And now comes the most interesting part - while in the mountains, Aliya called and finally kept her promise and invited us to her home for dinner! We gladly agreed. She lives in a flat apartment similar to ours about 20 minutes taxi ride away from KIMEP. Apart from Aliya, there were also her mom, older sister, younger cousin and one good friend. Her dad had some business and couldn't make it. Which was actually maybe even better, as we were enjoying a quite relaxed atmosphere, something I didn't expect. We were chatting quite openly and freely. It probably would have been a bit different with the father in place, though you never know. Our first impression was WOW when we saw the table - it looked like our tables during Christmas or Easter! So many served dishes! Aliya's mom confirmed us that it is common for kazakhs to serve so much food to any guests that are coming. What is more, when someone has a birthday in the house, all the friends and relatives come without invitation during the whole day, so you keep the table ready throughout the day.

So, here is a detailed description of what and how we ate. We were first offered some traditional salads and juice, nothing special, as well as Kaza, a big sliced sausage made from Horse meat. It was rather fat and tasty. In general, they told that Kazakh dishes are usually quite fat. Very soon after, the main dish was brought, the most national Kazakh dish - Beshbarmak. It consists of lamb meat, mixed together with specific big and flat pieces of noodle substence and a lot of onions. Very very tasty and filling, though quite hard to digest. What is interesting to note here is that actually almost nowhere in Almaty you are served knives when you eat, you have to ask for them specifically! Beshbarmak itself is traditionally eaten with hands, although this time we didn't try it. :) At the side, we could also support our stomachs with Baursak - a tradional Kazakh bread, which is very similar to our “ponchiki” (like the ones our grandma makes). Very tasty once again. After Bershbarmak, tradional after-beshbarmak bullion is served, that is, the soup that is left from making Beshbarmak. It is mixed with very salty cottage cheese or something similar. Liked it too. :) They drink it from small ear-less cups-bowls (around 300ml), but they never fill in more than half. After this, the tea ceremony followed. Traditionally kazakhs drink Indian (Ceylon) black tea mixed with milk, again from the same type of bowls. They always fill in only half of the bowl, cause if they would fill in full, it would mean that they want us to leave (meaning, drink the last bowl and go). Near the tea we were enjoying some cookies and candies, as well as traditional kazakh dessert, called Chiak-Chiak, which is an interesting bread-honey mixture. So we had quite a lot of such rounds of half-cup teas, enjoying a nice conversation in russian, together with some english and translation (the mom didn't speak in English). In total we spent around 3 hours by the table, and afterwards they packed us some remaining food to take home (Baursak bread, fruits and Kaza), which is also very common here. So to sum up, it was a very interesting experience, and I was so full as I have haven't been since Easter or Christmas. Only our grandmother can make us more full. :D Unfortunately, I still didn't get pictures from Aliya from the dinner, will hopefully upload them later.

Finally! The day that I was waiting for! This Friday was the first basketball training with the coach, the training of the KIMEP basketball team.  Although initially I confused the coach with some silly young guy, who was about to play basketball with jeans, as he was putting his sport-shoes on jeans. Good that I didn’t comment anything. :D He really looks young, maybe 22-23, but probably he is 25-30 or so. And he has attitude and authority, so its fine, I like him. As many players have left the team last year due to graduation, there are quite a few vancancies, and I was promised a place in the team. Yes, this means that the level of the team is not too good, especially for a 4000 student university, however don’t forget its Kazakhstan, not Lithuania. :) And actually there are a few really good players. So right now I am already ordering a KIMEP basketball uniform, with shirt and shorts, my number will be 5. Its really good, because I needed to by sport shorts anyway. :) Already in some 2 weeks a tournament awaits. Now we will have trainings 3 times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and I will quit American football trainings now. Peteris seems to be doing better there, or at least he is more excited about this sport, so I guess he stays. Though he promised to check out basketball trainings, too. We still have a game to play between each other for 1000 tenge (20 LTL), that was the deal. :) And so far I am still beating him in Age of Empires 2, we play it once in a while in the evenings, but he is getting better and better. :)

I am now starting to worry for the approaching mid-term break, which will start right after mid-term exams, on 18th of October, and will last for 10 days. Why worry? Because all the nice plans to visit China are fading away now! Why? Because it costs f***ing 300 dollars to get a tourist viza for 2 weeks! What a heck is the point of making the viza so expensive? They are loosing millions of dollars in tourism, I bet, just because of this. Last year it was much cheaper, lets say Janis, the latvian guy from SSE Riga who was here last year, paid only about 75 dollars for it. But the rules got stricter during olympics, and of course they don’t bother to change them back. Same with Kirgizstan, as I wrote earlier - around 200-300 dollars for viza, already since last year! Uzhas! (Awful!) On Monday we hope to clarify it till the end, whether its possible to get it cheaper for China or not. Plan B - Uzbekistan, and if that will not work out, then we will join other exchange students, who already lost their hope to go outside the country due to student viza’s, and decided to go around Kazakhstan, to the west - Turkistan, Aral Sea etc. That we will do, sooner or later, as well, but I would be very very dissapointed if I wouldn’t manage to go to Uzkebistan and China! And in beginning of December, we will be going to Astana, everyone recommends it to go there in winter. Mom, dad, could you please call the China’s embassy in Vilnius and ask how much it SHOULD cost to get viza for lithuanians to China (tourist viza for 2 weeks)? And whether its possible to do it without the help of travelling agencies. Thanks. :)