Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Yesterday we brought Ethan some 4-inch plastic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Apparently they only started getting the program here a few years ago, so they're pretty popular right now. Ethan loved them, although we had some pretty major leg and hand losses in battle early on (most of the toys here are made in China, and break pretty easily.) At least we could converse with him in the universal sounds of battle "arrg!" and "ohhhh!". We had little boy wars with Ninja's attacking each other, and later riding around on the toy lion, leopard, and giraffe (which luckily kept all their limbs). The Ninja's definitely mellowed out as we played with them, even if they were still carrying large weapons in the few remaining hands available for battle.

Ethan also turned into a fierce lion for a while. This kid can really make a scary face! He crawled around growling, and picking up large dogs in his mouth to eat later. (He's really good at making animal sounds -- the best is a really excellent pig grunt.) Later, we got to take the kids outside into the orphanage play area for a while. They have some swings there, and some things to crawl around on, and a tiny pool they fill up in the summer. It doesn't seem like they play outside on it much in the fall or winter (Kazakh's are very concerned about the kids getting cold, and tend to put big coats on and warm hats in weather that we wouldn't wear more than a shirt in) . Ethan showed off his climbing ability, and we also kicked the ball around with him some too.
Yesterday was a beautiful, warm day, probably around 70 degrees. We've been really lucky with the weather here. Summer's are very hot, and winters are very cold, so it's great to be here in the fall. It's been very pleasant most days, especially when the sun is out, which it has been recently. There is, however, a lot of dust. We're essentially in the middle of a desert, so I think it just blows in from there. Or maybe it's from the unpaved streets and sidewalks in most of the city. In any case, there are piles of dirt on the sides of the paved roads, and it blows up and into the air every time a car goes by, or the wind blows. We are frequently covered in dust by the time we get home. Yesterday, there was a woman sweeping dirt from the side of the road by hand, with a small hand-made broom, but it was somewhat futile since there was still lots left behind.

Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the world, but has a population of only around 15 million, a little more than New York City. This means that there are large areas of the country that are quite desolate. KyzylOrda seems to be in the middle of one of these vast desolate areas, at least as far as we can tell from the map and our flight here. There is a river nearby, which is used to irrigate crops in the region, including rice and cotton. We are also near the Aral sea, which used to be filled with lots of fish and an active fishing industry. The Soviets took too much water from it, killing all the fish, but the Kazakh government got some funding from the World Bank to reclaim it by building a dam and filling it back up with water. We met a man from the UK here who was working on the project, and he said it was going very well and the fish are returning.