The end draws near!

I now know my permanent site in Kazakhstan. I will spend the next two years in Petropavlovsk, which used to be the most northern site in Kazakhstan (and possibly the world) until this year when there is a new site thirty kilometers closer to Russia than I. It apparently has excellent cheese and is a major producer of pasta and grain products. The soil of the steppe is very rich and the whole area was and remains the breadbasket of the region.

I have already bought a doublonka, which is a heavy Russian coat that goes to my knees. I think it is fake fur, but you never know. I paid 12,000 tenge in Baraholka, which is the largest bazzar in Kazakhstan and probably the region. It is a very heavy jacket, and I anticipate that it will be very warm in the coming months. I will visit Petropavlovsk at the end of next week, and will take a 33 hour train ride to get there, much like traveling from California to Oregon. If I miss my stop I may be in trouble since the train goes from Petro to Russia, for which I will not have a visa.

Baraholka was an experience, although not as terrible as I had feared. It is really big; I only saw a small part of it when I was there, but the but took 30 minutes to crawl out of the parking lot. Traffic efficiency is not well developed. I am actually in the internet cafe writing this so it needs to be short. I will try and add some anecdotes to my next post, hopefully on Monday.