Summer 2019, Part III: Coming to Kazakhstan

We finally come to the event that took up the most of my summer.  But before I could arrive to my new home for the month, I first had to leave my old one.  It was a lovely grey afternoon when as my mom & I drove down our driveway:

My mom was headed west over the Pacific for work, while I was making my way east.  Unfortunately, all the flights were super crowded & me being standby (as usual) did not get on & had to spend a night in LAX.  But the next morning was another beautiful day as I finally did get to take off & take in the last sights of familiar home:

The East Coast was much more sunny by the time we neared Newark airport, & I could see the City quite well on the approach:

I've flown through Newark many many times, but I think I've only exited the airport two or maybe three times.  This time being the first time I got to take the train, which leads to a pretty cool train station:

Around the area they have posters with famous folk from New Jersey (or at least, I assume they're all from New Jersey) & quotes by them.  Below is one of Mark & Scott Kelly, the only siblings so far to have both gone to space.  For those who haven't heard, Scott Kelly is known mostly for his "Year in Space" wherein he spent 342 days aboard the International Space Station.  His twin brother Mark is known mostly for being the husband of Gabrielle Giffords, the U.S. Representative from Tucson that was shot in 2011.  Both of the brothers have done many more amazing things both in space & on the ground, but you can look that all up if you're interested:

I was not on that train platform for 342 days, but it sure felt like it.  The view was nice though:

Eventually, I made my way to Queens, New York City, where I was going to spend the night.  In the subway station they had some cool mosaics:

I flew in a day early because I wanted to make sure that I made it on time despite standby delays.  As I mentioned earlier, I did not get on the first day so it was a good thing we planned for that, but I did manage to find a room for $41 a night at the rather nice Q4 Hotel (but it's actually a hostel):

After a very restful night's sleep, I went to church at Wellspring Church NYC & then hung around all day because we didn't need to get to the airport until fairly late in the afternoon.  Fortunately, there was a nice little park by the hotel:

But eventually I made my way to JFK airport via the train:

I still had a long wait ahead of me as our flight didn't leave until like midnight, but our group slowly gathered over the next few hours.  This next picture is included not so much for the funnily-named drink--although it was pretty good--but because it happens to be the first picture I took that includes someone else from the group that was to become like family over the course of the next 5ish weeks.  Say "hello" to Kaely...or at least her arm:

But later we took a much better picture picture of the group.  I apologize for the weird colouring on parts of it--the original had a bit of white-out & I tried to adjust it but that marks the first time I've tried to photo edit anything other than just cutting, pasting, blurring, & cloning so it didn't turn out...great.  But no amount of skill could do justice to the greatness of these friends:

Anyway, a bit before midnight we got on the plane.  It must have been an older plane though, because it had something I'd never seen before: an S-video port on the seatback screen!  Or maybe S-videos have some usage other than the ones with which I'm familiar?  I don't know but in any case:

Soon we left JFK, as shown in this amazing shot:

& eventually we arrived in Istanbul:

The iconic tower

The iconic new airport

The iconic 300th plane.

Deplaning in Istanbul was neat because we did not have a jetbridge--they put us right on the tarmac--& I had never been directly on the ground by a plane as big as the 777 that we were in (please ignore the disheveled state we're all in after the like 11 hour flight & focus on the cool aeroplane):

We then had a 5-hour layover before getting on the plane to Almaty.  On this plane, I learned my first Turkish word:

&, more importantly, got my first views of the country which I would call home for almost 40 days:

The above is just a random part of Kazakhstan that we happened to be over when we first opened our window around 4 A.M. local time after our nap.  Below is my first good sight of the city sticking its structures out of the haze:

On the ground they had a plane painted to look like a snow leopard, which was neat & also funny:

& we took in our first good look at the mountains that we would soon see every day:

After settling in a little bit, we all went to lunch at a restaurant & I got to try my hand at really reading Russian for the first time.  Of course, there were like 3 languages represented on just this menu's cover so it was difficult, but fun:

Later that day we went to the store & just had to get a picture of the milk that they had been telling us about.  As you can see, something as low as 1% fat is not nearly as ubiquitous as it is over here:

We had many more adventures those first couple of days, but those were more the kind of stories that should be told in person than in pictures so for now that's all I'll share.