Travel

We didn't update this yesterday with our traveling so we are doing so today. We rented a car and drove to JFK on December 4th. Not too bad of a drive. JFK is such a huge airport (first time there for the both of us). Of course we were there 4 hrs early so we had time to kill but just sat and people watched. Flight left at 9:35 PM. We arrived in Franfurt, Germany at 11:10am their time on Saturday, Dec 5. We had a little wait there. We met the other couple adopting with us Gretchen and Carl there. (very nice couple). We took the shuttle bus over to the plane together. We were driven to the plane itself and had to walk the stairs onto the plane (never did that before). That plane was supposed to leave at 1:25PM but there were difficulties with the plane. They had to do a tire change as we were on the plane. So, approx 45 min to an hour later we were off to Astana, Kazakhstan. We arrived there approx 12:30AM. This stop was to just drop people off. We left Astana at approx 1:30isham and arriving in Almaty, Kazakhstan at approx 3:30am. After getting our luggage we were met by our driver. We arrived at Hotel Kazakhstan at about 4:30am. After check in, we crashed. Check out was noon, so we checked out and ourselves along with Carl and Gretchen decided to see Almaty. We did some walking around and found a beautiful park with statues, a beautiful church and a little bazaar fair going on. In our journey we even had the pleasure of using a "bathroom" there. We had to pay 30 tenge to use the bathroom and it was an interesting one. Literally a hole on the floor. If you could see the look on my face wondering how i was to go to the bathroom... what an experience.. lol.

What we can say is that Lufthansa is an excellent airline. What service and nice folks.

As well there were a few weddings going on so the couples and wedding parties were getting photos at this park as well. We proceeded on to go into one of the open markets.. tons of fruits/veggies, meats, Christmas decorations, etc.. so much stuff to see.

Almaty is beautiful and it was a fun day. Our driver picked us up at 6:20PM and brought us back to the airport. We checked in and waited a bit and boarded at like 8:50. This was a quick hour or so trip via plane (air astana) to Karaganda. After getting our luggage and stuff, we were met by our driver and translater there and brought to the hotel Dostar Alum by about 11:30PM.

We are attaching some pix from Almaty.