WOW! I didn't realize I had gotten the latest comments. We've been gone a month....was on 4 continents in a month...North America (of course), Europe, Africa and Asia.
Met our daughter in Barcelona in early April and went on a 2 wk. Mediterranean cruise from there calling at ports in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt and Malta. Was in Rome for Easter Sunday and stood in a crowd of hundreds of thousands in front of St. Peter's Basilica to hear Easter Services and the Pope came out on the balcony to bless the crowd.
It was the first time to Egypt. We stayed in port overnight and had 2 full days giving us plenty of time to see the pyramids and the sphinx and take a dinner cruise on the Nile, visit the mosque of Mohammed Ali and watch a paper-making demonstration at the Papyrus Institute plus tour the cities of Cairo and Alexandria. Just glad the weather was mild...I was afraid it would already be really hot in the desert.
Barcelona was one of my husband's favorite ports when he was in the Navy during the Korean war, so we stayed 3 nights there altogether. Loved walking the Las Ramblas.
After the cruise, we went to Kazakhstan. I don't think I'm supposed to say where she's serving, but I don't know why. Everyone was so nice. We had a great time. We visited the orphanage. I had been sending beads and she took them one Sunday. I had expected they would have fun with them, but never dreamed of the intricate jewelry designs they made. More than a dozen of the teenage girls got into the floor and started turning out earrings, broaches, necklaces and bracelets as fast as they could. I was truly impressed.
We visited a lot of historic things like the gulags where Stalin sent political prisoners and the mass graves. I went with Victoria to her Russian classes and to the English class she teaches at the halfway house. That's where some of the orphans live after they have to leave the orphanage after 9th grade. Some aren't so fortunate and are just let go to fend for themselves. All of these kids are so talented, but there are very few facilities to help them after they have to leave the orphanage. Just breaks my heart.
Anyway, I saw a treadle machine at the halfway house. One of the girls who is 16, wants to be a fashion designer. She sews on the machine. Victoria said one night she was making a beaded costume for one of the other girls who was in a dance recital. She also crochets. The dream of all of them is to come to the United States. And Victoria's desire is to stay there. Go figure.
I learn more if I listen to her answers to other people's questions. Someone asked her if she would be coming back to the states after her 5 yrs. are up and she said she hoped to be able to stay there. The kids depend on her now. She said they were very needy and clingy when she first arrived, but now they know they can depend on her so they're becoming more self-sufficient and she doesn't want to leave them.
The ones who aren't lucky enough to get in a halfway house or trade school or aren't taken in by a family member, wind up on the streets. Aprox. 10% commit suicide the first year and the rest become prostitutes or drug dealers to survive.
We took an overnight train to Almaty in the far south near the China and Kyrgyzstan borders. We stayed in a duplex on the grounds of "Teen Challenge", a rehab center for young males. They had also taken in some younger male kids that were living on the streets. The manager said there are some addicts as young as 8 yrs. old and some prostitutes as young as 10.
The manager drove us around for a tour of the city and a trip into the Tein Shan Mtns. where the apple trees grow wild and they were in full bloom, as well as the wild tulips. There's a very good book about this country called "Apples Are From Kazakhstan" by Christopher Robbins.
He also took us to his favorite Uighur restaurant. He said they weren't supposed to open for another hour, but he told us to wait in the jeep while he talked to them. He came back and told us to come on in. I guess they opened up just for us, because we were the oonly ones there for an hour. We ate with chopsticks and drank green tea with the meal. He is a descendant of the Uighur tribe of China.
There are actually several tourists in Almaty, but it's not a touristy city. It is like a different country from Karaganda (where Victoria lives), though. It's green and has character and of course, the mountains. It has a population of 2 million according to our driver.
She lives in a city of 1/2 a million, but it's on the steppe....nothing to break the wind...it's in southern Siberia. It's very much like the plains in the US. Their only trees are planted in the city, but there aren't any outside of town.
It snowed twice after we arrived, but the trees & lilacs were sprouting buds by the time we left. The streets are one pothole after the other. The temps are sometimes 45 below zero F. And the summers are often over 100 F. She has moved into an apartment alone now and it's one of the very few that has A/C. The other 2 she has lived in did not.
I'll put some pictures on here later if anyone is interested. It takes a long time for them to upload, so they may be few and far between.