Cirque du Afanti

Dr. Z and his family came back from Kazahkstan, and we spent a day just kind of relaxing. Today we went to a stage show about the Sufi saint Afanti. However, it really wasn't about him, it more like he was a character walking through various circus-like scenes. His companion was a donkey, and the actor playing the donkey definitely stole the show. I enjoy acrobatics and the like, so I enjoyed it, it just didn't tell me much about Afanti. Visually it was stunning. They didn't allow photography, so I had to be sneaky, but I did get caught by an usher at one point so I had to stop.

Donkey!

Done with the Backposting

The blog is officially updated with everything in it's proper chronology. I think we're leaving for Beijing in a little over a week. I don't know if I'll have any sort of internet access once I'm there but I'll update at least once before then.

Sometimes I really love BoingBoing

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/25/fish-with-transparen.html

I feel bad the fish had to die. Kind of like Laika. But look at that thing! There's video of it on YouTube.

Home Alone

The Family Z is currently in Kazakhstan, which means I have the place to myself until they get back in about half a week. Well, Karalygash's sister comes to stay once in a while, which is fun, but mostly I have the place to myself. Which is good because I have a mountain of homework to get caught up on. Unfortunately, I have also gotten very sick the last couple days, so rather than getting caught up, I've been unable to do much more than drag myself to and from the bathroom. Eventually I will have to attempt to go to the store for supplies.
I'm going to continue to backdate posts containing pictures from the country. When I have more energy.

A week to myself, somewhat

The views from my hotel windows:

Karalygash met me at the hotel and we went back to the police station to finalize things, but they said I can't pick up my passport until the 25th. Ah, well. We went to the supermarket where I got some juice and things for the aparment and then I took a Black Market cab home. A black market cab is just some person who will drive you in their car to make some extra money. It was a clear day and on the way back to the apartment I finally could see the nuclear plant that's within the city, with the two large stacks like in The Simpsons dominating the skyline. I hadn't seen it before because the pollution is too thick most days.

The Family Z got all packed up and Karalygash's sister came by to help them get to the bus station. She'll be coming to stay sometimes while they're gone to check up on me.

Hey, you ever wanted to see Spongebob Squarepants in Chinese? Me neither, but here it is anyway!

Hotel Calif..I mean Urumqi

My hotel room was pretty comfortable. I found an English-language(don't tell Dr. Z!) game show on the television that I watched before going to bed.

Do you feel like you were there yet?

I'm attempting an excruciating level of detail so far.

Nice to be back

I took a shower and washed my hair. What a glorious feeling that was. Then I enjoyed some of my Valentine chocolate:

It was delicious, but melted quickly. This apartment with its heated floors feels downright tropical after the cold of the country. Though I do miss the mattress.

It turns out that I have to stay a night in a hotel in order to get my visa fixed so I won't get a fine when I try to leave China for not having gone to Kazakhstan. It's a complicated system.

Valentine's Day:The Aftermath

I think our host has a hangover from last night's festivities.

The horses that scared me half to death in the middle of the night when I was on my way to the outhouse behind them. Seriously though, the stars were amazing.

And look who finally figured out the panorama function on her camera.

This one's a Where's Dr. Z? Cupcakes if you find him!


It is really beautiful out there.




I wanted to take a photo of these red sand hills form the front, because they were spectacular, but the extreme cold caused my battery to freeze.



Puppies! They make look cute...

But these are not friendly dogs. They're meant to guard livestock and they're vicious. Not pets.

This was my bed in Qiakaertu. It had a mattress!


There were two beds in my sitting room as well.

Our hosts in Qiakaertu took us out for dinner before we left, where there was more drinking of white liquor(on their part) and toasting. They also gave me a Valentine gift of white and milk chocolate, which was nice of them. They had spent our entire time there trying to keep us from doing anything because they apparently thought Dr. Z was there to evaluate them, something that needs clearing up by next year. It was frustrating for him, I think, to then listen to them giving toasts in which they call each other "friends" and hope we come back, etc. It's traditional toast-giving rhetoric.

They saw us off to our bus, which was a sleeper bus, and I wish I had a picture of it. It's a standard size charter bus, but with two aisles instead of one and three rows of bunk beds. Very skinny bunk beds. I wonder how Dr. Z didn't fall off his bed, he's very tall. I was fine, of course. And it was actually very comfortable. I went to sleep on the bus and woke up in Urumqi in the wee hours of the morning.

Valentine's Day

I spent Valentine's Day out in the country. We were checking out a site that no one would take us to, which meant we had to stop for directions every so often. Trouble is, it's the Gobi. You could walk all day and not find another house unless you knew where to look. We found this house:

No one was there, but everyone leaves the door unlocked so we went in, and what did we find?

Why, a little lamb too young to go to pasture!

Our driver suggested I pose with the lamb, since he knows I'm an animal lover who doesn't eat meat.

The lamb was very soft.

This kind of hat is common in the area we were in. They don't sell them in stores; they're handmade by family. The lining is fox fur and I've seen the outer fabric in every color. They're quite striking.

and I'm sure incredible warm.

The bundle on the left is made up of the parts of the traditional yurt, though you can see the winter house runs on solar power. The cord hooks up to a radio inside the house. This is not the house of a poor person.

Our driver making tea. The ground water out here is too salty for human consumption. People collect snow and melt it for water. It has a very distinctive taste. We had tea with sheep tail fat instead of butter(I thought it was butter when it was added to my tea, but then it tasted like lanolin). Eating animal fat this way is a common practice here. I felt a bit like Goldilocks, coming in and eating someone's food, sitting on their bed, drinking their tea. This is expected, though. It's a harsh environment and to get to town sometimes people walk all day to the next house, stay the night, walk all day to the next one, and so on until they reach the road or a town. The man who lives here returned as we were finishing up and gave us directions. He was probably pleased we had hot water ready for him as he had been walking all day from another house.

This is an animal husbandry office.

We were pretty far from Qiakaertu at this point, and it was getting late, so we spent the night here.

Our hosts were very happy to have company, and entertained us with a card game called "Close the Gate" which everyone plays.

As you can see, they get pretty into it. Our hosts were initally put off, I think, by my vegetarianism(most Kazakhs seem to think I'm having some kind of mental episode), even though our driver kindly explained that I take pictures of animals because they are like people to me. They thoughtfully included some vegetables in the evening meal for me, which they normally would not have done. I redeemed myself by being extremely good at this game. The older man called me a word which can be translated as both "terrible" and "awesome". Over the course of the evening they gave me a Kazakh name, which Dr. Z explained is the most common Kazakh name, the equivalent of "Susan" or "Jenny". The older man mentioned he had a son and asked if I would like a Kazakh husband, a form of teasing I grew used to. Several times through the evening he would say things like "My son studied in college for five years and speaks Russian." I told him I'd raise the grandchildren vegetarian and he'd hate that.

There is a kind of alcohol they drink in China which has been around for thousands of years and is made from wheat. It's referred to as "white liquor" and it's taste can be described as something akin to canteloupe and nail polish remover. In terms of what it does to do, it's like Bacardi 151 and Uzo combined. And they drink a lot of it. Our hosts toasted us with it and proceeded to go around the table saying nice things, a drinking tradition here, at the end of every toast you have to do a shot. We all slept on the platform you see the men sitting on in the video. They have stacks and stacks of warm blankets that kept us quite comfortable.

In the middle of the night, I went out to use the outhouse, and saw more stars than I've ever seen in my life. I could see the spiral arm of the milky way splashed across the sky. It was incredible. Of course, I was also a bit tipsy and thinking about how our hosts commented that there were a very high number of wolves in the area they were having problems with. Eventually I decided that if the wolves came for me, I'd stand my ground and shout "Come for me, G'mork, I am Atreyu!"

Gone With the Wind(in Chinese, of course)

Rhett Butler has a strangely high voice in Chinese.

Greetings from the Future! Which I guess is still actually the past since I'm late in updating this...Greetings from the Future Past!

Postcards from the Roadside Enclosure

Another good photo opportunity day. We were there for several hours, so I was able to get closer to the horses than usual. The scientists have been staying in the small building next to the enclosure, since the project requires about 58 hours of continuous monitoring and dung collection.

Mutual Grooming

More Mutual Grooming

This was the only horse to stick her head out of her enclosure when I approached.

Me with a horse urinating in the background. I am just so damn glamorous.

She didn't seem to mind letting people touch her.

In my EWU shirt, taking promotional pictures. Women and horses, they just eat that kind of stuff up.

Action shot. They may look like they're about to sprint away from one another, but really they are butting butts.

The previous night a very large wolf was prowling around the enclosure. These are some tracks. It was a very large wolf. The wolves have no problem getting into the enclosure, but the horses are fierce and fight them off. Not all the scars you see on them were caused by other horses. They've even found wolf teeth still stuck in the horses' legs after a fight.

Measuring out medicine for the horses. The medicine makes the parasites drop with the dung so they can count them.

This skull belonged to a wild gazelle. As a good anthropologist I took several shots of it in the position in which I found it.

I then repositioned it to make some of its characteristics(here the horns) more visible.

The yellow powder on the snow is medicine.