On Sunday evening, we went to the circus with some friends. In Almaty, the circus has a permanent home in a building constructed specifically for it. It seems rather small compared to the big arenas where we watched circuses at home in Canada, but it allows us to get much closer to the action. There's only one ring in this circus and the seating is fairly steep so that every seat has a good view. If you look closely at the poster on the side of the building, you will see that Kazakh shows tend to integrate Western cartoon characters (Spongebob Squarepants, Shrek, and Kung Fu Panda were a few of the stars this time ). Shortly after this photo was taken, as we were all jostling to get through the one open door into the building, Karla's wallet was stolen from her purse! Needless to say, Karla's enjoyment of the circus was significantly soured.
The circus was made up of a series of smaller acts, including some things that we would expect in a circus at home: gymnasts, a trapeze artist, firestick jugglers, trained poodles jumping through hoops. The stereotypical Russian act, the dancing bear, was also there, although his trainer and his assistants were also quite entertaining. Unlike circuses at home, there were a lot of dance numbers in between the acts and the dancers were mostly wearing costumes that revealed a lot more than what we'd expect at home. But all in all an interesting night. By the end of the story, the Santa Claus figure arrived on the scene and put everything to rights.
My friend Pete had his dad and brother here for a visit and wanted to go for a hike in the mountains. So on Tuesday we drove southeast of the city to a small park called Butakofka. We managed to drive up the road a fair distance before it got too steep for our car and then we began our ascent. Supposedly there is a waterfall up somewhere in this park (we never found it) but the sky was bright blue, the air was crisp and clear, and the temperature was just below zero. For the first half-kilometer, the snow was fairly solid but then we started breaking through the top layer and sinking knee- or thigh-deep into the snow. As the ground got steeper, we were forced to slow down, rest frequently, and take turns being the leader. When we reached the ridge we had made our destination, we stopped for lunch and discussed our next move. This first picture shows Pete walking out one side of the ridge to check out one of our options.
The other direction led up quite steeply into a bunch of trees, but we decided to give it a go to see if we could reach the top before having to turn around and start heading home. Here the snow was softer and waist deep, so our progress was slow. We had to zigzag our way up the mountainside with Pete and Andy taking turns wading through the snow. We didn't really find the top (there were too many trees in the way) but we were all satisfied with how high we had been able to climb. Pete, who had carried his snowboard all the way up, was now excited about the descent. There was so much snow up near the top and the slope was so steep that the rest of us tucked our jackets into our pants and slid down on our backsides for about 300 meters. The remainder of the descent was quite comfortable too, although the ice that become encrusted around my ankles began to melt and settle down inside my boots. A great day in the mountains!
