Well everything seemed to go wrong yesterday. First, I went to one of the disease institutes where I was supposed to be working at Monday through Wednesday and they said that they weren't expecting me until Wednesday! Crazy stuff. So I packed up my book bag and set off for another institute across town where I had another project to work on. I was told the night before that my collaborators there were on vacation, but I crossed my fingers because I couldn't get through to them on the phone. Luckily, after about an hour long drove through the traffic-clogged streets of Almaty I made it to the other institute to find that one of my collaborators was in fact there and not on vacation (luckily)! So we discussed plans for the next day because the data was not ready.
This meant that the afternoon was free so I spent a little bit of time walking around the main strip near the hotel. I went up to the supermarket (or "Gros" as they call it) and bought some freshly-baked bread, pringles, water, and coke (because it cost almost $8.00 for a can of Coke at the hotel = ridiculous). A guy in the checkout line could speak a little English and asked if I was Irish to which I replied: "Aye, of course I'm Irish - was it the red beard?" He replied that indeed it was the red beard that tipped him off (i.e., I'm not actually Irish, I'm of Scandinavian descent and that was many a generation ago too, but it's pretty cool that someone actually thought that I was Irish). I spent the rest of the evening working on some of the KZ data, a paper, and some homework.
Today was much better as far as organization goes. I was able to get a lot of work done on one project in particular and I was also able to discuss the future of another project. It is always difficult to interpret other datasets and manipulate them into a format that is mappable in ArcGIS, but after working with these guys for awhile I think they're now understanding the correct spreadsheet formats - that means less Tylenol for all of us!
Anyway, the first picture above is a view of the mountains from my hotel balcony - they look beautiful in the morning, but after a full day of smog I can hardly see them in the afternoon. The second picture is actually a covered tent ice-skating rink! Pretty crazy - it's still 85F out here, but they were blasting some disco music in it when I walked by so somebody must be having fun in there. And the third picture is of Bolat and me to get some work done in the Center for GIS at his institute.
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