"It's a beautiful day, don't let it get away..."

Wednesday and Thursday have been HIGHLY productive. First of all, I went to one of the institutes to start working on what I thought would be a large, tedious dataset. But......I never even had to start working on it! Gulnara (one of the researchers working on data entry) had taken the data home with her over the past two days and entered all of the coordinates she could find. I guess she knew that I wasn't happy about the data not being ready on Monday. She did an excellent job and it was a pleasant surprise. There were still some formatting issues, but we worked through those and were able to produce a basic map of new sample locations before lunch time. Good stuff! So after finishing at that institute earlier than expected, I headed back to an office in the hotel to work on several other maps and make a "How To" powerpoint for another project.
Today (Thursday), I worked in the office again in the morning then met Bolat and Natalya (the interpreter) for lunch. We went to a really nice Kazakh/Chinese restaurant. We all ordered a delicious lamb, noodle, and pepper dish called Bishkun (sp?) and had a plate of peppered steak to go with it. I always have to readjust my food mentality here because normally I don't eat a huge lunch, but in Kazakhstan people generally eat a very small breakfast (if they even have one), then eat a large meal for lunch (they have a 2-hour lunch break here!), and then another large meal at night (usually later at night around 8pm or so). After a great lunch, we went to Bolat's institute and I worked with him and Vladimir on running GARP models that predict the ecological niche of specific species that they are studying. I let them run the model several times and gave them a powerpoint about it. They seemed to really be interested in producing maps that show where a species could exist because this could help them realize the spatial extent of specific disease-carrying species.
After a productive afternoon, I said goodbye to Bolat, Vladimir, and Natalya and told them that I hoped to see them again soon. Tomorrow I will be working in the office at the hotel finishing up some of the analysis on the new datasets then it's back to the States! Mmmmmm.....I can almost taste the hamburgers, pizzas, and chicken wings - haha.

Picture Descriptions: 1) A Kazakh Drama Theater that I passed while walking around this afternoon; 2) Who needs a truck to hall vegetables anyway?!?!; 3) Natalya and Bolat working on the laptop; 4) A cool statue with what appears to be a jaguar jumping through a hoop; 5) My bishkun (sp?) dish - would you like some??

The best-laid plans of mice and men...

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.

Back in KZ!

After an eleven week hiatus I am back in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The plane ride over wasn't too long and I was able to get a little bit of sleep because I had 2 seats to sprawl out in! I probably won't be so lucky on my way back. I arrived last night around midnight and I spent most of the day just relaxing in the hotel, walking around the "Fantasy World" theme park, and getting a little work done. I just got back from eating out at the Tau Samal Cafe in front of the hotel. It's a neat little outdoor restaurant with a covered bar shaped like a yurt. For those of you who don't know...a yurt is a "portable, felt-covered, wood lattice-framed dwelling structure used by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia" (Wikipedia 2008). I ordered some excellent lamb shashlik - a perfect way to start my week off here in Almaty. In one of the pictures above, you can see the wood-burning oven where they cook the shashlik.