Day 28

So I discovered how to buy baking powder and yeast and lots of other things that I wouldn’t have a clue on a translation or know how to find them in supermarkets. Perhaps we can start to be a little more creative in our cooking... pancakes for breakfast this weekend! I dragged the children (much to their disgust although they behaved beautifully for the hour we were there) to a newcomers meeting of the Astana International Club where a lovely lady opened up her home to show myself and a few other new, lost people the best places to buy all the ingredients we may be missing. Great idea for welcoming people.

We then caught the free bus from there to the university. This is a treat for the children as it’s a lot more like a coach than a local bus so they get a comfy seat and dash right to the back as it seems to be empty at lunchtime. Plus they are extra excited as they get to see Daddy for lunch!

The reason for our visit was to have a little tour of the new apartment block where we should be living at some point. We’ve been told this should be within the next month but it sounds like there are others who have been here since August or September that have been told that every month and are still here at Riverside. I won’t hold my breath! The block itself was actually better than I expected and very well resourced with shop, cafe, medical centre, dry cleaners and children’s play area... although of course these were all still empty and who knows when they will open?! The people showing us around wanted to be sure we didn’t miss anything so it took an awfully long time and we were accompanied by an awful lot of security guards too... we didn’t really need to see the parking facilities as we won’t have a car (I’m pathetic driving in the snow and the other side of the road, plus the cost of a car is incredible!) but they insisted on showing us anyway. The apartments themselves are a fair bit smaller than here, as we expected, but quite nicely furnished. We are grateful that as a family of 5 we will have 3 bedrooms, while those singles or older married couples will have quite a poky living space. The children were excited and it was like viewing houses all over again, but with less decision making. We will take what we are given... but they were certainly larger than a cabin on a ship, and for that I am thankful!

 

Ali

 

From Nyet to Da seems to have worked with the homeschooling budget. I believe we can now claim for Russian and music tutor lessons for the children, which was a turn around from earlier this week. There is a really hard working guy in the International Hiring and Affairs Office at NU who had been able to seek approval for us. Things are being progressed on the contractual changes front. I'm not very hopeful on this score, but I have backing of my managers at least. So I don't feel like I am being petulant; I did keep the foot-stamping and teddy bear throwing to a minimum!

 

The viewing of the apartments was interesting (see Ali's thoughts above). It was curious that the multitude required to show us academics around the new place seemed very eager to know what the Whitby family thought about it. Suddenly I was very conscious of some of the negative things we had picked up on as we went round (for example a cupboard that couldn't open because there was an oven handle and door in the way. The building manager said you need to move the oven back a little, proceeded to show us and then couldn't open the cupboard door either. On the more practical front though was a really small 3rd bedroom, albeit bigger than Matthias's room back in Eastbourne, small bathroom, no dishwasher (although they said they could plumb one in for us)) and then tried to ensure this was properly balanced with the good things we felt about the place (really big main bedroom with en suite, the fact that it wasn't a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment, the services provided within the complex). Ultimately, the 3 bedroom apartments were far more roomier than the 1 and 2 bedrooms - you may think this is self-evident, but just in the consideration of lounge and dining room space, there is a marked difference going from the 2 to 3 bedroom place, whereas there's almost no difference going from 1 to 2. I think some managers are going to have some complaints from staff only getting 1 bedroom apartments (they are, after all, no longer students).

 

Fantastic to have the family over for lunch. Also great that my office colleagues were really happy to have our children all doing their school work in the office.

 

Ray