we've spent the last week basically just waiting around here for the dog that (hopefully) won't bark. we got one week to go and i'm going crazy waiting. so i booked a quick trip to kazakhstan's gleaming new capital that i've heard so much about.
before i arrived in kaz, i had the impression that astana was some kind of boondoggle, a city built in the middle of nowhere, just a vanity project for a president with too much power and too much oil wealth. but the people here seem to be uniformly proud of the city, and quite a lot of young people (who are disproportionately the ones i speak to as they are the ones who know english) want to move there. that's probably a reflection of the ubiquitous pro-astana propaganda.
okay, i've basically written this post already. crap, i even used the same picture. but this time is a little different. tonight i'm going. maybe i'll have something different to write once i get there.
