St John's

Conclusion after the three days in the new city: charming in its own way, very friendly people, potential, great traveling companions! Now at the airport, heading west, to go east! Great!

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New adventures! Canada here I come!

Sitting at gate 136 in Toronto heading east again for St John's Newfoundland! Getting tired, my body is trying to tell me it is 01:45 and it wants to sleep! But we have a few hours to go! Hoping for a quiet nap on the plane. But looks bleak, the plane is overbooked, so guess it will be packed... Well well, only a 3 hours flight! Bon voyage!

Home sweet home!

It is great to be home! My supermom picked me up at the trainstation and helped me up with all my gear! Super extraservice! I would have struggled on my own! Now the bags are emptied out and huge piles are covering my floor, laundry day will be tomorrow, now it is time to put this exhausted body to bed! Good night Oslo!

Amsterdam

KLM Lounge, sushi and cava! What more can you ask for! Slept all the way here, got a 2 seater for my self. 5 hours in Schiphol is just the perfect time to relax, eat and shop!

The last adventure of K and K, for a while anyway...

Early one morning at Atyrau international airport! The bags are sent (all 4 of them) and time has come to go home. Goodbye Kazakhstan! For this time! You never know where life takes you, maybe I will come back one day! Plenty of oil in the Caspian! So never say never! So I will say goodbye for now, på gjensyn!

We had a great night

out yesterday and early today... Thank you so much my great friends, for giving me a super goodbye! Who needs to sleep when you have such good friends!...
Kristin and I are back on the same rotation, so we are going to do what girls always do at Schipol: lounge, cava and shopping!

 

The very last day has come!

The very last day has come! Time to clean out the desk and also the apartment. Went home during lunch, and packed the last stuff, and moved everything over to a crew-change apartment. So now my two suitcases, two bags and an in-flight are in the hall, waiting to come home with me tomorrow morning at 5! Erik Anton and I have got presents and cakes, and lots of nice words. Sad and nice at the same time!

Tonight we are doing some wine and beer up on the 17th floor, then we will go over to Champion's and eat and have some fun! I can not waste my last hours in KZ sleeping can I…!

Post party note...: The story ended a little differently! We went to Champion's first (as I was so hungry and could not wait any longer...), and then at midnight or so we made it over to the Ardager and up on the 17th floor. With chilled wine and bubbles, music and good friends, we made every minute count! It was a night to remember!!

The last days have come...

Today is my second to last day working in Kazakhstan this time around. Atyrau is showing itself from its muddy and cooler side. We had rain yesterday and during the night, so there is a good deal of flooding on the roads (as the drains do not work very well, way too flat here...). So now we have the usual cold wind from the north, slippery mud and grey horizon, with temperatures this morning of 6 degrees, and at lunch 9 degrees. Guess summer is definitely over for this time!
It is time to clean out my desk, finish up the most important work tasks, and get ready to leave. Kristin, Linn, Mike, Rob and I had a great big lunch at our favorite lunch restaurant, Sanshack, a Turkish Restaurant with quick and tasty food! And tonight is the last pizza and wine at Renco! Looking forward to a great night out!

370-летие города Атырау

Congratulations Atyrau with the 370-th Anniversary of the City! And this has been celebrated for days, with different events on the main square, ending with a pop concert with "stars of Kazakhstan", fireworks and disco! As we walked past last night on our way home we arrived in the middle of the pop concert. And to our great surprise and enjoyments, the pop star started singing Aleksander Rybak's "Fairytale", so we sang along and dansed a little! The square was crowded with people off all ages, and there were several big Yurtas, and even stands had been put up, so people could sit and enjoy the show!

Music Night at Hotel KZ

Last night Ken and Clair had arranged a music night at the pub in the Hotel Kazakhstan with a donation to the Children's Charity Fund.
We had live music, Ken played guitar, Clair sang, Gaukhar played the Kazakh national instruments the Dumbra (a two stringed "guitar"). The pub was pretty packed with people from the office, both expats and locals. It was a fun night of entertainment and good friends, and in total over 130 000 Tenge, that is about 6000 nok, was collected for charity.

New pavement!

It is a big day in the life of the hard working expats of Atyrau! We now have a sidewalk to walk on all the way from home to the office and back! It is no longer an endless collection of uneven mud and clay! Over the summer the city have slowly but gracefully been upgraded with sidewalks laid with grey and red pavement stones, and all the curb stones have been repainted white. The last stretch to be finished to complete our path was just outside the office, between our office building and the Ideal Grocery store. And we even got a traffic light up last week! Pretty amazing! So now we can cross the road without being used as human targets by white Ladas driving at high speed!
And to add to this loooong list of amazing infrastructure-news, I must inform that the crazy big round fountain and rose-patch over the bridge in Asia is now a official roundabout. They have dug up the rose-bed and asphalted in stead, but left the fountain. The roundabout rules are still not fully in place, the signs are up, but lot of cars still stop inside the roundabout, giving way to the other cars driving into the roundabout. Pretty chaotic the whole thing, but amazingly it works in its own impossible way!