May 2nd marked Nick’s and my 13th wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we planned a five-night, adults-only trip.  But where to go? A tropical getaway to the Maldives? A hidden spot in the Himalayas? Europe? Well… after thinking things through for a bit, we decided to do something we’d never done in our 13 years in the foreign service—go check out our next post!
Kazakhstan is actually closer to India than you might think. When we recently discovered that Almaty was just a quick, three-hour flight from Delhi, it seemed only natural to go check it out, especially given how reasonably priced flights were. The benefits of doing a reconnaissance visit were many, and included: touring schools for Nia, meeting Nick’s work colleagues, determining how prevalent English is, and assessing what day-to-day life might entail (think commuting, grocery shopping, weekends, etc…) But perhaps most importantly, we hoped this trip would calm our nerves around our soon-to-be-home, which we’d been feeling leery about since the January riots and Russia’s growing influence in the region.
It was still an anniversary trip though, so we opted to blow the rest of our Marriott points on a five-night stay at the Ritz-Carlton. The hotel occupied the top 10 floors of the tallest building in the city and we lucked out with a 27th floor room with sweeping views of the city. Fun surprises—like this chocolate and bubbly welcome gift—were waiting for us upon arrival.
It felt very fancy and special, even given how many nights a year we stay in hotels. It was also nicely positioned adjacent to a mall, which made it easy to grab food without always having to jump in a cab. It wasn’t the best-ever place we’ve stayed (that probably goes to our mini-villa in Bali in 2009), but it was literally the Ritz, so thumbs up from us!
On to the city!Â
Almaty’s climate has four distinct seasons and it’s currently spring. We had great weather the entire time, with sunny skies and highs between 72 and 83 degrees F. It was ideal exploring weather, which incentivized us to see a good chunk of the city on foot. We weren’t quite sure what to expect, given that this is an entirely new region of the world for us, but from everything we saw, it appears we found ourselves another hidden gem of a city.  We were struck by the wide, well-kept sidewalks and bike paths, the abundance of parks and playgrounds, and the immense variety of flowers, bushes and trees—all rarities in Mumbai. The only downside was that my allergies kicked in big time, but that’s a trade-off I’m definitely willing to take.
As anticipated, communication proved to be a significant issue. Russian was predominant in both writing and speaking, although many signs had some combination of Russian, Kazakh, and English, which really helped. Products in grocery stores and pharmacies typically had Kazakh on one side and Russian on the other. Confusingly, both use the Cyrillic alphabet, which made it impossible for me to tell which one I was looking at. I used Google Translate a few times to scan a product’s description for translation, but had mixed results with the effectiveness of it. It was definitely better than nothing though! To give you a sense of how cryptic it was, here’s an example of a receipt from my afternoon coffee and pastry: Â
Confusing, huh? It definitely reinforced the importance of learning the Cyrillic alphabet and some key Russian phrases and words. Nick will be getting a year of Kazakh, which we’re told will be helpful outside the city, but it still seems like he’ll need to learn some Russian on his own as well to get by. That being said, Kazakhs were very helpful. If they saw you struggling, they’d offer help. The problem was simply that the number of English speakers is fairly limited – mostly younger people, and probably less than 15% of the population. Still, we managed pretty well and it wasn’t quite as bad as we thought. We even managed to use the local version of Uber (Yandex) without any problems.
Trigger warning for Indian friends: One of the things I was most excited for was BEEF! We hadn’t been out of India since July of 2021, which means I’ve been without beef for nine long months. Happily, meat was plentiful here and I took full advantage, ensuring that I had beef at least once a day. It was absolutely delightful. Here’s a picture of me getting my first burger for the trip.
I was so proud of myself for figuring out how to order given that they didn’t speak English. I didn’t get quite what I wanted, but at the end of the day it was still a burger, which is what really mattered! Yes, that’s Burger King and yes, I got a better burger later in the trip. But when you’re craving, you’re craving!
Our first full day in Almaty was Friday. With an upcoming Monday holiday and a Tuesday morning flight, we needed to cram in all our appointments that day.  Thankfully, the Consulate was able to recommend a freelance English-speaking driver who could move us around efficiently. We began the day by visiting three different international schools. All were excellent but had different strengths, which explained why the Consulate community was so evenly split between the three.
We need to discuss it with Nia more, but the option we believe suits her best is the Kazakhstan International School. It had several things that we thought Nia would find appealing, namely: a thriving arts program, IB curriculum (which she’s currently doing and likes), a cool design technology program with a massive Maker Space, and a 10:00 a.m. start time (she likes to take her time getting going in the morning).
The building was very new—three years old—and the transit time would be 10-15 minutes each way, as compared with our other top choice which was a 30-minute bus ride there and back. My only complaint would be that I like to see the international student enrollment higher than the host-country student enrollment (in this case it’s 60% Kazakh kids, 40% kids from other countries) but the school seems to be steadily increasing its international population year over year. There is also a dynamic new Head of School that we had the chance to talk with and a robotics program in the works that I think she’ll get into. We are leaving one of the top international schools in the world here in Mumbai, so it was a huge relief to find that there were three high-quality options that would be available to Nia in Almaty too. Even if we eventually decide on one of the other two options, she’ll be in good hands.
School visits took up the entire morning, so after a quick lunch at a local mall, we made our way to the U.S. Consulate, which, oddly enough, is split between two different office buildings. That is going to take some getting used to, as we’ve grown accustomed to entering massive, high-walled compounds to go to work. Remember our fortress in Peru??
That day we only visited one of the two buildings. We sat down for a quick meeting with the Community Liaison Officer to get her take on schools, learn more about the various housing options, and emphasize my desire to work in the GSO section again. Fingers crossed there will be a job open in that section when I get there! It’d be a bummer to have gone through so much training and gained two years of on-the-job experience and then not be able to use it. I’m hopeful though.
Nick and I split up around 3:00 p.m.. He went off to a few more meetings, including a happy hour with his future work team. Meanwhile, I was still trying to get over a sinus infection, so went back to the hotel to enjoy some downtime before meeting up again for a steakhouse dinner later that night. When we finally reunited at 6:00 p.m., Nick looked exhausted but happy. We had both come away from the day feeling like Almaty was going to be a great fit for us personally and professionally. The lack of English and unfamiliarity with the region will definitely challenge us, but the positives appear to be far greater than the negatives.
