Day 4

This day started out as every day should: more Beaver sports!! We try to limit screen time for Holland but make a special exception for Beaver (/Cougar) sports.

Afterwards we visited an outdoor (Saturday)/indoor (every day) food market. Outside were three or four 100' rows of stalls of folks selling raw and smoked meats, cookies, honey, and produce. It might have felt more like a farmer's market, but several of the stalls appeared to be selling the same setup; sometimes it was hard to tell the difference from one to another. Perhaps they have the same distributor? Whitney and I had a fun time selecting cookies from one booth (a few of which were fairly tasty!). My parents bought a big bag of potatoes and onions, and a smaller bag of strawberries. Unfortunately we walked around with the produce for the rest of the day so the strawberries resembled a pile of mushy goo later.

We perused the stalls inside, which mostly featured the same goods, except perhaps with reassuring refrigeration for the meats. One vendor that we spent some time at was a spice seller. Whitney and I channeled our inner 6 year-old and sounded out the spice labels in Cyrillic. "K-oo-m-ee-n. Cumin!" One dish that we've enjoyed is Plov, which is like their fried rice... sometimes with horse meat. When we sounded out "P-l-o-v" and my mom translated it to be a plov spice mixture, we were happy to order a satchet to try making at home. The young women deftly rolled a square of paper into a cone and then nimbly scooped multiple spices into it before folding the corners in and handing to us. We should have ordered another to get a video of the transaction. It may sound weird, but I never expected to watch a master spice mixer at work.

Unfortunately, we placed the spices in the bag of cookies, which over time rendered the cookies less palatable.

When Whitney saw this logo for a bakery, she had me take a photo so that she could get a tattoo of it later. Or a decal for our wall. Not sure.

Today we tried out the stroller with Holland for the first time, and she loved it. This is in contrast to when we took our Bob stroller for a test drive in OC and she screamed the whole time. But no, this time she was all relaxed, and even propped her feet up on the tray to really settle in.

We met the young volunteers for lunch at a relatively fancier restaurant. Basically same food as what we had at the holes-in-a-wall, but more expensive. It was an opportunity to meet the new Elder, straight from London. The young volunteers in the area are very engaging and endearing. They seem to get along well with each other, which is good considering there are just two areas that they can serve in--so the pool of companions is pretty small!
From L-R: Elder Gray, babers, Sister Nelson (Conn), Elder Shutler-Levi (London), Elder Paul (Montana), Sister Critchfield (Idaho), Sister Gray, Ni-Ni.

After all that walking around in the nice weather, we realized that Holland was at risk for sunburn. So Whitney, my dad, and I had a fun challenge of finding sunblock. My dad looked up "sunblock" on his phone translator, and we visited a few skin care or pharmacies in a mall. "Mozhna *points at phone*?" One upscale Korean skincare place advertised ~10 mL sunblock for like $10... we kept looking. A pharmacy shop sold a few brands of baby sunblock and we found ~100 mL for $4. Sold.

One thing I wish I knew more about is the history of Kazakhstan and the USSR. My mom pointed out that the 5-story buildings resulted for a project by Kruschev, who sought to provide more urban housing. According to my mom, components of these apartments would be built off-site at a mass-production facility before shipment and assembly on-site.

While my parents and young volunteers had District Meeting, Whitney and I chilled with Holland, WHO ROLLED OVER FOR THE FIRST TIME TODAY!

In the evening, my mom and I strolled around the residential area south of the apartment. Interestingly, the neighborhoods north, east, and west of my parents' is very urban and full of high rise apartments. But to the south is an enclave of single- or multi-family dwellings. It's a quick drop-off from modern city to this neighborhood, some of which are new construction but many of which are is various stages of disrepair.