Goodness, 2005 is here. Happy New Year to everyone. We spent the holiday in Almaty with about 20 other folks from Atyrau. Almaty is a great place – the story goes that Ernest Hemmingway’s wife Mary claimed that Almaty was the most beautiful cities in the world. With modern buildings and mountains in the background, it’s easy to see how she came to that conclusion. We enjoyed a great party in the Hyatt Hotel, and then spent the next few days shopping and going to restaurants. We headed up to the mountains on Monday to enjoy the view. What a great place. For Christmas, Liz put on an excellent dinner for 12. We had so many people that we had to borrow another table from a neighbor. It was great to have everyone together. A few pictures were taken – I’ll try to dig out a few and post them here.
