Steve here. We've really settled into a schedule now.  It's hard to call anything "routine" when we're halfway around the world from home, but things continue to go smoothly.  Benjamin Aidos was really smiley at our morning visit.  He also talked to us a little bit - we are too ignorant to understand him, though.  

I was really excited to finally post our web pages.  There are various technical challenges, but we have solved them for the moment.  The internet cafe down the street from our hotel has a pretty slow connection, but the computers do have CD drives.   I can burn a webpage onto a CD and bring it over where we can upload it.  There are only two minor problems:  (1) I'm running out of CD's and it's not clear if their machines can handle "unfinished" disks, and (2) we can't update the Guestbook entries yet.  But we're working on it!  If you've signed the book, we haven't forgotten you.

We took two 15-second movies of Aidos on our digital camera today.  They are pretty big files (around 4 MB) in size, so each will take a while to download if you have a slow connection.  Plus, you'll have to turn your head sideways to look at one of them.  But we think it's worth it.  (If the link doesn't work, we probably haven't been able to upload it yet.)

Jen here. Below are a few sights from today.  The church is the only attractive building we have see thus far in Uralsk - we think it is Russian Orthodox. We intend to go some afternoon to visit. Andre is our personal chauffer; he waits while we shop or visit with Benjamin Aidos and opens the car doors for us. He speaks quite a bit of English - On the second day, he teased us about our religious use of seatbelts: "In USA, yes. In Uralsk, no!" My motto is "In USA, yes. In Uralsk, YES!!!!!" The driving is very exciting. The main streets are wide and there do not appear to be actual lanes; drivers ride three or four abreast and pass on the right, left or in the middle at alarming speeds. There are a few designated one-way streets - but apparently this is just a suggestion, because there is always someone driving the wrong way (and this bothers no one. They just make room to let them skim by.) Meanwhile, pedestrians dodge in and out - the game, it seems, is to get to the middle yellow line - which apparently is the 6-inch-wide safe zone.  My favorite picture below is the crosswalk symbol which mentally translates to me as "run like hell." 

We had horse meat (in a sausage) for the first time today. Tastes like beef - only greasier. When in Rome...