This morning Ben had a medical appointment - I guess our government needs to be sure he is not carrying a contagious disease when he enters the country. It was a bit traumatic, but no shots at this point.  He's somewhere between 10 and 11 kg (22-24 pounds for you Americans), and 89 cm (almost 3 feet) tall.  He's a little guy, but he appears well. 

From the clinic we could see a huge hill and Andre said that we could get good views of the city from the top - so up we went. We had no idea how smoggy the city is - until we saw it from above. Almaty (Alma Ata to the locals - it means "Apple Grandfather" in kazakh) is lovely otherwise. It is a city of about 2 million - with virtually no urban sprawl. We took several photos and did some deep breathing before heading down to a bazaar called the Green Market.    

The bazaar is amazing - it is basically the biggest and most organized farmers' market we have ever seen. Tables upon tables where fresh fruit is displayed in perfect cannonball pyramids. There are baskets of dried fruit and nuts, an area of fresh flowers, tables of breads, cheese and milks of all types. (Andre encouraged us to try the horse milk - which turns out to be fermented - tastes a bit like beer.) There are tables of fresh bread and Korean salads, and rows of fresh meats - often the whole animal. You can also get any animal part you might want - sheep head, cow tongue, pork tenderloin, whole chickens, a side of beef, smoked fish, horse liver, sausages of all types, goat, lamb... The Green Market is open every day except Monday, and it looked as though markets and restaurants buy much of their produce and meats there. We saw trucks taking away way too much meat for any family to consume in a month. Steve was a bit concerned about sanitation (I guess the calculator lying on the chicken bothered him for some reason) and he refused my offer of a side of horse.  So we elected to buy salads and bread and pistachios (they have huge white ones from Uzbekistan and even bigger yellow ones from Iran) - an excellent lunch.

Benjamin Aidos' current English vocabulary (words used without prompting today in appropriate contexts):  mama, papa, All gone!, hello, bye-bye, bus (of course!), baby, duck, yeah.  Of course he understands significantly more than he says.  I think this is true of all young children, but particularly for Aidos, who is not a big talker anyway.