Honeymoon post 1

Here's a copy of the email update I sent out while we were in Kazakhstan. I know I had one more before this...but gmail seems to have eaten it. Sorry about the weird format - I can't seem to fix it!

Hello once again friends!!! Time for installment 3 of 'Toff and Cara

hit the road!' *[just so you know.........there was a lot of ground
to cover here.....so I suggest you go make a drink. Maybe a strong
one. You're in for a long read ;-)]*

After leaving Ele in Italy, our adventures brought us up to Reddich,
England where we met up with our friend Liam from camp walt Whitman
last summer. Liam took PHENOMINAL care of us - he picked us up from
the airport at midnight, then drove us 3 hours to his home, he also
showed us around ol' Willy Shakespeares home Stratford upon Avon, and
finally, used his heavy foot to get us to Heathrow on time for our
flight that left 12 hours earlier than we thought it did ;-) (we made
it 4 minutes before they closed boarding! eeee)

So we found ourselves then in NY, where we stayed with my cousin Gin
and boyfriend Justin who took us to Cape Cod, where most of the
Newcomb clan was gathered for Eric (Dad's brother) and Marks wedding.
We spent a week at the Cape, with lots and lots of rain, and lots of
drinking to compensate. The wedding was absolutely gorgeous - it took
place on this little knob in practically hurricane conditions. You
had to cross a 5 meter wide isthmus to get to the knob, but you had to
be quick and make it to the other side before the wind came across and
whipped a wave right on top of you. After the ceremony we went back
to the house Mark and Eric had rented for the week (seems like the new
wedding thing to do!) where we had a lobster feed and danced until the
neighbors called the cops! (When we simply moved our dance party to
the living room) One exciting event that happened while we were
there, was that a group took the ferry over to Martha's Vineyard,
where they had lunch with the Obama family! The Obama's were
vacationing in the area, and apparently share the same favorite
restaurant as Uncle Eric.

After our week there, we jumped in the car with Mom and Dad and found
our way to Thomaston, Maine to stay with mom's brother Kevin and his
wife Kathleen for a couple of nights to catch up with that side of the
family. We made sure to enjoy more lobster while we were there (Maine
lobster might actually be the best in the world - don't quote me on
that, but across the country you find 'live Maine lobster') and Toff
enjoyed playing Grampy Giff's handmade dulcimer (a small 3 stringed
wooden instrument Giff makes in a workshop behind his and Grammy
LaBree's home in Bradley, Maine) and we were surprised at the end of
the weekend when he and Grammy LaBree presented the dulcimer to us as
a wedding present!

We then hopped back in the car, and the 4 of us drove allllll the way
back down to Virginia (splitting the 14 hour car ride into 2 days) and
headed off to see Mom and Dad's new and improved lake house! They
doubled the size of the lake house and made it feel like a gorgeous
home. Dad is enjoying having a 'son-in-law' I think, and found plenty
of projects for Toff to do around the house :)

The next few weeks were spent in various adventures around VA
including but not limited to: the 2nd annual Lake House Camporee (held
every Labor day weekend @ the beginning of Sept, so you can pencil it
in for next year!) where amoung many other beautiful people, we were
very lucky to be joined by Liam all the way from England and his
fiancee Aelisa. Cara visited Kiki in Roanoke VA to help her begin to
move into her new living space in a gorgeous old house while Toff took
off to the New River Gorge to do some rock climbing with friend Kevin
from Harrisonburg (who will soon be joining us for vintage in Aus!)
In Roanoke we also got to catch up with Rachel and Sam, so we got to
see everyone who made it over for the wedding :) We paid a visit to
Paul and Brandy (and their kids Blake and Ella) to see our AMAZING
FANTASTIC BREATHTAKING wedding photos in a super dvd slideshow Brandy
did - both "moms" have a copy, so whether you are in the states or
down under you can track one of them down to see it! ;-) And finally,
we went to Coro and Taylors stellar wedding held at an old plantation
in the Blue Ridge Mountains and then hit the bars downtown
Charlottesville at the brides request! I think that about sums up our
American whirlwind tour! Per usual, we ran out of time to do
everything we would like to (so Mimi and Kevin, you absolutely are
not allowed to move until we get back to see your new apt next year!)
but all-in-all had a great time catching up with faces and places we
have missed!

Whew - maybe take a break to go get some water, or add a few ice cubes
to that drink, because the ride is just beginning!!!!

We made our way back up to NY to catch our flight to Abu Dhabi and
then ...Almaty, Kazakhstan! In total we spent 46 hours travelling
(including getting to NY for our flight, and 13 hours spent overnight
in the Abu Dhabi airport) as you can imagine we were quite
exhausterated so were glad to have booked a place to stay with
Valentina at her guest house, and had organized for her to send
someone to pick us up from the airport. Our driver, Marrat, turned
out to be Valentina's neighbor and was our personal guide to Almaty -
he drew us a mud map of the city, and walked us to the bus stop to
make sure we got on the right bus, and that the bus driver knew when
to kick us off :) We wandered the city for a day, and met up with John
(or Jolbeck) who we had met during our 13 hours in the Abu Dhabi
airport. John and his friend took us to the top of this mountain
where there are all these carnival games set up and we took the cable
car back down to the city.

The next day we set out via bus to the capitol city Bishkek in
Kyrgyzstan where we met up with our couch surfing host, Irene. Friday
we spent most of the morning organizing our visas back into Kazakhstan
(we had a little trouble getting out of Kazakhstan, b/c the airport
didn't give us a visa when we arrived, they just kind of gave up and
sent us through) but it actually felt like a scavenger hunt through
the streets of Bishkek to find the embassy, fill out the form, go to
the bank to pay, go back to the embassy....etc. We then organized our
trip into the mountains with an organization called Communtiy Based
Tourism (or CBT).

Saturday we took a bus down to Kochkor, a little village where our
adventure would begin! But first we walked into the center of town
where a stage was set up and sort of rally was taking place for one of
the party candidates who is running in the countries first democratic
election (which is taking place after we leave moms) it's actually
quite exciting, and feels quite safe here as well - we haven't run
into the slightest sign of turmoil or unrest that you have heard about
on the news. The people are happy and helpful - if you can try to get
past the language barrier. The children have no trouble a) getting
past the language barrier or b) recognizing two backpacking tourists
when they see them, because almost every child we passed would call
out "hello!" and then "what is your name?" (although they didn't seem
to care past that point)

So Sunday morning our driver picked us up at the guest house we were
staying in (many towns here don't have many or any hotels, but to make
some extra money several families will open extra rooms in their house
to guests. We actually stayed with the Mayor and his wife, who is a
doctor, and were taken very good care of by their daughter Star, who
spoke phenomenal english. Just a side note: we have both been amazed
by the freedom young children see here. Kids no older than 8 or 9
will be on public buses by themselves, and Star, who is 13, was the
only one at her parents guest house when we arrived b/c her parents
had gone to Bishkek for the weekend!) Back to my story - our driver,
Yousep, drove us 2 hours to Kyzart Village where we had lunch, enjoyed
watching a couple local men try to work our camera, then set off on
horse back! Apparently I am not a natural born rider (sorry to let
you down Aunt Patty!) because I couldn't seem to get my horse to go
any way I wanted to go, so our guide (who's name sadly I have
forgotten, but I think is sounded something like Bishneek) tied my
horse to his and towed me for quite a ways. A few hours and sore bums
later, we reached our first stop - the 2 bedroom shack of Azamat and
his newly pregnant wife (sorry - forgotten her name too) We had a
grrrreat night there, with the 2 of us, the 2 of them, our horse
guide, and a man who I took to be Azamat's father sitting around,
having first tea with fresh bread, fresh cream, and homemade apricot
jam, then having a dinner cooked in an amazing cast iron pot built
right into the top of the woodstove of mutton fat, onions and
potatoes. We were then joined by 3 more guests - a neighbor (who I
think actually lived miles and miles away) his wife and their 3 year
old son. We spent the night laughing about phrases found in our
Central Asian phrase book. Azamat, for example, got quite a kick out
of finding the phrase "have you eaten yet?" right after we finished
dinner, and the word for 'air-conditioning' as he pointed to the
missing pane in their window. We also (sort of kind of) learned how
to play a card game (which for all we know mostly consisted of
throwing a card down in front of your neighbor and yelling 'OBA!"
which means 'yes' in Kyrgyz.) We all slept on the floor in the 2
rooms on thick piles of blankets laid out on the floor after watching
the men herd about 200 sheep into their pen for the night. And in
case you were wondering, you can fit about 3 times the amount of sheep
into one pen than I would have ever guessed :)

The next morning, after our breakfast which closely resembled the
USA's Southern grits, we set off on horseback again. While up to this
point we had enjoyed the sun and early Autumn temperatures, it didn't
take long into the climb towards the 3400 meter-above-sea-level peak
to hit full on Winter. We had a minnie turbulant start when my horse
decided it did NOT want to climb the mountain, but instead would
rather head towards the down hill slope and the ravine, but our guide
rescued me and we again set off to the rocky peak. I'm not quite sure
how Toff didn't have a dry mouth and a sore throat by the end of the
day, because everytime I turned around (I again, at this point, was
closely tethered to the horse of our guide) he had the biggest,
goofiest, wide open grin on his face I have ever seen. On the other
side of the mountain (but still 3000 meters up) we quickly donned more
clothing ...okay, every single piece of clothing we had in our
packs... and took off at a gallop towards the yurt camp beside
Song-Kol (which translates into Last Lake) where we would be spending
the night in.

We had imagined that we would be staying in a yurt with a family, but
apparently CBT has its own yurts that a woman in the village will just
look after. So our "yurt mother" Asel brought us a lunch of fresh
fish right from the lake (YUM!) We wandered around the camp, watched a
family finish taking down its yurt for the season, and quickly headed
back inside to the fire. There were about 12 yurts still set up, and
I imagine in the middle of summer there would be at least 20, but it
gets quite cold (I mean, it's only September and it was snowing!) so
they pack up their yurts and move back into houses in Kochkor for most
of the year. Asel said her family stays at Song-kol for 4 months, and
will be packing up their yurt on Oct 1. (We didn't ask....but I like
to think that everyone stores their broken down yurts at a convenient
storage facitily called something like "Store it Yurt-Self")

The next morning Yousep came to pick us up again and drove us back to
Kochkor where we again stayed with Star and her hospitable family.
They also have a Peace Corps volunteer living with them, who is from
Oregon and went to college at EMU in (drum roll please....)
Harrisonburg VA!! (The same town Cara went to school in!!!) Woah.
Small frickin world.

I spent most of that day sleeping as I hadn't slept much the night
before - was feeling a bit ill, silly altitude! while Toff (I think
we need another drum roll....) spent most of the day reading! woah.
And yes, in case you don't believe me, I took a picture :-D hehe

Running out of time in Kyrgyzstan, we took a taxi to Cholpon-ata, on
the coast of a massive lake called Isa-kol that looks like the summer
tourist hub of the country. The lake is salt water, and looks like it
would be a lot of fun with water slides right into the lake and
theaters set up too. But the town was almost deserted for the winter.
So we just spent one night there, then went back to Bishkek to stay
once more with couch-surfer Irene.

And now we are up to today! Where we woke up and took a mini-bus
across the border to Kazakhstan (no drama this time! Thank you
embassy and your helpful little thing called 'visas!') We are now
staying with couch-surfer John, and are feeling quite spoiled because
we are his only guests tonight, while his record in one night is
SEVENTEEN couch surfers!!! In an apartment that is easily one third
of the size of our house. Tomorrow we might go hiking to see a
glacier that is just 3 hours out of the city (here's an interesting
fact - Almaty translates into something like 'apple father' because
the area is the botanical home of ALL apples. How crazy is that????
So I reckon we are in the original 'big apple') Then Sunday we fly to
Bangkok for the final stage of our honeymoon!

Whew ...sorry about that folks.... don't be mad at me for making you
read all of that :) But hopefully it gave you a good idea of where we
have been and how much SAFE fun we are having :-D

LOVE love love to you all!!!!!!

Toff and Cara