Day #1 Kazakhstan

After 3 hours of trying to rest we had to attend our 1st meeting. It was at KIMEP, a well-known university here in Almaty, for a showcase of my films. They are going to screen over 1 hour of my films in their Great Hall this Monday, June 1st at 6:30pm.
There were several faculty and the Director of Student Affairs, etc waiting to greet us and show us their different screening halls.

Timur is going to present the event and host the Q&A with me. The Great Hall sits over 600 people, so the space is huge and still somewhat old with decor so I think it's beautiful. They use it for graduation, which explain the image of it I posted.

The school is sending out a lot of publicity for it as well as our project's producer, Yelena,

(who I met for the first time at the meeting yesterday.) She is a perfect producer and is doing so much work. Right after the meeting she had an appointment scheduled with the travel agency for our trip into the outskirts of the city planned for next week. This travel agency specializes in the most picturesque locations in the country and we will have our own driver so I can shoot as much and long as is needed. 

Anne LeBaron arrived a bit later, but we haven't seen her yet because both Timur an I couldn't stay awake for much longer. We both fell asleep until now. 

So far this experience has been an experience. Almaty is unlike any other place I've ever been too. You can definitely feel both the Soviet and Asian influence. The people here have been very kind and from what I can gather this society functions a lot on trust. 

You see all kinds of people, from students to grandma's on the side of the road hitchhiking everywhere. This is common practice, we even did it a few times yesterday and 1 time 2 young students picked us up. You agree on a price at first and then get into the car.