Not looking to Steppe on any toes, but …

We’re currently in the air, enroute to Frankfurt.  From there, we’ll be on to Almaty, Kazakhstan.  This is a bit of a different trip – we’re staying for six weeks, we don’t have an incredibly ambitious todo list, and there’s actual work to be done.

While we’re there, I’ll be teaching at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (KazNU) as part of an engagement through the Fulbright Specialist program.  This program provides a chance for US-based professionals to engage with academic institutions abroad. I’ll be teaching a course on Digital Historic Preservation, and hopefully getting to know the University community.  I’m mildly terrified, as I’m stepping into a lot of unknowns.

We won’t be doing day-by-day blogs on this one, since that would get pretty repetitive.  (“Drank some fermented horse milk. Taught. Worked.”) We’ll try to capture the exciting bits though, along with our sense of Almaty.  Almaty is pretty far off the tourist trail – most of the materials available for travelers are intended for expats coming to work in the extractive industries.  There’s a lot to discover about our temporary home. But we’ve identified a climbing gym, and Kat knows where the yarn stores are, so no worries there.

In the short term, if anyone needs to reach us while we’re traveling, count on calling my cell phone, texting, emailing, or tweeting.  Work friends, you can always ping me on Slack as well.  We’ll be +12 hours from Minnesota until DST ends, and then +11 hours (Kazakhstan doesn’t change their clocks).

Fingers crossed.