So, one million hours later.... I have arrived in Kazakhstan. I have now travelled more than half way around the world, and in a direct sense, I can't really travel much farther without leaving the surface of the planet. It is currently about 1:00am Monday here, which makes it 1:00pm Sunday back home. It turns out we have a 7 hour layover here, so they've put us in a really swanky hotel (The Almaty Hyatt) for the night.

Oh, and they lost all our luggage. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

ugh

Yeah between the three of us, we had 5 checked bags and none of them made it. Mike's two bags were in Lufthansa's computer as not having made it onto the plane back in Frankfurt. Heather's bag, my bag, and the equipment case are .... elsewhere. They told Mike that they couldn't get his bag into Almaty before Wednesday, and it would take another day to get it to Aktau, where we will be by then. Yeah. So that's at least 4 days with just my carry on. Luckily this sort of thing was anticipated. I have basic toiletries and money. Lufthansa customer service hooked us up with an emergency kit that included a T-shirt and more toiletries. They also gave us 7000 KZT each (~$55-$60) for our troubles, so we'll see what that gets us. Maybe I can find some boxers with cyrillic writing on them or something.

I just see this as upping the Adventure Rating™ of this trip, which is fine. It's a challenge. And besides, my nose is all stuffed up so I can't tell how bad we all smell.

Having fun despite the lack of clean socks. Tomorow, we fly to Aktau and go shopping for replacement stuff! :)