OK I'm on a really bad dialup connection from my hotel room, so this is going to be brief. I'm doing well, safe, etc. Still no luggage. We went to some goofy market in town and bought Kazakhstani clothes so we'd have something to wear. Let me tell you: buying underwear from a strange girl in a bazaar-type setting is weird enough. The fact that the only kind of underwear we could find was really embarassing speedo-esque boxer briefs was more weird. The fact that the sizing is totally different here is embarrassing. Whereas I wear a large in the US, an XL here feels like I am losing circulation to my legs. And the final nail in the embarassing underwear saga coffin is that Mike and I managed to wear the exact same ultra-small speedo boxers yesterday when we had to change into our radiation suits with all the other guys. So we were sorta... in uniform.

No, there will be no pictures. (I'm sure this comes as a tremendous relief to everyone except Nina.)

The reactor facility is really fascinating, it is overrun with cats (which we feed from a big ziploc of catfood whenever we come across them) and the lunches they feed us are really gourmet. Last night I had dinner at a shashlyk (kebab) place on the shore of the Caspian Sea.

Even with the cold showers and dirty clothes, I'm having a blast.