Happy Mother's Day, Claudia!

The weather here is beautiful today - sunny, slightly breezy and cool. I had a lovely run, and was nearly late for class as I got so caught up in the day, my coffee, the cat, and just hanging out on the balcony. And I must admit I was in no hurry to visit my little brats. as R has certainly mentioned, my fondness for my children waxes and wanes. They want to get out of school as bad as I do right now. I¹m hoping that together we can find a way through the next two weeks.

The seminar in Aralsk was fairly successful. They were a tough crowd - very unanimated and almost morose at times. Certainly, rainy cold weather coupled with a barrage of holidays didn't help. However, our trip to the cemetery of ships was pretty interesting. I felt somewhat voyeuristic driving out to see this catastrophe of epic proportions. Sort of like slowing down on the highway to get a good look at an accident. It was startling to see what was once a vast sea bed - complete with sea shells, fishing villages, port cities, beaches, and boats - empty. We drove for almost two hours through a huge stretch of steppe filled with scrub grass, and eagles. one had built her nest on the edge of the road we used, so we got a good look at her eggs and the whole shebang. There were also huge and oddly shaped rock formations that rose up in the middle of nowhere. Rich got photos of a couple of them. I assume that they must have been underwater thousands of years ago ( like everything else here) and are the left overs from those aquatic days. They looked like overgrown sand castles with their roving spires, bulbous sides, and layers of different colored sand (mostly grays and browns). Camels were as populous as grass there, dotting the horizon, munching near the road.

The cemetery of ships is near a small fishing village - so small. Maybe no more than 50 families or so. We drove to the edge of town. and then out onto the once beach and then the sea bed. We drove right up to these large ships that have thoroughly rusted through. Big fishing vessels that just rest on the sides and have been gutted and left to rot in the sun and wind. Rusted anchor chains littered the ground, as did a number of sea shells and much camel dung. All in all, it was an odd combination. I was left feeling sort of empty myself. In my mind I¹d had pretty dramatic pictures painted, and this was dramatic but more depressing when it came right down to it. It symbolizes carelessness and a major disaster. What was I doing? Snapping photos and climbing around. Certainly, as Angela said, we're now able to better tell people what is here, what happened, and what it's apparent effects are, but it is still rather sad. all those kids in that village - that's all they know. The stories of times before is simply legend now.

It may not change in the near future. The dam that had been built between the two parts [of the remaining sea] collapsed in a major storm two weeks ago taking two people with it. Now the water is again draining from this part. The salinity is apparently so high in the other part of the Aral that you can't fish there. What will these people do? My instinct would be to move, but they haven't the means and if they did, where could they go? Aralsk itself seemed like a pleasant town - a typical port city, just without much of a port anymore. It seemed fairly clean - not much litter, etc. and the people were nice. It was almost pretty when the sun finally came out and the clouds cleared away.

Our train rides to and from were pretty normal. When we got near Baikonaur (at least that's where we believe we were near) there was a huge satellite complex in the distance. Satellites were pointed straight up into the sky, and there were domes everywhere for telescopes and what not. We were rather excited at this little glimpse and discussed fervently what it could mean while our train moved on. Hopefully we will see a launch in a couple weeks that will answer all of our questions. The ride home was rather fun, since we did not have tickets. We boarded the Khrygyz train - tidy and pleasant as all get out. Nice curtains, clean hallway, little carpet in the coupe - incredible. We overpaid for our tickets, and slept like rocks until 6.45 am when the conductor woke us up for KO. Then it was a normal day of banya-ing, cooking banana pancakes, and hanging out on the balcony.

Allright, I¹m off to type to a few more people. I¹m going to send this message to some others so they can hear about the trip, and so on. Hope this finds you well and happy.

Take care, J.