We woke up today, watched Docherty take bronze in the triathlon, and then headed across the road to be charged NZ$3 and hour for the internet - we think our blogs will be a bit shorter for a while, and the emails not so frequent!!
Afterwards we grabbed a doner kebab for lunch from across the road (Liv utilising her full Russian vocabulary to ask for one without meat) and made our way to the Migration Police Station. Since arriving here whenever we see a police officer we walk in the opposite direction (so some of our walks have been longer than needed), so it felt a bit foolish walking into the station - but it was a requirement for being in the country. Foreigners staying for longer than 5 days in the country must register and although lots of foreigners we met were registered immediately on arrival, we weren't!! Travel agencies can register for you but charge about US$50 each, so we thought we'd try doing it ourselves - which we successfully did, with no Russian, for the price of only around US$5 each!
We had to wait until 4pm to pick up our passports after registration, so we made use of this time to wander around town. 
First we headed to Respublika Alanghy, where there is a huge Monument to Independence of the Golden Man on top of a winged snow-leopard.
From here we got amazing views of the snow-capped mountains just outside Almaty - making Adam long for snowboarding even more than he already does!
First we headed to Respublika Alanghy, where there is a huge Monument to Independence of the Golden Man on top of a winged snow-leopard.From here we got amazing views of the snow-capped mountains just outside Almaty - making Adam long for snowboarding even more than he already does!From here we went to one of the biggest bookstores to try and find a Central Asia Lonely Planet, which we didn't end up finding, before making our way to relax in one of the many many parks that are all over Almaty.
We picked up our newly registered passports with no problems and headed to St Nicholas' Cathedral. This Cathedral was built in 1909 and was used as a stable for the Bolshevik Calvary. Now it is in full use and as we arrived worshippers were also arriving for daily prayers. The atmosphere was different than many temples we've been to that are used to tourists, and we were thoroughly relaxed in its surroundings. 
We wandered through a small market while making our way back to the hotel where we expected to meet Muhammad, but he didn't show so we headed off to dinner ourselves. Funnily enough the first restaurant we walked into turned out to be a Chinese restaurant!! At least Liv could read the menu!
Adlibing it with the police.
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