I mentioned that I live in a “castle”.

We’re on one of the higher floors in the building and the views of the city are impeccable when I can actually see out my window.

It gets really, really foggy for some reason. But most of the time my views look like this:

There is ONE bad view though. And unfortunately people actually live in this house.

I will get into this more later, but the picture above is probably what this whole “New City” looked like 10 years ago.

10 years ago, my area of Astana was pretty much empty. There was an existing city here, and the local people now refer to the existing city as the “Old City”. The “Old City” and the “New City” collectively make up “Astana”.

If you travel10 minutes out of the “New City”, you’re in for a shock. I thought Astana was really, really modern and nice until I ventured into the “Old City” to take Noah to the hospital the other day.

The “Old City” is enormous compared to the “New City”.The apartment buildings are disgusting and dirty. They look like World War I era factories! The poverty is evident.

I live in the “New City”. The one that Kazakhstan began building just ten years ago. Thank God f0r this, because I would have been back on that plane to Frankfurt had I stepped foot in the “Old City” for a split second when I first arrived here.

I can see the entire “New City” from my view in the Castle, but I can’t see any of the “Old City”. I assume that the government strategically built the “New City” so that visitors would never have to set sight on the “Old City”.

Smart thinking!