Another Walk Through the Village (Day 5)

Although I have even more pictures of houses from our second walk, I will refrain from posting them.

It seems monuments are pretty common throughout the former Soviet Union, so in each city we've visited there's been at least one. Sharbakti is no exception.

This is a WWII memorial, the second picture gives a closer view of the mural on the wall.

Another memorial in the same square, that red star definitely is the Soviet star.
This is a statue of Lennon. Many statues of the famous Soviet leaders were defaced, beheaded, or otherwise removed when the Soviet Union fell, except it seems in the small towns and villages.
There is a small, though well-kept, museum in Sharbakti which we (of course) visited. I took more pictures than you will see here, but hopefully these items will be of interest.

Please forgive the glare in this picture, but the ridged, curved wooden thing is actual an old school iron.
Hanging out in a yurt replica.
This is a crib of sorts. You strap your baby to it and there is actually a little hole for little boy babies... for bathroom purposes of course.
The traditional Kazakh-style table is like this one, round and low to the ground... you still on the floor (which means there are always enough seats ;D)
Camels are pretty big here, we often see little stuffed wool camels in the tourist shops. Because the old Silk Road used to come through (or at least near) here, they are/were important. There are some areas in southern Kazakhstan where camels were commonly used.

A complimentary description of a child with large eyes (and long lashes) is to say that they have baby camel eyes.
Zoe in the yurt. She definitely has baby camel eyes. (Chris feels a little defensive of his long-lash crown when he's around her, just to give you an idea.)
Don't you love this wood work?
This is a samovar. These have been around since at least the 18th century. This little baby makes sure you always have hot tea, or at least hot water for your tea. If you look towards the bottom the openings are for air to get to the coal or wood that keeps this hot all the day long, and I am told there is a hollow center where the hot air travels and keeps the tea hot.
The museum is rather small, so when we arrived we were the only visitors. The curator started taking us around and a group of three women arrived shortly thereafter. These women were apparently from at least one newspaper and were visiting to take pictures and get information about the museum for an upcoming article. We soon found ourselves unwilling subjects... they began blatantly taking pictures of us and commenting about the Americans who come to the museum. The curator attempted to halt their conversations about us by letting them know Chris spoke Russian, but they had already heard him speaking and actually discussed how well he speaks... It was kind of an odd experience, and I decided that we should take a picture of them too. We have a few, but this one (though very blurry) is the only one with all three in it.
This area was open space, so one of the ladies pinned up some doilies she made to fill the space. Heather and I fell in love and managed to commission some pieces from her! =D
Next stop was the library! Inside the children's area is a little fairy tale nook where this little house can be found. Baba Yaga is a famous character in Russian fairy tales, she is a witch that lives in a house with chicken feet.
And this little house is outside the library!

So fun!
After our walk we returned to the Joneses and finished our preparations for some homemade shashlik. I don't have any good pictures, but I can assure you, it was a tasty meal!