This page contains a blog I wrote to discuss my experiences of teaching in Astana, Kazakhstan for two weeks in January 2026. The blog was written mainly for my colleagues in the School of Physics and Astronomy, as so many of them asked to be kept informed of how my trip was going. Since then its been shared a lot more widely than I was expecting! I hope people find it an interesting or informative read. If new to the blog, you can use the button below to jump down to beginning (Day 1).

Epilogue - Staying On

As an epilogue we have a guest blog written by Eamonn, describing Patrick and Eamonn's weekend holiday to Almaty, and their extra week in Astana. As, the original version was 6 A4 pages, I've given its own separate page. You can find it here:

Day 18 - Äzirge / Bye for Now

It's now the last day, and time for the four of us academics to fly back to the UK (Patrick and Eamonn are staying an extra week). This was a early start with us leaving the apartments at 6am (1am UK time) for the airport. I wasn't feeling the best as Eamonn and Patrick's cold had finally caught up with me. All was fine at the airport, and we had a nice chat while obtaining some caffeine and eating breakfast. I found a nice hash-brown/egg/smoked-salmon dish; while Marcus and Laura took advantage of the rule that at an airport the time of day doesn't matter, and ordered a pizza for breakfast.

Our breakfast at the airport in Astana.

While we all boarded the flight on time, there was a technical fault with the plane which took an hour to fix. This caused a bit of stress, as we had a very tight connection in Istanbul. While we caught up some time in the air, there was a long taxi on the ground, and this left us with just 40 minutes to get to the next gate. Vince absolutely sprinted through the airport to try and hold the flight, unfortunately, he sprinted right past the gate we were going to. There were some comical moments with Marcus running along holding his belt (after the extra security check), but we made it safely to the plane. The plane departed about 20 minutes late so we had some hope out bags would make it, but this rapidly diminished at Heathrow, and none of our bags arrived. So that was both journeys where my bag did not arrive! At least this time they knew where our bags were, and I had a whole house of spare clothes. I was the designated driver so drove the hire-car back from Heathrow to Cardiff (which probably wouldn't have fit all the baggage if we had it), the team did a good job keeping me engaged in conversation and kept me awake. I made it back to my home around 8pm, where I had a nice takeaway and then crashed. Our bags caught up with us the next day, so it wasn't too bad.

The four of us looking glum at Heathrow airport when our bags didn't arrive.

My final cultural difference to mention, is how numbers are written. In Kazakhstan they often use the traditional (I think) Russian system where a "," indicates a decimal, and a "." (I think) can be used to indicate a factor of 1000. While this might not seem a big issue, we have several quizzes that are automatically marked by our virtual learning environment. The system ignores commas, so if a student wrote "1,5" then the system assumes they've written "15" not "1.5". Also in questions where it generates the values it sometimes adds a comma to indicate thousands. Now we know the issue, we've tried to add instructions to the questions, and I've manually checked submissions. Something to remember for next year!

As well as the students being the great, the other aspect that made the experience enjoyable was the entire group of us visiting from Cardiff (I've already mentioned how great the Scientific Thinking were for teaching, so I won't repeat), but Vince, Eamonn, Patrick, Marcus, and Laura made the whole experience a blast. We explored parts of Astana, saw sporting events, some good meals, and game nights. I have a feeling as a group, we will meet up again in Cardiff, or maybe even in Kazakhstan again in the future.

The six of us at the ice hockey match.

The group of us outside the revolving Chinese restaurant.

Overall, I had a great experience, thanks to the students and other lecturers. Was the experience perfect? No. There are some administrative, logistical, workload, and potentially even some cultural/ethical issues that we possibly need to reflect on for the future. Some of these will get better as this initiative develops, as being first we were the first to encounter some of the issues (for example future visitors are now being offered thermals). Other issues may get harder with the building filling up with the undergraduate year groups, leading to new challenges. I strongly suspect (assume?) I'll be back again next year, so looking forward to seeing how things change (and maybe another blog).

The view of Astana from the plane on the way out.

The view of Astana from the plane on the way out.

The view of London as we flew in to Heathrow.

To end, the marketing team in Kazakhstan have created videos of both Vince and I talking about what we do, and about the course we're teaching. It has some nice clips of the labs, and our seminars. They're really well made, but I still hate watching myself on video.

Day 17 - The Final Whistle

We made it to the final day of teaching! This is a bit of mixed emotions for us as its been a hard two weeks with the high teaching load and away from our homes; on the other hand we have got to know many of the students and care about their education so leaving after two weeks is hard. The plan for today's sessions was for the students to perform peer-review of each others lab diaries for experiment four, followed by 'Feedback Friday' to see what the student thought about the module and get their views on any improvements. Finally, I'd planned a bit of a fun session on the magnetic field around a wire and electromagnetic induction.

The feedback session revealed the students were very happy with the module, with high levels of satisfaction. This came as a big relief for me, as trying to write an experimental module with a dedicated lab is quite tricky, and no matter what you do beforehand there's always an element of uncertainty about how things go in reality.

The quantitative feedback scores from then morning group (afternoon is almost identical).

While numerical comments are useful for overall satisfaction, its often the free text comments you learn a lot about a module. From the results many of the students seem to have really enjoyed the opportunity to do practical experiments, and chatting to them it seem that many have not had a chance to do much practical work in the past (I think this is possibly linked to the type of school you went to). They also were very appreciative of our help, this is in so small part the great team we had delivering the module. A special shout-out to Patrick and Eamonn who as PhD students explained things expertly, had a good rapport with the students, and probably were performing at a level way beyond expected of PhD students. Vince and I bought them Cardiff University Kazakhstan T-shirts for all their hard work (I did buy myself one too, so maybe we'll need a matching shirt day in Physics). Also a shout out to Vince's never ending source of enthusiasm around the students, this quite often lifted the energies of both the students and staff. Of course no module is perfect and there were some issues, and a range of useful comments; the obvious common theme is that we do need to reflect on next year is how the peer-review of the lab-diaries works. It would work if attendance was perfect and all students engaged, but obviously in the real world that doesn't happen. We'll come up with a solution though over the next year (I might even write my own code or form). We got a great bunch of text comments so here's a small (very biased) selection:

• "All the tutors and professors are amazing at explaining everything to us, taking their time. Thank you for explaining everything and even answering sometimes to out stupid questions :"
• "I liked the materials that were clear and just on point for people who are just starting their studies in experimental sessions."
• "doing real-time experiments was really fun. you get to see what you used to learn."

Overall, I think the course went about as well as it could (actually better than I expected), only problem is we've possibly set the bar high now! I also received an amazing letter from a student, but I'll save that for the last post.

To finish we had a few things the students could do. They could look at the magnetism experiment (this was to work as a backup in case we were missing any equipment for the 4 main experiments I'd created), in this experiment we used the iOLab to measure the magnetic field around a current-carrying wire, which is cool as you see both the direction and magnitude of the field (as the iOLab's magnetometer has 3-axis). Then they could measure the magnitude of the Earth's magnetic field. Finally, I had a challenge where the winner was the team to induce the largest EMF after setting their experiment going at not touching it for a minute. While these were all grand plans, the session was really was a bit more relaxed (we kind of left it open in-case any problems in the previous two weeks), and with all the different groups doing different things we did cover all the above. I was also able to distribute all my prizes (collection of UK chocolate bars) for challenges won.

An example of one group measuring the magnetic field around a current-carrying wire with Eamonn helping (or hindering). The iOLab is face down as you roll the iOLab over the wire to map out the magnetic field.

During the sessions, many of the students asked for pictures with us, its quite possibly the most selfies I've ever taken. I also received some gifts of Kazakhstan chocolate (which is very nice), a Mclaren key chain (as I wore a Mclaren F1 top during the week), and also a very apt mug. A day or two before, Patrick and Eamonn were discussing something with a group of students, and I made some joke that 'my employees were muppets' (this is completely unrelated to this blog's muppet of the day). That actually sparked confusion over what was a muppet, so we spent the next 5 minutes explaining. So, I've not got a mug with "All my employees are muppets" with a picture of kermit the frog! I've already made use of it, and its sitting on my desk in Cardiff. Towards the end of the session we were having some good chats with the students, showing them aspects of our research, and even learning the popular local card game 'Durak' which translates to 'fool'. Here's some photos from our final day:

A pic with the group of students that gave me the mug and chocolate.

A selfie with the a group of students.

Eamonn and Patrick were also popular for selfies.

The picture with this student took a bizarre turn with us lifting up Vince.

In the afternoon we got a big group photo.

Vince showing a group of eager students how to code up some basic game theory in python.

My new mug with the phrase 'All my employees are muppets'.

Us learning how to play Durak (or fool), a popular local card game. The aim is not to be last out, otherwise you're the 'fool'.

At lunchtime we had the guest lecture by Laura and Marcus on the research into Street Art in Sao Paolo. It was a topic I knew absolutely nothing about, so it was really interesting to learn about the motivations, how it has evolved, and what it means to people in the city. The session ended with a competition where we could make our own street art, with the top three getting a prize - some of the entries were really good, given we only had 5 minutes and some board pens to do it.

Eamonn and Patrick went straight into street art mode, creating these masterpieces on the floor.

While Vince and I probably should have gone home and packed, we had arranged one final activity with the students. They had invited us to join them for their football practice, this is actually jointly done with a few of the staff at the University. The four of us (Vince, Patrick, Eamonn, and I) were put on the staff team, and it was a winner stays on format, but with only three teams, and first to two goals it rotated rapidly. The students being 17 are a lot fitter than most of us (although Vince somehow keeps running), and probably more talented (than at least me) made it quite hard, but we did win some games! As predicted, this is Eamonn's sport, and he definitely put it some thumping shots which drew some oohs from the crowd (even some locals in the next session). Sultan our local guide did call me a madman as I decided to stay with my shorts, so I could shower back at the apartment before getting changed. It was a warm -12C at this point, so not too extreme! (amazing how your perspective changes after -33C) and I did feel a bit like a postman with my massive boots. The football was a great way to end our experience with the students in Astana, and I hope future lecturers also get the same great welcome we did.

Eamonn with the ball.

The student team shooting at Patrick in goal, unfortunately, I think the ball went in.

Picture from when the two student teams faced off.

A group photo of all the footballers at the end of the session.

Day 16.5 - Random Observations

As we're coming to the end of trip, I've had a list of random observations that I've made, but ran out of time/space in the other posts. So, I've created this bonus day to discuss some of them.

In this blog I've discussed how cold it can be in Astana, we've experienced temperatures ranging from -12C to -33C. This obviously has necessitated some adaptions compared to the UK climate. One that I hadn't heard about was that car keys have a remote engine start feature. This means you can start the car from inside the building, and let it warm up before you get in. Another aspect of the temperature differential which I hadn't thought about, is with it being +23C inside, and -23C outside, it can actually be quite hard to open doors, there's a massive pressure difference! Most buildings seem to operate a semi-airlock system in the winter (while in summer some doors would be unlocked). However, even with the airlock it can still quite hard and you have to properly use your weight to open some doors. I tried looking at the calculation (based on P=nkT), but the numbers are incredibly large (need to account for not perfect seals etc...), a bit of a google suggests its probably about 20-100N, which is a lot!

The 'airlock' system at our apartments. In the summer I think you can walk straight through, but in the winter you have to enter at one end and leave at the other.

Another aspect of the weather is its exceptionally dry. This has been a slightly hurting my throat while I've been here, although that's possibly from talking a lot more than usual, and maybe the start of the cold which has afflicted everyone else. I did notice in the Banya, with its high humidity, that my throat felt a lot better. Its so dry that if you do a cloths wash, they can be dry in an exceptionally short space of time (almost within 4 hours). What I wasn't prepared for is how much static electricity I've been generating. For my research I've been to some of the driest places on Earth, and I've never been shocked so much as here, maybe air density is also a factor?? (if your an expert on static electricity let me know). To emphasise the point, here's a video of me just rustling my wool thermals after just taking them off - those cracks are electric discharges!

Another shock was that its still Christmas in Astana. Unlike in the UK where within 12 days after Christmas the decorations are down and the shops have moved on (normally starting Easter egg sales), in Astana, Christmas music is played, large Christmas trees and decorations are still around. Talking to the locals they suggested that its because January is cold and depressing, so keeping the Christmas decorations up is a way to keep their spirits up. Apparently the decorations stay up until the end of January.

The Christmas tree at the botanical gardens.

Finally, I just wanted to show just a few image from around the campus building:

The campus has two table tennis tables! Unfortunately, I only got to play a few points. Hopefully a table football table will join in the future!

Our main teaching room for scientific thinking.

I think the small room next to our large teaching room probably has the best views in the building (I wouldn't mind having it as an office - if it got a door...).

Day 16 - The Final Straw

Thursday was our last day of 'official' experiments. With most of the students getting the data they needed, they were mostly concentrating on analysing and writing up their RC filter results. A few students attempted the optional resonance circuit parts, and one student managed to complete the challenge where they had to design a circuit to reveal a code hidden in some noise. As Patrick, Eamonn, Marcus, and I, had all bought matching ice hockey shirts, we thought that the student's would appreciate us wearing them to campus. I think a lot were appreciative that we were supporting their local team. At one point we walked past the business class, and Marcus invited us in to the room, and a spontaneous round of applause erupted for our 'combined look'.

These students requested a picture of us in our ice hockey shirts.

This week also represented the first week my module in Cardiff was running. I felt bad that I was missing the first week of lectures, its not great for engaging with the cohort, but, luckily the brilliant Haley Gomez is covering three of my lectures (as head of school is obviously not enough to do...). It was slightly ironic though that it was me, 3000 miles away that first noticed the camera in the lecture theatre wasn't working (and apparently hadn't been all week...). I'm looking forward to meeting the Cardiff cohort and returning to the my more regular astrophysics topics at a slightly more sedate pace of teaching.

As the day was fairly quiet I'll talk about some non-teaching related things. First, just before travelling I was asked about any health and safety considerations about doing the experiments. Luckily, I had thought about this a bit, but as we were only using the iOLab's which run on AA batteries, the experiments are very low-risk (equivalent to the normal teaching use of the rooms). That doesn't mean I haven't noticed some differences between Kazakhstan and the UK in terms of health and safety. The thing which caught me out the most this week is that the staircases have all the same-size steps, except the last one which is about half-the depth. A couple times while going down the stairs when I haven't been paying attention I've nearly stumbled; I'm 99% certain this wouldn't be allowed in a UK building. The other thing to catch me our I would say are the plug sockets on the 8th floor. I would guess originally the movable tables are probably meant to be over the sockets, but the tables have migrated over time, leaving the sockets between tables. During the week I definitely found myself tripping on the sockets, particularly as the students often leave them raised when they've finished using them.

The staircase with the last step being half the depth.

The plug sockets on the 8th floor, that have been left up as a handy trip hazard.

Another difference to Cardiff, is that during the day I have often discovered students asleep around the building. An example below is a picture of someone just snoozing in the main coffee shop (I thought this photo was OK to post, as they've covered themselves up so well that you can hardly see them). I've also seen this in other rooms throughout the building. I'm not sure why exactly this is, I really hope its not due to working late on our lab diary submissions! I suspect its because some of them are fairly restricted on what times they can get the bus, so either having to travel early, or they have big gaps in their timetable and need to kill time while in the building (i,e., between my STEM course and their history course). Or its just nice and quiet compared to the building. That said I haven't been to the library in Cardiff for a while, so maybe people are asleep in there too. One way you can stay awake is there are two table tennis tables in the building. Unfortunately, I only got a chance to play 3 points, but hopefully next year!

A student asleep in the coffee room, with a nice use of the cushion to cover themselves.

In the evening we took Marcus and Laura back to the micro-brewery/steak restaurant we found on our third night in Astana. As before the food was really nice, although we did have an issue that the salad contained meat (not mentioned on the menu), which didn't help the vegetarian member of our group. One thing over the two weeks we discovered is that if a woman buys a beer, they're given a straw to drink it with. This is most definitely something, that we wouldn't see in the UK! Of course, I was drawn to the table-football table, but it turns out Marcus was also a fan, and so we had to give it a go. The crowd's went wild (Laura, Eamonn and Patrick), with many oohs and aahs as we battled it out. It was best of 3 games, and it went to a decider, but I just matched to clinch the final game. I really need to somehow get a table in Cardiff (maybe in X decade time when the school gets a new building), although Eamonn and Patrick now refuse to play me.

Laura with her provided straw to drink beer.

Eamonn felt he was missing out without a straw, so he tried drinking his beer with one too.

Day 15 - Ice, Ice, Hockey

On Wednesday we were back to our full strength team as Patrick had recovered, just in-time for a new experiment. Today was the start of an experiment to create, measure, and understand the function of a RC filter circuit. By characterising the circuit we can accurately determine the capacitance. There is an optional part where we make a resonance circuit, but the majority of students have opted to stick to just the first bit. The experiment involves the students creating circuits which was a struggle last week, and now most of the class managed to create it with minimal help, so we're learning! Of course, using all these small components is creating a nightmare of items not going back in the same bag, or students putting stuff in the wrong box, so unfortunately Patrick and Eamonn are going to have to do a bit of an audit next week.

Two of our students working on the RC circuit experiment.

As we're now about 1.5 weeks into the 'live' sessions the students are starting to open up and have a bit more a rapport with us. They still call us "Mr Matt", "Mr Patrick", "Mr Eamonn", and "Mr Vince". They obviously didn't get my joke, when one of them said "Mr Matthew are you free?", and I replied "I'm free Mr Humphrey" (bit of a niche reference). The students have made the comment that they appreciate Patrick's fun jumpers and t-shirts (normally they feature some random band etc...), and also that they missed him when he was off for day ill. Vince was being taught some local choice vocabulary, and Eamonn has been discussing football (I've been trying to endorse rugby but its not getting traction). (aside, the copilot autocomplete wanted to suggest the following narrative about Vince learning vocabulary, its so off the wall I thought I'd mention it: and one student asked him how to say "awesome" in English, Vince replied "cool", the student then said "no, cooler", so Vince replied "super cool", the student then said "no, super cooler", so Vince replied "mega cool", the student then said "no, mega cooler", so Vince replied "ultra cool", the student then said "no, ultra cooler", so Vince replied "hyper cool", the student then said "no, hyper cooler", so Vince finally gave up! Its nice to see them starting to relax a bit more.) I also passed some students in the corridor and they said OK, in a slightly subdued tone. I asked why so glum and she said its because we were leaving soon.

In the building there's two places to get food. There's the student/building coffee shop which has a good selection and very reasonably priced. I had a very nice oreo doughnut for probably £1.20, and the milkshake is really nice. The other place is the grand floor corridor restaurant, everyday they do the 'business lunch' where for £3.20 you get a soup/broth starter, a small side salad, a small main course, a couple slices of bread, and a drink. This is all served to the table and is usually quite tasty - a bit better value and service that the Trevithick (although Trev probably has a bigger range). The restaurant is open most of the day, but seems to only do lunch, so I'm not sure why its open the rest of the time (it may do drinks?).

The business lunch from the ground floor restaurant.

The coffee shop on the 2nd floor of the University building.

The back wall of the coffee shop has a map of Cardiff (I held back from marking my office on it), with some key dates.

In the evening we had booked to go watch an ice hockey game which was Astana Barys vs Vladivostok Admirals. I'd bought the best tickets in the house, which was 5000 KZT or about £7 each (I wanted to look at booking a box, but I couldn't get the website to work, and we were probably better off where we were). At the shop Marcus, Eamonn, Patrick, and I got into the local team spirit by buying the home team shirts. Ice hockey is very big in Kazakhstan and it was fun to watch such a high-quality match. Luckily, Vince had some knowledge from playing with a Jamaican ice hockey team (that's not a joke!), so could explain most of the rules to us. The only thing I found slightly unusual is that food or drink is not allowed inside the seating area, you can buy and eat it outside, but then expected to eat/drink it very quickly before going back in. The atmosphere was very good, with lots of chanting, music in stoppages, and there was another marriage proposal! (this time on one knee). Unfortunately, the home team lost 5-2, but we all enjoyed ourself.

The scene while the national anthems were being played.

An example of the general action during play.

At one point the puck was in front of the goal line, which caused all the players to dive on top of it.

Patrick, Eamonn, and I in the stands cheering on the home team in our jerseys.

The stadium was a 20 minute walk away from our apartment, in the park we passed a small ice rink, but what I really wanted to try was these ice slides. Unfortunately, you need a rubber ring, but next maybe we'll get to try it next year.

The ice rink in the park, with a big ice slide next to it (the diagonal structure behind with lights).

The Barys' stadium in Astana.

In front of the stadium was a very slippy layer of black ice which made the last 10 minutes pretty hairy.

Finally, just a word on our University supplied coats, they are very practical and warm. They cannot however be described as fashionable (I think I'm right in saying Patrick's girlfriend was mortified by the sight of him in the coat). Some of the students have asked if we work in construction, and Eamonn while outside the apartment was asked by a local for the directions to a pharmacy because they thought he worked security at the building. The reason I'm mentioning this now, is as we were walking across the park we passed a couple groups of police and in the dark we did look pretty similar.

Day 14 - 'Happy Fun Lab Time'

Tuesday started badly as we learnt the Patrick's cold had got worse and he'd been up most of the night coughing, so we told him to take the day off and rest. At the lab most students started the next bit of the experiment measuring the speed of light. To do this we used the signal strength of the iOLab's wireless signal and a reflector to measure places where there is destructive interference (i.e., if the distance from the transmitter to the reflector is correct, the reflected wave cancels out some of the outgoing signal). This is a cool little experiment which can give surprisingly good results. Interestingly, many of the students weren't happy with their values if they got 2.7×10⁸ m s^-1 rather than 3.0×10⁸ m s^-1 - they're perfectionists! However, that's part of the purpose of my module, to get them thinking about the limitations in their methods and data. I did usually respond with the line: "given you are moving a bit of tin-foil I think that's pretty good!"

Some of our students gearing up for the speed of light experiment.

The experiment also included an (optional) challenge, I'm not going to go into details as I don't want to give away the answer, but it involves understanding phone tones and then deciphering a message. A few groups in the morning attempted and succeeded, we're still waiting to see if the afternoon group will manage it. As I mentioned, some students are really keen, which makes it fun, but with any student cohort there's a full range. A few memories include Vince having a debate with a student as they couldn't tell if in a equation written down by Eamonn had a "n" or "v". Instead of just looking at the handbook where it was clearly written, they spent 20+ minutes walking up several floors of the building to find Eamonn, with the argument they "wanted the answer quickly". We also had to deal with one thing today that was not acceptable, where we had to address a mobile hotspot with a name we considered offensive (bit of an accident we found it), it very quickly disappeared, and I think we handled it well. Luckily, such things are incredibly rare.

In the evening we been asked if we wanted to take part in a 'pub quiz', although its full title is the 'Happy English Quiz'. A quiz here is a very professional production, there's slides for each question, the slide automatically has a timer which counts down, quite a lot of picture/sound questions. There's strict rules about handing the sheet in within 45 seconds of the round ending. We also had a random local assigned to our team, as they thought we would struggle. It turns out with the exception of 2-3 questions that were mainly about Russian music artists, all the questions were pretty international. Unfortunately, we finished last place, although that was mainly because we misread the question on the last round (put the sizes in reverse), and Eamonn handed the sheet in just as I got the anagram. It was a nice place, with some good food, and we had fun.

Our team for the 'Happy English Quiz'.

Finally, I thought to end today I should talk about the accommodation that we're staying in. The University (local and Cardiff) have put us in some apartments. We had some concerns before hand, but the apartments themselves are pretty nice. We've all got a bedroom/bathroom, and open-plan lounge area/kitchen, with the exception of Eamonn who has a studio (not sure why he's the odd one out). There's plenty of space, and while the cooking facilities are limited there is some equipment to do basic meals (for the odd occasions we want to stay in). Here's some pictures:

The living area of my apartment.

The kitchen of my apartment.

The bedroom of my apartment.

The bathroom of my apartment.

On top of this the local team here provided a nice welcome bundle so we could have some quick snacks, basic food, or make tea - there was even basic McVities biscuits! Here's a picture of the welcome pack, but there was more stuff in the fridge like cheese, milk, eggs, butter, yogurt etc...

The welcome pack provided by the local University team.

However, there are a few significant downsides to these apartments, which are worth mentioning. First, the apartment is a reasonable distance from the University, and the traffic at rush-hour can be slow. This means we have to meet-up at 7:45 to make sure we prepared and ready for our teaching at 9am. We then don't normally get back to about 18:45, which makes it a very long day! Somewhere closer would really help free up some time to just decompress as its a very long intense day. Second, there's been no cleaning of the room, or change of towels/bedding (this does seem to depend who owns your apartment, as Marcus/Laura and Eamonn have had this). While I've done a towel wash just some light cleaning, like changing sheets, or cleaning the floor (tends to get a few marks from melting ice). While we've been out here some staff (non-module teaching staff), have stayed in closer hotels, so it would be good for everyone to have the same options available to them. There's a few other reasons as well (e.g., English reception, in-location dining), which we'll feedback to the University.

Day 13 - Four (+4) Weddings and a Duck

Today was back to teaching, so the Scientific Thinking team met at our usual 7:45 am time to get a taxi to the University. Today we were started a new experiment, one that I was slightly apprehensive about before hand. This experiment measures the speed of sound in air, and the speed of light (see tomorrow). The speed of sound measurement is quite cool, essentially you play a sound into a tube and if you hit the right frequency standing waves are created, and you get a resonance feature. However, there were some concerns: first the measurement is quite sensitive to background noise (even when adding pipe insulation), and second some of the headphones we use aren't that good at low frequencies which can lead to issues. Luckily, with only foundation students this year, there are many, many empty rooms in the campus building here, so we were able to send them out to find a quiet space. This reminded me a bit of school, where my biology teacher used to send us out to take samples; it was only when we older we realised this occurred mainly when the test match cricket was on. The availability of quiet spaces meant that not only could they get quiet data without noise, but they could also use their louder phone speakers which are a bit better at the lower frequencies. All the students seemed to get some good data, and some reasonable values (as good as when we did this with proper lab kit in Cardiff). The downside though is that we had to try and periodically check all 8 floors to check people weren't stuck.

Two of our students measuring the speed of sound.

Another two of our students measuring the speed of sound, with a nice graph.

A few of our students found some interesting locations to measure sound. The staircase might not have been my number 1 choice.

One thing I discovered while doing my rounds was that the lift here has a feature I've never seen before. If you accidentally press a button for the wrong floor, by double/triple tapping the number you can clear that floor's selection (i.e., you cancel stopping there). We also saw some cool sparkly snow, as some very fine snow/ice was falling but the sun was still out, giving this glitter/sparkly effect - unfortunately it didn't photograph well.

I guess as the first STEM module out here, the local marketing team have been taking a lot of material for marketing, and I guess the experiments lend themselves to having some cool pictures. The speed of which the posts have been released is a bit staggering (normally this takes weeks in the UK). Here's a couple of examples that I've found where we've featured in social media advertisements:

An advert with me helping two students - this was also the last time I saw my iPad pen (I noticed I lost it later that session, but its no where to be found).

A video including Vince.

A video involving scientific thinking, I think the pendulum looks cool. Might even look better without the clamp-stands we were hoping to have.

One notable difference to the UK, is that some of our students do like to dress smart for the office, this is also more common amongst the staff that you would probably see in the Physics department in Cardiff. That said, I think as the students are relaxing and getting used to us (we are not wearing a suit and tie), some of them are starting to dress a bit more causally.

Our best dressed student!

Vince had volunteered to give us a talk on his topic of research, and so gave a lecture on the topic of "The Mathematics of Cooperation". It started with a classic game of "Golden Balls", where one player ruthlessly steals from the other player. Its quite a fascinating topic; Vince kept the lecture interactive with a team competition where we saw which team had the best strategy for winning, and including real world scenarios with rhino poaching.

Vince giving his guest lecture on the Mathematics of Cooperation.

The six of us had heard about a very nice restaurant at the top of a hotel which is designed to resemble Chinese architecture. However, what is unusual about this restaurant is that it rotates, something like every 1.5-2 hours you get a full view out across Astana. To celebrate Vince's talk, we decided to splurge for one day, this is possible as for the first time Cardiff has implemented a 'per diem'. This is a system which many of my US colleagues have, but is not common in UK universities. The 'per diem' means we get a fixed amount for subsistence a day to cover subsistence and local taxis. We get £40 a day, and don't need to collect any receipts! This is a massive benefit as I always lose one or two receipts. It also means if on some days if we spend less, we can spend more on another day, rather than trying to keep the expenses balanced every day. The food was very delicious, but the main attraction was we ordered a whole duck to share. The downside to this was that the duck did take a while to cook, but when ready was sliced up by the chef in front of our table. We then were asked if we wanted a broth from the carcass which also took a while to cook. I would say while the food was very nice, and the ambience was great, the big downside for me at such a high-end restaurant was that none of the food came at the same time (I think this might be a wider feature of Kazakh restaurants but I don't know).

A picture of all of us at the revolving restaurant.

The duck that we ordered to share, which is carved up at the table by the chef.

The other remarkable thing, and something I've never seen before is the sheer volume of marriage proposals that happened while we were there. Literally every 15 mins music was played, a big bouquet of flowers appeared, and applauding. In the end we think there was 8 wedding proposals while we had our meal. We asked the waiter if this was normal or if it was a special day, apparently, the number we saw was about average (we actually asked twice to confirm we had heard the answer correctly). One thing we did learn is it doesn't appear customary to go down on one knee, instead they say a few words standing up. Congratulations to all the couples!

Patrick and Eamonn admiring the view.

Finally, let's return to muppet of the day. I forgot for Sunday I'm going to assign myself mini-muppet of the day for leaving my water-bottle at basketball, as well as in the Irish bar - luckily both times a quickly timed whatsapp meant it was recovered. Vince came close to winning it for today, as he couldn't find his hat, and was searching where we got out the cab, the reception, our office. It was only at the end of the day he found it in his coat sleeve (no idea how it got there). However, muppet of the day I think has to go to Eamonn (sorry!). This is because Patrick and Eamonn are planning to visit Almaty this weekend, and Eamonn was in-charge of flights. He accidentally booked a set of flights in the wrong direction, luckily he realised straight-away, but is now fighting the flight companies to get his money back.

Day 12 - A 'Layup' of a Day

Sunday started with an easy morning (although I still woke up at 7am), and so I caught up with some e-mails and writing this blog. In our building there's a costa on the ground floor, but we discovered there's also a coffee shop on the 22nd floor. I went up for the first time to see Marcus, and Eamonn around 11am. The coffee shop is designed to give a nice panoramic view of the gardens and the city. I discovered you could still very clearly see the site where we made snow angels during the week. Its a nice non-chain (I think) coffee shop, and seems to have some good items.

The view from our apartment blocks 22nd floor cafe.

Patrick, Vince, Eamonn, and I, then went to check out one of the bazaar's or markets a little bit north of the city centre. Most of it resembled an old shopping centre, except most of the shops were small outlets, largely focused on clothes, shoes, and some other household items. However, out the back there was a large outside area full of stores made from old shipping containers, which was a bit different. Although, in the back of my head I couldn't get the image of the old 'Erith' market that used to exist in my childhood, as I think the types of stores are largely similar (maybe with a few more dedicated to the cold weather). In particular, there's quite a few hat stores, with a range of fur (or fake fur) hats, although we weren't expecting to see the one with the paws still included!

A selection of hats from the outdoor stalls at the central bazaar.

Eamonn was very proud of his new hat (it says 100% polyester on it) - I thought he looked like a 'peaky blinder' from a distance.

As Patrick still needed to do some shopping, we then went to the very new, massive, shopping centre, the 'Mega Silk Road', which is just south of our hotel. This shopping centre would not be too out of place in the UK (in fact many of the stores are the same), and we haven't noticed much difference in price in these international stores. One interesting quirk was there was a small indoor ice rink, which seemed a bit redundant as there was a larger outdoor ice rink just outside, which is naturally kept cold (maybe the indoor ice rink is also there in the summer). After lunch we split up, and I walked over to the Exbo where there is meant to be cool exhibits on the future of energy etc... Unfortunately, it was closed for refurbishment, but I saw the Central Mosque was walkable so headed over. It took a bit longer than I thought, as Astana's Grand Mosque is the largest in central Asia and one of the largest in the world, so I'd underestimated how far away it was (still the walk only took 30 minutes). This was my first visit to a mosque, and so I was slightly apprehensive about making sure I didn't commit any faux-pas, and getting into trouble. Luckily, there was a steady flow of people, and some English signs, so I just followed what others were doing. Actually, the only main thing to do was to take off your shoes in the area where you first enter. The mosque predominately consists of the main prayer hall, which is a very large, and impressively decorated space. What I wasn't expecting is at the back there were some mothers with children running and playing, which reassured me that etiquette was not too strict. After a prayer session concluded in the middle, many people were taking photos on their phone, so I grabbed a couple of pictures.

The Central Mosque in Astana around sunset.

The prayer hall inside the Central Mosque.

At this point it might be good to mention how we are managing to walk around. This might sound a silly question, but in places where people have been walking, or on roads the pavements can be essentially just be hard layer of ice. Even with our Cardiff provided boots, its exceptionally slippy (unless your walking on snow), and sometimes the ground can be tricky with random piles of snow. However, we've got a set of 'ice cleats' which essentially are small studs/spikes that strap onto your shoes. These work really great, although some of the locals find it a bit amusing, as they seem to just magically walk with no slides (I think its just practice).

An example of the ice cleats that just strap onto the base of your shoes to give you extra grip.

An example the random snow obstacles you encounter, with walkways often compressed to ice.

For the evening, Vince had arranged with the students for us to join in with the student's regular Basketball practice. So Patrick, Eamonn, Vince, and I, headed over to the sports venue to represent Cardiff UK. The four of us were split into teams with the students (we said it wasn't a good idea for us to have our own team). Basketball is not really my game, and we played games where the winner stays on (which did mean some teams had a lot of time between games). My team did manage to win a couple of games in a row, which had the down side that I had to keep going for a fair period (no subs!) - I forgot how much sprinting and cardio was involved in basketball! I did manage to score a basket, and had a few good defence moments (although taking out Vince was not one of them - although on slow motion replay I'm sure he ran into my static hand). Vince was definitely the stand out staff player, which was probably only matched by his trash talk... We all had fun playing, and it was good to get some exercise, and engage with the students.

A game involving Vince, Patrick, Eamonn.

Another basketball pic.

Another basketball pic.

A big team photo of the whole group of students and Cardiff staff who turned up to play.

Day 11 - Steamy-oke

(Please note I'm trying to catch up with the blog at the weekend, so check you haven't skipped a day)

To start the weekend off our Sultan, our local guide and helper at the University (whose done an amazing job of making sure we are OK and know what we are doing), invited us to go with him to one of the public Banya (Russian Sauna). Apparently, Sultan goes regularly so we weren't taking up his weekend time. We had agreed to meet at 10:10, which was fine. Except, if you were Eamonn or Patrick, as it turned out they stayed in the Irish bar until 4am and then some locals showed them around the old town. There is a video of them going face-first down an ice slide onto the frozen river, so they didn't get back to the apartments until 5am... Patrick particularly didn't seem completely compos mentis in the morning.

Patrick joining us at 10am after a late night out.

The Banya itself consists of the main sauna, a steam room, plunge pool, hot/cold showers, as well as a treatment room. Luckily this location was one where swimming trunks were fairly common to be worn, but also we were told to wear this hat otherwise your head would be too warm - I'm not quite sure about the physics of this, but given hot air is blown at you maybe that just shields your head.

Eamonn modelling the hat that we were advised to wear in the sauna.

The unique bit is every two hours they perform a 'ceremony', which we think is called "общий пар" or 'Common Shared Steam'. At this point with thirty or so people in the sauna the sauna 'master' comes in, opens up the windows to the hot stones/oven, adds water and then uses a massive fan on a pole to waft hot air over you. There's a bit of shouting involved, which I think is a bit like a challenge (i.e., bring on the heat), and it does get very hot. This process repeats (and sometimes you shift positions, i.e., expose your back, or chest to the heat). We were seated towards the front lower levels where it is very slightly cooler; I believe we were strategically placed if as 'amateurs' we couldn't handle it and had to leave. Everyone was really friendly, talking to us in English, and encouraging us through the process. After this you have to have a quick shower, and then you can jump into the cold plunge pool. Vince was offered by a local person to drive him to the river, where they've cut a hole in the ice for you to jump in (apparently this is currently possible as the pool has been created for an Orthodox festival). Vince didn't quite fancy it when the air temperature was ~-17C, let alone the water temperature. Between these ceremonies, its all about relaxing either with more sauna/steam room time (also including hitting each other with sticks), or having drinks or snacks in the cafe.

For extra, you can add some additional treatments, like a massage, scrub, etc... I've never had a massage before, so I thought I'd give it a go, as it was £14 for a whole hour massage (Vince, Eamonn, and I all opted to have one). The massage was really good, although the downside was they didn't speak English and I didn't manage to adequately convey that I didn't want the 'cupping therapy' (the one where they stick jars to you). So I have a few marks on my back, but they're beginning to fade. Overall, we all really enjoyed the experience. Sultan our host has a blog, and you can see the video he made of Vince's before and after reaction here.

Vince looking quite menacing with the sticks/branches/leaves that Sultan brought for us to (gently) each other with.

After the Banya we came back to the apartment and then ordered some lunch. Patrick and I decided we both felt a KFC was a good idea so we ordered it for delivery. Unfortunately, it arrived quite cold, which seems to be becoming a feature of delivery. I guess it shouldn't be surprising (although the KFC is close), so we used a combination of the frying pan and microwave to reheat it.

Patrick reheating the KFC delivery.

In the evening we met a few of the local University staff for some food and karaoke - thanks to Saniya for organising and Marcus for suggesting it! The place is very different to anything we have in the UK. The place is set out like a small restaurant, and each table get's two songs (we had a double so 4), there were about 4-5 tables so the mic was passed round and you sang from your seat (although I preferred to stand). As has been my experience in Asia everyone is brilliant at Karaoke, so I'm not sure all the locals appreciated the efforts of Patrick, Marcus, Eamonn, and I (sadly Laura and Vince didn't volunteer...). Luckily (for you), I've not got around to setting up video on this website, so no videos of our efforts. Also a special mention for Saniya who sang absolutely beautifully, with songs with a range of origins. Overall, a great night, and a good way to round off a Saturday.

My first attempt at karaoke.

Marcus and Eamonn had a duet!

Patrick singing!

Day 10 - Astana to the Universe (via Ireland)

(Please note I'm trying to catch up with the blog at the weekend, so check you haven't skipped a day)

Its Friday! The end of our first week of teaching here in Astana. Today in class we were continuing with the Capacitor/Diode/LED experiment, which seemed to progress relatively smoothly (although I did spend most of the day talking about creating straight-line graphs). If our gruelling schedule wasn't enough, I had volunteered to give a talk about my research to the students (and staff) and lunchtime. This didn't require a lot of prep as I mainly recycled one of my previous outreach talks. The time slot probably didn't help attendance as Friday lunchtime I believe is an important prayer time for many of the students. That said I still had about ~30 people attending, and I think its probably one of the most engaged audiences I've had, which was great as it made the talk interactive, and people asked some good questions.

One part of the diode experiment requires knowing the temperature in the room (as the diode's behaviour is technically temperature dependant). So I got my first official reading of the temperature of our teaching room on the 8th floor:

The temperature on the 8th floor where we are teaching.

Yes ~28 C! (although the other measured 27C) Its not quite as bad as it sounds because the air is so dry, so its not like 27C in the UK, but it does get uncomfortable. Annoyingly many of the windows in the room are glued shut, but at the end of the lab we did find one window - here you can see us making use of the cold air! With the outside temperature at -20C and inside at +27C the cool draft is particularly effective.

Eamonn, Patrick and I making use of the -20C outside to cool ourselves down in the teaching room.

Amongst the Scientific Thinking team, we were talking about the differences to the first year lab in Cardiff, where we have a dedicated lab, and Vince asked the question whether there is anything we can do in Kazakhstan that we can't do in Cardiff. I suspect with such a high temperature gradient between the building and outside there must be something we could do with heat engines, but that is quite advanced, and probably breaks health and safety laws (any suggestions on a postcard).

As I've previously mentioned, the purchasing of equipment was a concern, and with a week to go before I flew we decided to send some small and cheap items over with a courier, that way hopefully we'd be able to run most aspects of the course. Unfortunately, while the courier was quick, the customs process took about 10 days, and I think did involve the local University staff here doing more paperwork than I was hoping (my aim was the courier would just send us an online bill to pay). However, today it arrived, and gives us one item we were slightly short on, provides redundancy for some items, and some room for future larger numbers on the course.

The parcel I sent from Cardiff two weeks ago, was delivered to the building!

As its the last day of the first week, I think this is a good time to also reflect on the course and how the students are interacting with us. My personal opinion is that so far, everything has gone about as well as we could have hoped for, mainly down to the hard work of Vince, Patrick and Eamonn. With a new course there's always teething issues with a brand new course (especially when you are in a new environment and unsure on the skills of the students when you arrive). Unlike students in the UK, the students here are one year younger which I think does mean we have possibly a more varied class, but the students are well behaved and we've not had issues with disruption. We have had some lost in translation moments, one particular one being when they used the word 'retarded' instead of 'shorter', which really changed our interpretation of the sentence... On the flip side we've had some nice moments, Patrick recently was chatting to a student and after saying something as a joke said "Don't worry, that's just one of my stupid jokes", to which the student replied "Oh Patrick, we know you, with your jokes". One student also told us he was enjoying doing the practical side, as in school they only learnt from the text book, and how he really appreciated the practical and problem solving aspect of the course. This is one of the reasons that this course is up first, as we were told that schools focus more on learning the laws rather than problem solving. Informally, we've heard that while its a lot of work, the students are enjoying the in-person sessions. In fact our colleges in business have had one students tell us they are jealous of the experiments!

Of course in the UK (at least in Physics), Friday is the day we go out to the pub to relax after a hard week, and so it seemed appropriate we do the same here in Astana. Most of the restaurants here the choice of beer is limited to only a couple of lager's, and so Patrick and I have been hankering to find some ales (specifically IPA's). While the others went back first to the hotel, Patrick and I thought we'd try a place close the University called 'Meat and Beer', which sounded promising. Unfortunately, while the meat looked good, the beer selection was quite limited (at least for a place with beer in the name). So we had one pint in the bar and a cocktail (we both like old fashioned's), before we moved to a place that Eamonn heavily campaigned for - the Irish Bar (no stereotypes here...). Of all the places we've been in Astana this has been the most buzzing. It did resemble an Irish bar, but with a few twists. For example, when we entered there was an 18+ quiz going on, with some suggestive questions, the first being "Which of these underwear's do you least want to find your date wearing?", followed by 4 pictures. The good news was they did have alternative beers including Guinness for Eamonn, and a couple of IPA's for Patrick and I. Later in the evening there was a live band playing with a small dance floor, with most of the songs being in English.

The Irish pub in Astana.

Earlier in the week we were chatting about competitiveness not being a bit thing, just don't be a bad loser (although I think we probably should add not being a bad winner). As such I think Eamonn, Patrick, and I do like a competition, and the Irish bar gave us two opportunities for that, with an arm wrestling table and an air hockey table (there was a dart board, but it was about 2 foot too low). I was quite happy with my win at arm wrestling (definitely didn't mention being 15 years older, and not being particularly fit), and Patrick won at air hockey (the 'air' bit might a bit of an exaggeration as the puck didn't really float). I would feel bad for Eamonn but he beats me at football every week in the UK... The time quickly disappeared and before I knew it was 1:30 in the morning, at which point Marcus, Laura and I, called it a night (Vince had left earlier), and we left Patrick and Eamonn partying (more on that tomorrow). We got back to the apartment about 2am, so might regret not catching up on sleep!

We had dinner at the Irish bar. Here's Patrick, Marcus and I with our burgers. They provide gloves for you to wear while you eat them.

Day 8 - Discharging and One Way Flow

(Please note I'm trying to catch up with the blog at the weekend, so check you haven't skipped a day)

Today marked the start of a new experiment, where the students study charging and discharging of a capacitor, before moving on to looking at diodes (which only allow current to flow in one direction), and LED's. Unfortunately, it started with Eamonn being ill, and so we sent him back to the apartments, as we'd rather him recover than lose more days later on (its a very hard workload, and we definitely need him for the rest of the week!). With a bit of sleep Eamonn did return for the start of the afternoon session, and has since been on the mend.

Before the students started the experiment we tried getting them to peer-mark each other's lab diaries. This is to try and help share feedback so both the person being marked and the marker learns more about writing a good lab report. This is consequence of the intense teaching structure, where we do not have the ability to mark 240 lab diaries every two days. This part actually seemed to go quite well, with students carefully marking each other's reports, and giving (hopefully) constructive feedback. Then we moved on to the new experiment... A new experiment is always a bit of challenge as students don't know where or how to start. The main problem (which is not to dissimilar to our students in Cardiff) is that most don't read the experimental handbook, and for some reason quite a few students just seemed to go to the last paragraph skipping most of the experiment. Another example of this is that instead on clicking the link to the Appendix which shows them what the correct resistor is (and which bag its contained in), most prefer to use google or chat gpt, and then struggle to find the right items. As I mentioned this is not unique to students in Kazakhstan, although I think with non-native English language and different educational backgrounds may exacerbate the situation. However, after walking around and pointing these things out to the students, we got all going in the right direction. I think they enjoyed the first bits of the experiment as you get a nice graph of a capacitor charging and discharging. Towards the end of the day I did overhear one of the students say to Vince "You are a genius for writing this experimental handbook" so at least one student appreciates it (Vince also very kindly pointed out he didn't write the handbook).

A student measuring the charging of a capacitor.

The curve you obtain for charging and then discharging a capacitor, using the iOLab.

There are various reason we're doing an electronic experiment, first you can see how certain components which make up every day devices work, learn how to construct circuits, and it gives the opportunity to practice performing analysis on data (i.e., a lot of convert to a straight line, measure a quantity etc...). However, one of the main reasons is that without a dedicated teaching lab space we have to do things with easy to buy, small, and have no special safety requirements. This sort of experiment allows this to do this nicely, but, it does mean that we have a lot of small components. Due to our 'kit boxes' being significantly messed up on the first two days (parts moved etc...), we decided to put some masking tape on each box so they could write their name on it, with the hope that would give them a bit more ownership. So far the signs are positive, let's hope it continues!

With the weather so cold, clearing snow and Ice is its own industry here. One thing we spotted from our high lookout on the 8th floor, is an example of how they clear the road's or pavements.

Snow and Ice clearing in action.

With the excess of Chinese food from the night before we (all 6 of us), decided we'd hold a games night in the apartment, as a few of us had bought over some board or card games for us to play. As we were lacking rice (and we couldn't be bothered to cook), we did order some rice from the same Chinese restaurant to go with the meal. After an initial game of Exploding Kittens, we moved on to a game of Werewolf which just works with 6 people (5 players and the narrator), and was great fun. Despite most of us not knowing each other for that long, we managed to have some hilarious games, with some quite spirited accusations. One of the funniest moments was when the game had reached the final 3 players, I was the werewolf, Eamonn was a hunter (if the hunter survives to the final two then the villagers win), and Laura was a villager. I was pretending to be the seer, as no one had mentioned that, so Eamonn decided to say he was the hunter, but for some reason he seemed to think his best tactic was to say it didn't matter how he voted and could vote for everyone. He then suggested he could vote for himself (I think the logic was to leave the decision up to me or Laura), which after I prompted he then did, so of course I just then immediately voted for him, and won the game. Unfortunately, the group decided that makes Eamonn muppet of the day again, but due to the earlier illness I think we'll just say 'Minor Muppet of the Day'.

A picture of us during games night.

Day 7 - I'm Loving Angels Instead

Apparently, today was international hugs day, which the local psychologist was advertising. Unfortunately, we couldn't witness the two dedicated 30 minute sessions, to see if the hug sessions were utilised. However, one thing we have noticed as a group, is that generally our students are more relaxed than in the UK about greeting each other. Certainly when you first see your friends you always shake hands with them, and for example its not uncommon to see two male students with an arm around the other's shoulder. Its nothing big, but just a bit different to what we see in the UK. We also received a lesson in Kazakh etiquette that you should never wear gloves when you shake hands (this lesson occurred when we once leaving the building and Eamonn had his gloves on).

We were back to the lab to finish the pendulum experiment today, and students were getting on with measuring gravity. Eamonn woke him with his voice largely gone - not great when you are spending the whole day explaining things for students, but soldiered through the day. The students seemed to be understanding what was expected of them, and were working nicely on their lab diaries.

In Astana we're pretty much completely reliant on taxi's which you book through the Yandex app (a bit like uber, but even more extensive). Its usually pretty quick to get a car (sometimes not at rush-hour), but it is very cheap... Pretty much every journey is £2-£3 no matter really how far you are travelling across Astana. There is a variety of drivers, most don't speak English, but you don't need to know the language to interpret some of their communication with other drivers. The driver tonight had a particular shouting match with another driver, but we made it to our destination fine. Generally, the driving style in Kazakhstan is a bit I will keep nudging my way out until I've forced my way in, which sometimes leads to tensions with drivers that don't want to let you out. There's also the added bonus that all this is playing out on ice, the drivers handle it well, but there's been a couple occasions where I noticed a slight skid.

Before we left we got recommendations on where to eat from the local marketing manager, and we decided as a group (Marcus, Laura, Eamonn, Patrick, and I - Vince had meetings/work) to go to the recommended Chinese restaurant. Its sometimes a bit hard to judge the size of portions from the picture and price, and I think its safe to see we went a bit mad, and *slightly* over-ordered on food (maybe by a factor of 2). The food was good and were clearly enjoying ourselves (see below). As another first for us in Astana, we got our first 'doggy bags', so the food didn't go to waste.

Our massive feast at the local Chinese restaurant.

The chinese restaurant was only a 5 to 10 minute walk from our apartments so we walked back. I decided the best route was to take the shortcut across the park, but I did slightly underestimate the deepness of the snow! (I was trying to follow the tracks someone had left earlier). However, at that point we decided to have some fun, and make snow angels. As mentioned before its so cold, that this activity is not really wet, as the snow is most definitely still frozen even with the milder (-17 to -22 C) weather.

Marcus, Eamonn, Patrick, and I making snow angels in the park.

A picture of us in the park on the walk back to the apartments.

Day 6 - Getting into the Swing

Day 6 (Tuesday) started with the first session of our first full experiment. This is a take on the classic 'pendulum' experiment; a staple of every physics undergrad. However, instead of just timing with a stop-watch, the iOLab's are swung, which gives precision timing with its 800\,Hz sampling, and it can also measure the swing with its accelerometer, force, or gyroscope sensors.

The biggest challenge was the fact that the clamp stands (or retort stands), that I requested unfortunately weren't available due to a variety of reasons, including lack of local vendors, staff time, etc... This gave the students a lesson in improvisation, adaptability, or 'bodging' (depending on your point of view). The night before we had come up with a solution to make the lab possible; we were tempted to try hanging the iOLab's by the lights, but thought that plan was a bit unwise as they might not have been attached that securely. The solution that we came up with was to lay one of the tables on another to provide the height required. I provided our solution (see below) as one of the options but gave them the option to come up with their own alternatives (as long as it was safe). The more inventive students quickly found a better solution (see post below).

A student measuring the length of the string for their experiment, using our suggested 'improvised' setup. (Meter rulers also arrived a day late so we had to also improvise measuring the length).

A student came up with a better solution for running the pendulum experiment, using the window.

Its early days for this course, but I know there's some academics (in schools that are outside physics) that believe the compressed/intense teaching style, could be a good model that we should apply maybe in Cardiff (i.e., concentrating on one module in 5 weeks with intensive lectures/labs/exercise classes). However, my early impression is that our more traditional longer scale is better, for the following reasons:

• The knowledge is provided very rapidly, a more traditional course gives time for consolidation, time to think and reflect on the material.
• The time between doing the course and its assessment could increase (if say exams were at the end of the year).
• It can be exhausting... I made the comment to some staff earlier today, that each year I help out for two weeks on a camping trip for 13 year old's (80 students per week). This teaching experience is way harder. I suspect the pace maybe hard for the students as well as staff.
• From purely a staff perspective, unlike normal courses you can adjust the lectures, write materials. In this course you need everything ready right at the beginning, as those no time to adapt later.

For lunch we were invited to a 'staff celebration lunch', as it was the birthday of one of the local staff. Apparently, it is tradition that if its your birthday you bring in lunch for all the staff, and it was lovely that we were strongly encouraged to attend. It was a good spread of traditional Kazakh food with items like Palif, dumplings, etc..., plus cake. There was a small speech, as well as presents. One of my biggest take-homes of this trip so far, is the CU-Kazakhstan staff have a very tight community, which hopefully persists as the University grows in size.

In the evening Marcus, Laura and Eamonn, went to watch the champions league match between Almaty and Brugge. Unfortunately, Almaty lost 4-1, but I *believe* they scored their first goal in the Champions League, which the fans were very happy about. I heard Marcus particularly enjoyed himself, with his Brazilian heritage, and locals asking if he came to Astana for the match. I believe at one point he may have uttered the phrase "I may have come from Brazil, but today I feel like I was born in Almaty" (I've probably missed some kind of context there).

A picture of the lunch celebrating the birthday of one of the CU-Kazakhstan staff.

Eamonn, Marcus, and Laura at the Champions League football match.

While Vince went to do some work, Patrick and I went to get a quick beer, followed by food at an Italian restaurant. The restaurant was interesting as it was trying to resemble an Italian terrace. We may have misheard but we both thought the waiter was using some Spanish phrases rather than Italian (the football people thought their server had the correct phrases earlier on in the evening). The food though was very nice, and I splashed out on a chocolate fondant dessert which was very well done.

A picture from the day.

Another picture from the day.

Day 5 - The First Teaching Day!

After months of preparation, today was the first day of our teaching in Astana. This resulted in an early start (we met in the Lobby at 7:45), as at this time of the morning we were warned it could take up to 40 minutes to reach the campus by taxi, and we can't be late. As the year group is too big to fit in one space we teach two groups, which means we are doing 2 x 3 hour sessions each day (we're slightly jealous of our Business colleges who can fit their class in one room, so can do one two hour session each day - and get a lie-in).

Today's session is an introductory session, which started with me talking for 30-40 minutes on the expectations of these lab sessions, and what we want them to do. The next section was getting them familiar with the main device we'll be using, which is the iOLab. This is a really cool bit of kit with a large range of sensors, like voltmeters, accelerometers, gyroscopes, light sensors, which records your data to your laptop. Of course this meant that we had to get the device and software working on everyone's computer. We had issues with antivirus, firewalls, and different operating systems, but somehow despite menus being in Kazakh or Russian we managed to get (I think) everyone up or running (at least in their pairs). I've even learnt how to do it on a Mac...

Our first experimental session.

A picture showing students 'forced' to listen to me for ~40 minutes.

Once all the devices were up and running we did some initial data collection, but moved on to the fun experiment, how many ways you can measure your heart rate with the device. The idea here is there is at least four different ways that you can measure your heart rate with your device. What I thought was the easiest method was to measure the tiny voltage produced to induce the heart beat with the devices high-gain sensor. It turns out that either I'm either very electrically conductive, or have a very strong electrical signal, or (the most likely) I'm more sweaty so the wires can pick up the signal. Luckily, I had planned for this and with a bit of hand sanitiser gel we could get a good signal from most people.

One group measuring their heart rate by measuring how the iOLab accelerates.

A very peaceful and laid back approach to measuring your heart rate. This is another example of the accelerometer approach.

The most reliable way turned out to be using the accelerometer to measure the tiny movement of your chest when your heart beats. The downside to this method is in the guide I had the students laying flat on the floor, but they were quite reluctant. We managed to get round this by instead lying back on the chairs. The other interesting quirk, is to do this measurement you need to place the iOLab over your heart, and the majority of students placed the device quite significantly on the left side. I'm not entirely sure why, but I guess its similar to the UK or US where people tend to hold there arm/hand a bit to the left (i.e., during US pledge of allegiance). Overall, though the session went pretty well. Here's an example of the graphs a student made using the high-gain (i.e., electrical voltage sensor), the accelerometer, and the microphone to measure heart rate.

The data on heart rate produced by one of our students, using three different sensors (the high-gain voltage sensor, accelerometer, and microphone).

By the time we packed up, and discussed the next experiment, we probably didn't leave until 6:30pm. The four of us (Vince, Eamonn, Patrick, and I) went straight for dinner, at the same restaurant from our first night. The unique bit here was the servers, I guess (??) did a traditional Kazakh dance, (resembling slight Caleigh). Apparently, this happens every evening, and people are welcome to join in (so maybe in the next video one of us will be involved). Following dinner we headed back to the hotel, where the weather was a barmy -15C. That sounds a ridiculous statement, but its amazing the different even between -25 and -30C (wind may also play a part there). You don't need quite the same level of protection, and can say ignore the thermals for ~20 minute walks.

Our booth for dinner.

The traditional (?) Kazakh dance.

Day 4 - Another Tourist Day

Today started off again quite easy (Eamonn particularly needs his sleep), so I spent the morning finishing off my slides for Monday's introductory sessions - its getting really close now! Also Vince, my module co-lead, arrived so we had a chance to catch-up over the coffee.

In the afternoon we decided to go to the national museum to learn about the culture and history of Kazakhstan. The building is quite impressive, and its picturesque with the snow and mosque in the background.

The National Museum of Kazakhstan in Astana.

A replication of the 'Golden Man'.

Inside the museum there was a variety of exhibits, I quiet liked the one on the new Kazakh satellite that was launched, and their history of cosmonauts. There was some cool metal artwork from 3-4 century BC, and exhibits on nomadic history. During the tour I also got a handshake from one of our students in the museum, who introduced himself. I did know that some of the students were visiting on Sunday as part of their history course. One big difference between here and the UK, is that students are very keen to shake your hand (or touch chest and bow); less so in a big group, but you can be stopped several times on the stairs to shake hands.

A room of 'light' in the museum; we're not quite sure what it represents (felt slightly like being in the centre of the tardis).

The view outside of the museum. The pyramid is the 'Palace of Peace and Reconciliation'.

After the museum, we went for dinner in a restaurant that did traditional Kazakh food. To get there we walked across the botanical gardens, while you can't see many plants this time of year, the path was very picturesque with the snow. The restaurant was made to resemble a traditional Kazakh meeting place, and had a musician playing an instrument like a violin. At one point they also came round with a Kazakh tandoor, where food resembling mini-pasties were cooked by placing around the edge of the oven.

Our walk through the botanical gardens.

The Tandoor oven with the 'pasties' cooking around the edge.

Another difference between UK and Kazakhstan is in a most (might be all we've been to so far) each table is fitted with a call button. So when you want to order something, or ask for the bill, you call the waiter with the button. They do often periodically come round to check on you anyway, but I like the idea as it stops you being disturbed too much during your meal, or you can get attention when you really need it.

We ended the day by meeting up with the two Business Studies academics who had arrived the day before. The bar was nice and the beer was 2 for 1! Finished the day with some quick slide adjustments, and some remote technical support for my mum.

Day 3 - Being Tourist

The plan for today was to have a bit of a rest after a couple of hard days and to be a tourist in Astana. Eamonn and Patrick were going to have a lie in, but I was awake early (7am) so decided to try and sort out buying some tiny (0.01μF) capacitors. This was a late addition to my list (so my fault not bought yet), and is for a final 'fun' challenge. I knew the electronics shop they visited for other capacitors using goggle maps I got a taxi up to the shop. The location was a bit outside the main tourist areas we've been used to, and was interesting to see what I guess is more 'standard' apartment buildings (interestingly I'm yet to see a house, I'm not sure they exist here). The area was a collection of shops/market stools, but while I found some signs for 'Delta', I couldn't locate it, one shop had some massive capacitors but not the tiny ones I needed. Someone in a shop I think asked if they can help me, so I showed them a picture of the Kazak/Russian sign for Delta, and they took me back to their shop and showed me a pre-made card that I couldn't read (and google translate wouldn't identify the picture without internet - we were in the basement). From a picture and with internet back I discovered that it was a note saying that the shop had moved! What we've learnt in Kazakhstan is that google maps is not widely used, instead '2GIS' is the main map app. Unfortunately, we can't install it, as our Google Play region doesn't allow it, but we can access the web version. So another taxi later I got to the shop and they didn't have any (sad face). On the return though I found the Kazakhstan equivalent of amazon, and have managed to order them, and they should arrive on-time.

In the above you probably notice that I took a lot of taxis. We've been setup on the 'Yandex' app which is the local equivalent of Uber. Each taxi ride seems to take £2-£3 so its very cheap! So this is our main mode of transport while we're here (particularly as the University campus is a 50 min walk from our apartments). In one of the taxi's I met a very enthusiastic 23 year old driver who wanted to trial his limited English, I'm not sure he understood most of my replies, but we did discuss a range of topics from football, to marital status, etc...

In the afternoon we decided to go on a walk to see the main attractions around the President's Palace/gardens. It was a barmy -25C, but luckily no wind, so didn't feel too bad. Our first stop was the Baiterek Tower, which is a national monument commemorating the founding of Astana/Kazakhstan. We went up to the viewing platform at the top.

The Baiterek Tower from the gardens around the President's Palace.

A view fo the President's Palace from the tower.

We then walked down to the river which apparently is quite wide and shallow, so completely freezes over in the winter. We were told last week there were bannana boats pulled by snow-mobiles that kids were riding on, and other attractions. Unfortunately, we didn't see any sort of those activities (they were possibly linked to the national holiday last week), but we did see someone ice fishing, and we got to stand on the ice!

Here we're stood on the Ishim river that completely freezes over in the winter.

Patrick made a snow angel. This isn't as bad as it seems, as its so cold, you don't get wet when picking up snow.

After this we headed to get a beer and some food. We found a microbrewery that had a very cool looking grill that cooked steaks (and other meats/fish). Both were really nice, but my personal highlight was they had a table football table! I used to play probably (too much) at Uni, and Cardiff doesn't have many tables. So we had a few games, before leaving to pick a few things up from the supermarket, and then heading back to the apartments.

The table football table in the microbrewery we visited.

Day 2 - A Song of Ice and Fire

Today was all about trying to get everything we need to get ready for the course starting on Monday. The course is an experimental based one, where students will learn based on doing practicals and performing the analysis of the data. This obviously presents some challenges, as we need to have a range of equipment ready for the students to use. We've purchased some really cool devices (iOLab's) that have a huge range of sensors on-board, and can record data on a connected computer. However, we also required several extra items, to create some really cool experiments. This has been quite a cause for concern over the last couple months, as I guess due to the challenges of starting a new university (or otherwise), purchase of the items has been left quite late (at least compared to my try to be uber-organised self). After taking stock on Thursday of what we had, yesterday at least one of the staff members went shopping for us to get the remaining items - and we now have almost everything we need! (two items will be here, before we need them next week, and one item we can't get would have been useful but we can work around it). The delay did mean that at about 4:30-5pm we had to quickly assemble 65 experimental packs, but we are now ready to go for Monday! (special thanks to Mark, a visiting IT guy that helped us!)

During the day I also was invited to attend a meeting on Psychological First Aid. I found it very reassuring that it is taken as seriously (if not more so) here as it is in the UK. What I've also taken away from the last two days is that the students here seem to be really well supported, including an on-site doctor and psychologist. The staff also seem quite connected to the students. This I think is probably due to there only currently being ~300 students, as this year we only have foundation/preliminary year students. Hopefully though this ethos continues as the University grows when the proper undergraduate courses start next (academic) year.

As we were packing the boxes until ~7pm, the temperature outside had dropped to -32C! (this is definitely a new record for me!). As we wanted to visit the supermarket, we decided to go to the big shopping centre (which has a large supermarket in the basement), but a food court at the top. The building is about a 15min walk from the campus. Here's us at the start of our walk:

Here's us at the beginning of the walk. Patrick in-particular wanted to look brave for the picture, while I just look like I'm about to face a blizzard!

While, I had my doubts, I have to say the Coat, and Boots provided by the University seem to be doing a very good job. However, all three us are very much of the opinion that thermals are a must when its -32C outside! . We each had purchased our own thermals as the University doesn't provide them, which we'll definitely be campaigning about when we get back (for full transparency the argument is that we would be taking taxi's everywhere so don't need to walk outside, the taxi's though sometimes park a little way or move around so its not always straightforward). In the photo I look particularly out of place with my balaclava and googles, when the locals seem to have some natural resistance, but I decided I decided I didn't mind looking out of place for a warm face! This was the photo towards the end of the walk:

At the end of our walk, the -32C was definitely causing some glasses issues.

As you can see Patrick's glasses are a bit of a challenge, having frozen over, also some of our outer layers were starting to freeze, but I think we were mostly all warm underneath (I think Eamonn's legs were a bit cold, as he didn't want to put thermal leggings on). The shopping centre is a cool building designed by Norman Foster to represent (I think) a Yurt, and made with some cool flexible insulating material. We found food and the supermarket, and followed it by a late-night trip to a pub/bar by our hotel.

The Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center, still with Christmas tree.

Finally, we decided to add a new feature to the blog -- Muppet of the Day! (I think maybe it should be muppet of 'this' day, as its likely to be a sporadic feature). Before I go on, I want to add a disclaimer that this is done with discussion/agreement with both Patrick and Eamonn who are both happy to be featured - although there maybe a condition that we all have to win it at some point in the next two weeks. So without further ado, today's muppet of the day is ... Eamonn!

So what did he do to win this prestigious award? Well, he was up for some competition to start as Patrick slept through two alarms with the jet lag, but it started with him smashing a glass in the office. He thought he'd lost a ice cleat in the snow, but turned out he'd put two on the same foot when reattaching them. Then as we got back to the apartments, while dropping stuff off in my room he realised he was missing his key-card and wallet. After a frantic search of his bag we decided one possibility is he left them both in his room, and so we asked his reception (see future article) to get them to let him in his room. We managed that, but no wallet or card was found. After searching his bag again we found the key-card but not his wallet. After freezing his cards (luckily can easily do that now), we left for the pub, but checked with my reception, and he had dropped his wallet there in the morning. So in the end all was well!

Day 1 - Arriving

As so many people at work have asked for me to keep them up-to-date on my teaching trip to Kazakhstan, I thought I would start a 'blog' to keep everyone updated on the experience. Not sure we'll manage every day, as its going to get very busy.
So after months of planning the course, we (Patrick, Eamonn, and I) have travelled out to Astana in-preparation for the live sessions starting on Monday. The flights went smoothly, right up until the point that my bag didn't appear... Fortunately, it was found a couple hours later and I have all my luggage! It was an interesting view from the plane seeing the large ice-covered plane around Astana, with no obvious settlements/roads/etc, but then a city appear (very different to the UK).

The view from the plane on approach to Astana.

We were met by some members of the Cardiff University - Kazakhstan team here, who have been amazing, driving us from the airport (plus a second trip later), preparing our apartments, and getting us online with the local apps. We made it in to the building to and spent most of the day meeting all the staff members and some of the students.

Our arrival at the Cardiff University - Kazakhstan building (featuring Patrick in the foreground)

I also had a chance to pop-in to Vince's session (my course co-lead) on group work and using python to plot/fit data. I couldn't help but add some tongue-in-cheek comments to one or two of the menti questions (possibly one about downside of group work being having to attend many Univeristy management meetings...). The students seem engaged, and it was good to see them.

One of the scientific thinking 'live' sessions with Vince teaching on group work.

That's it for today, we did go out for dinner, but then it was an early night after travelling over-night to get here. Not sure how many of these posts I'll manage to create, but I'll try to keep people updated!