Ramblings...

Friday evening we ventured out for dinner to a new cafe called Merve. Ran into our friends Sean and Bethany there. We ate chicken kabobs, cheese pide (like pizza), salads and warm bread. All for about $13.

Saturday Blake had off so we spent the day relaxing as a family. That evening Blake and I attended the French Embassy's reception in celebration of Bastille Day. Met a number of diplomats, practiced my Russian with the Russian defense attache and enjoyed a lot of delicious french cheese. Who knew?

Sunday we really got bold and set out in a "niva" (Russian car) up into the mountains. What I didn't understand before we left is what it meant when Blake said, "the roads are bad." You must understand that the president owns 17 homes but once you leave Dushanbe the road, the MAIN highway between here and the north, turned to dirt and gravel. At times it was one-lane, wet, and so up-and-down that I was afraid we would bottom out. Chinese workers were repairing stretches of the highway. The road was so bad we averaged 25 MPH. But the scenery more than made up for it. Mountains hemmed us in on every side and a beautiful river flowed along the "road." We didn't know exactly where we were going, just "up." Eventually we stopped at what looked like a picnic area---covered pavilions with tables jutting out over the river. We pulled up and were greeted by a Tajik woman with 5 kids. We asked if we could sit and she said of course, but they had no food. We had brought our own. We relaxed by the river for the next couple hours. The kids explored and found goats.

The really stressful part, aside from the driving, was the horn malfunction on the Niva. The bumps must have jarred something loose and the horn went off---for about 20 minutes-- we could not get it off. I began to envision the drive back home with the horn blaring! But alas, Blake eventually slammed the steering column and it was silenced.

We paid $6 after a few hours for the table and headed back.

Today the kids had Kids Club and I asked my driver to set out for: matches, bleach, black shoe laces and polish for Blake, and nectarines. This afternoon we visited an enormous statue/monument but the militsia (local police) assured us we could not actually step on the stairs. I've taken some amazing photos of the places I've mentioned so far, but have not yet figured out how to post them......my goal for the week is to remedy that.

I just learned that Dushanbe has a new bowling alley. Driving home from the giant statue we pulled up behind a US Embassy vehicle (the license plates denote which embassy.) Turned out to be BLAKE!!! Fun.

One of Blake's colleagues invited us over for dinner tonight...

More adventures tomorrow.