Cornuccopia

Reporting in here at the close of a long, relaxing weekend that started with a classic all-American Turkey Day, continued with a day off of preschool due to local swine flu concerns, kept on going with Tajikistan's idiosyncratic celebration of Eid al-Adha on Saturday (one day later than the rest of the Muslim world -- and here they call it Qurban). After a rainy Saturday Eid, we had a glorious, sunny Sunday with a fancy breakfast and a walk in the Botanical Gardens. And today, Tajikistan's public holiday in honor of Eid, the 3 of us took our first long drive of the season, into Takob valley for a romp in the snow!

Thanksgiving was a real delight -- a buffet laden with a bounty of dishes at the home of our good friends, shared with a bunch of other good friends. Several kinds of stuffing, a corn pudding, a beef fillet, gravies both meat-based and vegetarian, baked sweet potatoes topped with golden-brown marshmallows, and two cranberry sauces. All of that was accompanied by the meat carved off a 23-pound monster of a Butterball turkey, which was shipped into Central Asia via Bishkek (Manas Air Base), detoured through Tashkent, and then afforded a special US Embassy escort to Dushanbe (frosty relations between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan make the connection much less realistic than it ought to be).

We were the ones responsible for the bird. Since I guess up to now I'd never been solely responsible for the turkey on Thanksgiving, I was a little nervous about how it would turn out. Least daunting of all was the roasting: receiving the fully frozen bird on Monday and given a defrosting schedule of 4 pounds per day in the fridge didn't get us quite all the way to Thursday. A cold water bath for the turkey on Wednesday evening got us the remainder of the way to thawed.

Prep on Thursday morning, despite Dan's protests, and roasting pan into the oven at 10:45AM still had us scrambling at a quarter to 5 to get the turkey to our hosts' house in an attempt to stick to the projected 5pm call to table. We sat down late, but I think we were not the only reason, and anyway, the freely flowing wine and "White Ladies" (something involving enough lemon juice to mask the taste of gin) and blue-cheese stuffed dates kept the rest of the other guests at bay almost the whole time.

And then there was dessert! So many pies, let me see if I can remember: apple, sweet potato, two pumpkins (one with "vodka crust"), chocolate pecan.... and something else I'm forgetting. As well as turkey-shaped sugar cookies, thanks to the smallest of our hosts.

It was a great holiday in Dushanbe!

It Speaks! It's Alive!

Whew, what a breather!

Yes, I know -- I actually was reminded that someone reads this blog when a couple of people asked what the story was, why I hadn't updated in a long while.

I guess real life got in the way.

Update since the end of September:

• Finally unloaded the many tasks associated with being sole organizer of Anya's preschool onto a small collective of my fellow parents. (This is where it started to feel again like I actually had a real life, I think.)

• Took time to walk. As in, walking Anya to sadik almost every day, instead of driving. (The location we moved to at the start of September is much closer to home than the previous location.) She sits in her stroller and I do a fast walk for about a half hour to get a bit of exercise -- and after dropping her off I often walk back on my own, with or without the arm weights of groceries or produce from the bazaar.
  
  We started out walking on city streets, meandering eastward and then south. We were having a nice time coming into more contact with neighbors and other people around the broader neighborhood who we were starting to encounter every day. But then I was reminded of how close we are to the Botanical Gardens, which allows us to flip that L and walk straight south, through the northern gate, admire a few yolochkas (fir trees, or Christmas trees, in 3-year-old parlance) and say a few salaams to the ladies sweeping up the leaves. Then we hang a left just past the old beat-up orangerie and head eastward, out the main gate, past the medical complex and over toward sadik. It takes us just over 25 minutes with the smooth paths and no traffic to avoid in the BG, and it's such a peaceful, beautiful walk, especially with all of the improvements they've made in the past 6-9 months (lots of beautifully carved wooden pavilions like the one below).

• Started reading and writing again, felt a creative surge and got some recognition from the outside (accepted to write a chapter in an edited volume). Got back into the library, found some good material and am finally beginning to write about Tajikistan -- malaria in the 1930s-50s.

• Had a birthday. Realized that 2 years shy of 40 feels kind of old.

• Took a vacation to South Africa with Anya and Dan -- had a great time, seeing old friends, making stews, riding trains, eating and imbibing all the good things we can't find in Dushanbe. (And pledged to take my morning walks to the next level when I started to feel like a pig after all that eating.)

• Celebrated Halloween with a small platypus. Three seems to be the year of really understanding and fully participating in experiences like birthdays and long distance trips and holidays. Complete with the understanding of what a candy bag is and how smooth those chocolate-peanut butter Halloween "eyeballs" go down.

• Got bitten by the football bug. (OK, loosely defined; see below.) The parents of the older expat kids who go to one of the international primary schools here organized a family sports day on Tajikistan's Constitution Day, in early November. We all had the day off from work and school, so they rented a football field at the main sports complex in town and invited nearly everyone we've ever caught a glimpse of in the international community. It was a classic autumn day, great for chasing a ball or a kite and taking a break now and then for a snack on the bleachers. Kicking and throwing a ball around is apparently another activity we don't do often enough, but after this Anya's been talking a lot about playing football and even trying to recreate the fun (unfortunately, more often than not, in the house).

• Met the start of fall with a shiver. The only downside to a vacation from Dushanbe to the southern hemisphere in mid- to late fall is that you miss some of the best weather of the year in Tajikistan. And then you leave the summery weather down under and return to a house that has been empty for 2 weeks, right at the point when it starts to get downright chilly. It took a few days for our heat to come on and take root -- and of course by then the weather had warmed up again. Now we are decidedly into sweater and boots and tights weather. The house is warm, but there is often frost on the Botanical Garden plants, and on sunny mornings a steam rises off of those plants that are getting the direct rays. And yet again the electricity has started to get sketchy -- one thing to be thankful for is our generator.

All in all, maybe a break was what I needed -- I figure anyone who cares enough to read this has faith that I'll come back. And here I am.