Summer in Dushanbe Is...

• A month-long break from sadik.
• (In connection with the former:) Visits to the many new indoor play centers that have opened recently in our fair city, replete with those pools filled with small plastic balls, jungle gyms, climbing apparatuses, rides, little huts to play peekaboo in, etc.
• Rides in just about the only elevator in town -- and humorously quaint views out the window. (Elevator conveniently located in the same shopping center as one of our favorite play centers.)

• New nightgowns -- we love Hello Kitty.
• Hot sun. And a new bit of shade in our formerly burning hot, shadeless yard (see below -- the white canopy, just a corner of which is visible).
  
• Pools, small and large. With and without views of the mountains. At home and away.

• Watermelons!
• Qurutob* (I'm ashamed to admit that this summer I have had only my first taste of this salad, despite its widespread popularity here. I've been very tempted to order it out, but both years we've lived here, by the time I've gotten around to really wanting it, the warm season has already arrived and with it a serious increased danger of getting food poisoning from something like that. This taste was much better: homemade by our housekeeper in a home-based Tajik cooking lesson.)
  

* Qurutob, a south Tajik bread salad
serves 4

3 medium ripe tomatoes
3 medium cucumbers
4 small onions
5 green onions
2 bunches of cilantro
1/2 liter of plain yogurt
1 loaf of fatir (crispy Central Asian flatbread made with oil -- fairly different from Middle Eastern or Arabian fatir, as far as I can tell)
1/4 - 1/2 cup of vegetable oil or butter

1. Seed and finely chop tomatoes and cucumbers, and mix in a bowl. Set aside.
2. Cut onions into small, thin moon-shaped slices, or simple half-circle slices. Divide in half. Set aside.
   
3. Chop the green onions and cilantro finely, mix, and set aside.
4. Warm the fatir in the oven on low heat, if it isn't already warm from having been homemade. (Yeah, right. Although where exactly are you going to get the fatir in the US if you don't make it at home?) Remove from the oven and rip into bite sized pieces, placing the pieces into a large bowl. (If you have a flat-ish wooden turned bowl made out of walnut from the mountains of Tajikistan, all the better.)
5. Pour the yogurt (it works best if it has a moderately liquid consistency; if the yogurt is pretty thick, add some water and stir well) over the fatir pieces and mix so that all the bread gets some yogurt and soaks in a bit of liquid.
6. Arrange in layers on top of the fatir-yogurt mixture: first the cucumber-tomato mixture, then the onions, then the greens/green-onion mixture.
7. Put about 1/2 cup of butter or vegetable oil in a small skillet, and warm on medium-high heat. Add onions when oil or butter is fully warmed and/or melted, and stir and fry for about 5 minutes, until translucent. (At this point you can add salt and pepper to taste.) Pour the onions and the oil all together over the salad mixture, so that the oil can evenly trickle down throughout as a kind of warm dressing, and so that the fried onion is evenly distributed on top.
8. Serve immediately -- especially when made with butter or butter-like ghee, the oil will congeal and make it less appealing if you don't. (If you really want to get Tajik, eat out of the common large bowl in the middle of the table, using your hands to take a little bit from your edge, mixing the layers together, and lifting up carefully to your mouth. Repeat until you're full of qurutob!)

Around (Part of the) World in the Past 80 Days

A non-chronological rundown from A to Z of what I’ve neglected to report since I last wrote:

A – Archives, in both Russia and Tajikistan. I have been surprised in the last six weeks to learn just how much bureaucracy and apparently arbitrary and informal adjustments to bureaucratic rules really do differ between TJ and RU. I’m sorry I have to be reminded, but I do often forget that it is wrong to lump these two together into a single category. If you want to be wowed, I suggest you work for several months just trying to get registered and allowed to see documents in the sad national archive of a regressing Central Asian nation, and then go overnight to the beautiful oasis of the main reading room at GARF (State Archive of the Russian Federation), with its computerized index system and terminals at each reader station. But be careful not to faint from shock.


B – Buzkashi. The art of dragging around a goat carcass and fighting over it from your position atop a galloping horse. See photo essay.


C – Cheeses. Twelve of them, packed in multiple plastic bags, ziplocs, and stuffed together with a gift freezer pack in Paris into suitcase #3, only to emerge upon arrival in Tajikistan still cool and smelling wonderful. Now awaiting experimental freezing.


D – Disease. Luckily for Anya, only “angina” which, I guess contrary to our use of the word in English (from the Latin for choking or congestion) in reference to chest constriction and heart disease, in French refers to something like tonsillitis or strep throat. It was the sickest she’s actually been her whole life, but she was still a trooper. And our visit to the French pediatrician in Tonnere, France, renewed our already high respect for socialized medicine – bring on that Obamacare, thank you very much!


E – Embroidery. To my great disappointment, I must admit, the needlework has stalled out! But for a good reason: renewed research inspiration and necessity (much-procrastinated research trip to Moscow) made me turn away from the embroidery kind of right at the point where I was going the strongest on it, unfortunately. But I am really glad to feel the new boost in creativity and production, and the work is fun. Whether to keep up with the crafts in this current phase of Dushanbe life is my next decision…


F – France. Mmmmm, 2 weeks binging in the heartland of duck confit, terrine and paté, fromages hard and soft (especially soft and runny Epoisses and Chablis, my favorite of our discoveries), red wine (Burgundy, to be exact), and escargots (Anya to Dan: “dai mne eshche ulitku! [give me another snail!]”). Throw a few raw oysters – and whelks and winkles – on top and you pretty much have our vacation in a nut (or snail) shell.


G – Grandparents. Had a great time with 2 of them in the French countryside – Anya for 2 days longer than we did, and apparently all 3 of them had a blast.


H – Hotels, good and bad. FYI, in Autun, it's probably wise to splurge on the Hotel les Ursulines up in the old town, with the beautiful enclosed garden, despite the nondescript rooms. The incompetent front desk manager at the Hotel St. Louis et de la Poste downtown (together with the single, yet surely not solitary, cockroach we spied) made that one a bust. And the experience kind of ruined the whole next 24 hours, to be honest.


I – Insects. Fleas to be precise, which are the most bothersome ones that have visited us (and apparently left, during our vacation) over the last few months. But with the onset of spring the aphids on the fruit trees in our yard have also come out of hibernation. We are trying to spray with soap and water, but is it possible that Central Asian aphids are immune to this approach?


J – Jeans. In addition to the fact that the fashion right now is very clearly to tuck these into your tall, but flat-heeled, boots, I gleaned many other fashion tid-bits during my many hours walking from archive to archive, and people watching, in Moscow.


K – Kyrgyzstan. In truth, this doesn’t really deserve to be on this list, since ironically (and probably luckily) we could hardly feel further from the unrest and changes there. That is not to say that it might not spill over – you definitely never know. But so far it really seems not to have one iota of an influence here in Tajikistan, and in a practical way for us that is a good thing. In the larger picture I am not so sure that it is in the best interests of Tajikistan’s citizenry to be so complacent, but I am not complaining right now. The “revolution” – or maybe “coup” – occurred while I was in Moscow, and actually I probably knew more about it learning about it from that location than from home in Dushanbe, since while I was there I had the time and the inclination to watch the news quite diligently (and even discuss all of the very interesting, mainly tragic or disturbing, current events, from Kyrgyzstan to Katyn to the Moscow metro, with my landlady). It kind of felt like I was at the center of a much more connected universe while I was in Moscow, while here in Dushanbe everything typically seems very insular, very isolated from what is happening in the outside world. In any case, I include this mention here mainly since so many people have asked us about events in the neighboring ‘stan.


L – Lady drivers. It seems I’m one of them again. More precisely, for some reason when spring arrives in Tajikistan, not only do the local men do a typical double-take for women walking and perhaps wearing something pretty (a revealing mid-calf kurta, or what have you), apparently they also have a habit of looking twice and even staring when they see a woman behind the wheel. Come to think of it, women and kids will crane their necks to check it out, too. It’s just that shocking a sight to see.


M – Moscow! What a big, bewildering city it really is – I had a great time, and although after two and a half weeks there I was ready to get back to the slow pace of life in Dushanbe (and my peeps), the hustle and bustle was pretty fun to experience. It was my first time really living in the city (and right downtown, in a great location, steps away from Kievskaya metro station) and exploring it myself – the town I know best is Petersburg, and Nizhnii Novgorod I suppose is a close second. (Sorry, Vladivostok, I guess you take bronze.) I think I might not even mind spending some extended time in Moscow in the future (although maybe I’d get sticker shock if we really were to live there for a stint, not just visit short term).


N – Navruz. After a week of sun and warmth leading up to the biggest Central Asian holiday of the year, with people getting positively punch-drunk on the weather, it was a big dud. Rainy and cold. Certainly not inspiring for anyone to wear their new kurta, especially if it is still far from being completed…


O – Other scholars/academics. This spring has brought a lot more contact with researchers here in this part of the world, surprisingly many of them here in Dushanbe. It started with the German grad student, studying Soviet history, whom I met by sheer luck near the end of her 5 year stint here in Dushanbe. (5 years because she is also a spouse and mother raising her small kids here; she wasn’t spending the entire time doing full-time dissertation work.) Then it gathered steam with the grad students I met in Moscow, and now, partly because it is summer (those US based academics are smart: avoid Tajikistan in the winter. What a good idea!), there are 3 grad students here in town whom I know. I also met an inspiring independent scholar from Canada and I hope soon to formally meet the German scholar who was working at the desk next to me at the archives today. It’s gotten to the point that I am seriously planning to have an academic dinner party soon, before some of these folks cycle out of here and the population dwindles again.


P – Potty Progress. Hooray! Big girl undies (thin, no soaker panel) + possibly an unusual time-out from preschool teachers in response to her last real accident = I guess a month or more of dryness and a nearly perfect (I’d say ‘spotless’ but that wasn’t actually our problem…) record with trips to the toilet.


Q – “Quiet time.” This was how I explained to Anya what the side chapels in the several French cathedrals we visited were for. She started wanting to go in them with me to catch some together.


R – Rain. Unfortunately we departed from rainy spring weather in Tajikistan (where it is at least warm) only to be met by rain and half-century record low temperatures hovering at or under 10C in France. And now we've returned to TJ, where the rains are just an annoyance in Dushanbe but have left over a thousand people homeless and camped out in the stadium in the southern city of Kulob. Anya and I tried to make a small contribution to help Monday when we brought 4 bags of things of hers and mine that are either no longer worn or have been outgrown to donate for local efforts to assist in Tajikistan’s south.


S – Spring! and the arrival of the “Season”: the season for produce in Tajikistan, that is. When even the neighborhood bazaar has strawberries (sad and soggy though they may be) for sale, you know the highwater mark of fruit and veg season is just around the corner. Sure, you’re still advised to make the trip to Green Bazaar for really good quality and selection, but the season has arrived, for sho’.


T – Train travel. And the miracle of catching our Frankfurt-Paris train, for which we had planned a layover of 3 hours. Ultimately we had to run for it in the 45-minute interval that Somon Air's delayed arrival afforded us. (Anya to Lisa the night before the return trip, in Paris: “Will we have to run for the train again? I didn’t like that.”)


U – Umbrella. Anya was pleased as punch to be given a Winnie-the-Pooh children’s (hey, they probably make them in adult sizes, so I might need to specify) umbrella, after a shopping spree in the hypermarché outside Autun. (Shopping therapy after our bad experience at the hotel? It’s possible.) It made the trip home just fine packed in a suitcase and still hasn’t broken. Surely better quality construction than the 9-somoni jobbie I bought her at the bazaar in Khujand in the winter.


V – Vaccines. The polio outbreak in Tajikistan has given me reason to renew my earlier interest in polio vaccines, both injected/inactivated and oral/live, albeit from a very different perspective. Anya got her first round of the OPV booster series today. The situation is truly serious, but for kids who have received good quality vaccines so far and are up to date like Anya there should not be an extreme risk. With that firmly in mind, I actually think it might do us a lot of good if more academics had to deal with their topics of heated abstract discussion in direct and concrete relationship to their own or their kids' lives. But I guess that probably isn't a widely applicable or appropriate thing to wish for. The experiences is actually very enlightening and provides fascinating insight.


W – Water, dirty. Spring rains (well, any rains, really) bring “brown baths,” as Anya has called them since her first ever dip in the tub here in Dushanbe, a year and a half ago. The water from the tap used to be brown all the time, but shortly after we moved in the city did some improvements (yes, it happens), and the quality on a typical day improved. But we are reminded right now of how extremely cloudy and dingy that water can get. At least it serves as a good reminder that it wouldn’t be wise to drink out of the tap!


X – Хозяйка. Or khoziaika. That is, “landlady.” I had a really good one in Moscow for the 2 weeks I rented a room in her apartment – it was a surprisingly nice arrangement for me, working for many hours during the day and into the evening at the archives, and coming home to have a bit of dinner or tea in the kitchen with Inna Zinovievna.


Y – Yoga! So glad that Dushanbe has seen a renaissance (or I guess simply naissance?) of it in the last 6 months. I am happy to say I’m back to 2 times practicing per week (when not on vacation – but I did go to 2 overpriced yoga sessions in Moscow!).


Z – From Anya Z. (Vladivostok friend) through the mid-alphabet, mid-Europe Meilak, to Berkeley’s own Z-spot, visited with lots of friends we hadn’t seen in years during the past few months’ travels. It's a good thing to do, since living over here, even in this internet-, Facebook-friendly age, means we still aren't able to keep in contact as often as we'd like with people we care about. Sometimes the isolation here just makes us sluggish and complacent in that frame of mind, and the months stretch on and the messages (and blog posts) don't get written. So it was really good to reconnect with so many friends (and family) over these past 80 days.

Historic Khujand

We took a trip to the north of Tajikistan for the first part of last week, to the city of Khujand. Dan and his colleague were going for work, and it seemed like a good (who knows, maybe already the last?) chance to tag along under such circumstances (hotel room paid for, ground transportation already planned and covered, etc.) and see something new.

So Anya and I got up early on Monday morning and went to the domestic terminal with the guys, sat in the chilly waiting hall, let ourselves be bussed out to the plane -- a frighteningly ancient (1970s vintage?) prop plane, an An-24 I guess. But the flight took only 50 minutes, so we didn't have too long to sit there and wonder how it was that this plane was flying so successfully.

The trip as a whole was a lot of fun, but it does make me marvel at the difference between traveling with a pre-schooler and either traveling alone or with someone older than about 8. It's just funny how slow you move, how much less you do each day (especially when a handful of prime hours are spent inside for napping!), but also what a different perspective you get on everything you see and experience on a trip where your main companion is 3.

As we've done in other provincial cities in the former Soviet Union, we stayed in the hotel's luxury suite -- not exactly the Four Seasons, but not too shabby nonetheless. Two rooms, one of which had a crazy contemporary sofa set with accessory pillows -- 1 round, 1 star-shaped -- that entertained Anya half of the time we were there. About a 100-degree curve of plate glass windows in the corner of the room, covered with curtains that entertained Anya for the other half of the time we were there. A jacuzzi tub that leaked and didn't have the water pressure to fill it in our lifetime. (Similar to another provincial hotel experience in Khabarovsk, Russia.) No honor bar, but a plates of dried apricots and a plate of pistachios left in the fridge (undoubtedly by another guest, but who's to say, really?). A big screen plasma TV that got Russian music videos and BBC World. What more could you really want?

The first day was cloudy but no precipitation. We checked in after our midmorning arrival and headed in our separate directions: Dan and colleague to work meetings, Anya and I to explore the town. Hotel Vatan was located really centrally, just a 5 minute walk to Khujandi Theater and the Sugd regional history museum. We used the clear weather to explore outside, since we'd heard the next 2 days would bring rain and/or snow. We forced ourselves to stop after a snack of several "healthy cookies" and get outside, walking past the theater and north along the "alley" park leading up to the Syr Darya river. Stopped at a park bench to have a mandarin orange and pick up some leaves. Strolled up to the river while singing several verses of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm."

Turned to admire the defunct Leninobod hotel building and what is billed as the largest Lenin statue in Central Asia (from afar). Turned along the river and up Lenin Boulevard to look for a cafe for lunch. Found a cafe in the Youth Palace (Dvorets molodezhi or Qasri javonon) where we had noodle soup, a breaded cutlet, and green tea. Got along famously with the friendly waitress, who addressed us in Russian but with the funny addition of a markedly northern Tajik question suffix tacked onto her sentences. This was also the lunch where Anya learned to love green tea out of Central Asian piyola teacups (the ones that are just like little bowls, without handles).

Then headed back to the hotel for a little bit of play and a nap!

And essentially that is where the sightseeing ends on any particular day, since Anya generally sleeps from 2-4:30, and by that time the sun is going down already. We went out for dinner with a friend from Dushanbe who was also in town and, as they say in the Madeline book, "that's all there is, there isn't any more."

On Day 2 we were planning to go with Dan and colleague an hour's drive away to the nearby city of Istaravshan, another city with over two thousand years of history behind it and reportedly a really interesting place to see, but since it was raining and we move so slow (and it wasn't clear how we'd get back midday for the nap), we decided to take it easy and remain in Khujand proper.

The highlight of the day was the regional history museum. This is a prime example of what I mean by the amazingly different perspective you get when your traveling companion is a 3-year-old. Anya's favorite part was the section where the floor was made of plexiglass and in the 3 or 4 inch space beneath it was basically a model of an archeological dig: sand and shards of pottery, pieces of wooden beams, gold coins, metal vessels and old shoes, etc. We spent a long time there trying to guess what the various artifacts were. So much time that I couldn't drag her away to look at anything else and finally got bored of it myself. So with some difficulty I bundled us out the door and across the square to another cafe for some homemade pelmeni (tushbera in Tajik; basically meat-filled dumplings), more green tea, and the very tasty Khujandi kulcha (small round flatbread bread loaves made with a touch more oil than regular Tajik naan).

Day 3 it did snow -- wet and sloppy. After much cajoling I talked Anya into going out of the hotel for a shopping trip to find the teapot that she claimed Bear needed to have for a birthday present. We stopped in all the toy stores between Hotel Vatan and the main market square of the city, admiring all the fun things on offer.

It seemed to me like there was more mid-level consumer-oriented commerce in Khujand, and these stores were a good example. I guess we don't spend a lot of time seeking this stuff out in Dushanbe, when we're not on vacation, but it still seems to me like in Dushanbe you either have bazaar-based commerce and items that are pretty cheaply made and sold, or you have super-fancy storefronts where you wonder who on earth really shops there. In Khujand I saw a lot more middle-of-the-road shops (and even well made commercial signs all over the place, very consumer-oriented) that seemed to hold things that people really want and can afford to buy.

We had a lot of fun looking at a flock of birds in the bazaar square and then tramped around the inside of the bazaar for a bit, me trying to surreptitiously buy a small collection of trinkets to serve as the small gifts in a makeshift Advent calendar once we got home. Along the way we finally found the child's umbrella that Anya has actually been suggesting that we buy her for over a month now -- the first thing she has so specifically asked for in her life -- and the plastic tea set for Bear. Then we hopped in a taxi and made it back to one of the more famous restaurants in town (Zaituna) in time to share Khujandi rice plov (raisins and dried currants seemed to me to be the difference in the north) and more green tea with Dan and his colleague.

A nap and some packing later and we were on the road to the airport. By the time we got through check-in it was driving snow outside, and I was somewhat concerned about the flight, despite the fact that we could see from the airport waiting hall that we would be flying in a newer and more substantial Boeing this time. But I guess they make this flight several times a day and often in snow, so it actually turned out very smoothly, thanks to Tajik Air's pilot. Made it back home to Dushanbe in time for a book and bedtime!

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!

Tajik Progress

Ҳоло ман бе шумо мехоҳам дар бораи забони тоҷикӣ гап занам. Ё нависам. Ана дар ҳақиқат фарқ дорад? Дар ҳақиқат дорад, лекин барои ман инҷо муҳим нист. Ман мехоҳам нақл кунам, ки ман нӯҳ моҳ забони тоҷикӣро меомузам, кӯшиш мекунам гап занам...

OK, so I continue to try to learn Tajik, taking private lessons two hours per week since right about the start of this year, or about nine months. I continue most of the time to feel as though I am making glacial-speed progress if I'm moving forward at all, although every now and then I feel some positive energy that allows me to think that maybe I actually am getting somewhere.

I always need to remind myself, I have after all studied Russian on and off, in and out of the classroom, since first beginning it in 1988 -- for twenty-one years! I can't expect, er, Dushanbe to be built in one day, right?

I think part of the difficulty is the variation and lack of standardization in Tajik. Especially if Russian is the yardstick, Tajik is really much different: the regions of Tajikistan are so separate, and you're constantly hearing how different from one another in culture and dialect the north and south are.

The written language and the spoken language are pretty far apart from one another, too -- not unlike in Farsi, but this pair with its own Tajik idiosyncrasies. You can't learn everything of course, so I guess if anything I'm trying to build up some basic ability in spoken Tajik, and then I also try to read some twentieth-century non-fiction (hoping that maybe in this coming year I can hobble through a few newspapers and journals) with my teacher.

Still, it's frustrating -- and I know that ironically part of the reason I don't make faster progress in Tajik is that I do speak Russian fairly comfortably, if not always totally fluently. In any of the interactions where I'd otherwise be forced to practice my Tajik and barely muddle through that way, the most obvious answer from the point of view of efficiency is to just switch into (or, really, remain speaking) Russian. Why speak like a 3-year-old (and that is being very generous to me, or very insulting to a 3-year-old Tajik), when I can speak pretty much from my own stage of mental development in Russian?

The one exception remains the bazaar.
















This is why I'm so reluctant to ask someone else to take over our routine shopping: I could ask the housekeeper to get things for us, or the odd-jobs guy we are considering hiring since our friends and his employers left Dushanbe... But if I did that, I'd never practice my Tajik outside of class!

Just this weekend, for instance, my visit to the bustling pre-Eid Barakat bazaar was a fun little chance to see the sellers I regularly buy from and practice a little Tajik. (For some reason I chose the Saturday before Eid to set out to out the Green Market again after a long absence, despite oaths that I would avoid it and the parking hell that reigns on the streets surrounding the market. I could tell several blocks before the bazaar itself that this was a bad idea and luckily was able to turn and escape all of the mishigas. I guess what had inspired me go was the news from along the expat grapevine that avocadoes and limes had been available from one of the sellers. My friends bought the guy's entire stock, but I was tempted to see what other goodies I was missing out on. I think post-Eid I am going to try to go once every couple of weeks... In any case, the Barakat pavilion interior in the photo here was from earlier this summer, on a very empty weekday afternoon.)

At Barakat, the older lady who sells chakka (thick, pasty, tart Tajik yogurt) just inside the pavilion greeted me warmly after my absence (with the traffic torn up and redirected in this part of downtown, I haven't gotten to Barakat as often as I used to). We had the typical greeting exchange, asking after each other's health, and then she sold me my usual 2-somoni handful of chakka, and invited me to her house for Eid on Monday. I did what I hope is an acceptable way of not actually accepting the invitation, smiling, thanking her but stopping short of saying I would come. At least this is what I have been doing about once a day with our next-door neighbor ever since we arrived, in response to his everyday invitations of "coming by" and having plov or tea.

The homely potato-carrot-and-onion seller I go to at the bazaar was also happy to see me. He is actually the brother of the usual guy, but normally they are there working their stand together. Originally I chanced upon the brother who wasn't there today, who at least in my experience seems to be the front man of the operation. To my surprise, he came out with shockingly good English the first time I bought my taters from him (surely choosing to do that because it is clear from about 5 miles away that I am not local -- the really naive ones must think I'm Russian). With this pair of brothers, I usually try to speak Tajik to them and the one brother tries to speak English back to me, as a kind of equal exchange. Today the English-speaker was gone, but the brother who apparently has just the typical Tajik and Russian greeted me with a crooked smile and tried to explain to me everything about fasting for Ramadan (like I hadn't already gotten used to the concept for the past month, but whatever -- it's about the cultural exchange, not about the content, much of the time...).

Then I went to the only melon seller on the side of the pavilion where I was (Barakat was a mess of pre-Eid shoppers too, I wasn't going to traipse around any more than I had to), and here I was out of my element and didn't have anyone familiar to go to. These melon guys immediately started out in Russian, which on the one hand I speak better, but on the other already feels to me like I'm down a few chips in the bargaining process and I have to work to clamber back uphill. Unfortunately I think I got a jacked-up Eid-eve price on my sweet melon -- not necessarily because I'm a foreigner, but it probably didn't help matters.

All that really matters is that I had a pleasant, relatively quick, shopping trip, re-connected a bit with my bazaar peeps, and ensured we'd eat at least one last melon before the season ends. And, as an added bonus, the sellers assured me that I was buying the sweetest melon of the bunch: "guaranteed to do wonders for a lady's figure!" I think they stopped just short of offering a "one-time special price" just for me.

Change in the Air

I fear the change of seasons is near! Already we have cooler mornings and evenings (very comfortable now), and cloudy skies in the dark evening (beautiful with the moon, a "ghostly galleon" on the waves of fluff up there, which has given us some enjoyable chances to admire the night sky and try to explain the moon to Anya). This morning we woke up to an already-drying rain-spattered courtyard. Only the second rain we have witnessed since sometime in June, when it stopped.

My own personal yardstick for the end of summer is the anticipated End of the Melons. I don't know when this is going to come, but I'm bracing myself. The sweet torpedo-shaped yellow Persian melons have been my absolute favorite part of summer in Dushanbe, and the way they laze about in huge piles on the roadside or in entire sections of every bazaar is such an amusing part of the season for me. It was during the last week of June that they appeared, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, and although they are still plentiful, I am dreading their disappearance. The only potential silver lining to this loss is the arrival of the persimmons, which I missed last year because of our October arrival and my general lack of experience with this fruit.

Fruit and veg was generally the highlight of the season, from my point of view: soft-ripe, deep red tomatoes and bright green hot peppers that made a delicious version of Mexican salsa fresca together with the ubiquitous cilantro, regular onions and lemon juice instead of lime. Fuzzy peaches. Anya's new favorite: green grapes, although it is my deep disappointment that Central Asia has not discovered the seedless variety. (I have been advised that if you seek out the especially small grapes at the bazaar, that these are essentially and accidentally seedless. Will have to try it out, although I'm already used to halving them, scooping out the 3-4 seeds inside, and giving them to Anya, who gobbles them up quicker than I can complete each step on the assembly line.) Sweet little apricots, both orange and yellow. Those long-passed cherries of the late spring. There was honestly so much that I didn't even take advantage of the berries, which generally are only sold in the central Green Market here, and I can't manage to go there unless there is a very essential need, because parking there is a terror and when you go to that market there is a documented change in the space-time continuum that requires that you lose 2 hours of your life and never get it back.

Luckily the fall will still bring us good things, and cooler temps, so that we can get back into the yard more. And right about now is when those ziploc bags and tupperware containers need to come out -- I still have not learned to can, but we need to use the modern equivalent shortcuts to make sure we can enjoy some of the fruits of the warm season throughout the winter!

Pizza Night

On Saturday we served pizza to our nanny. We were running late and didn't have our dinner on the table until after she'd already arrived to babysit Anya for the evening. So, as probably would be natural not only in Tajikistan but in the US, too, we offered her some -- in Tajikistan the difference is, you set her up a plate and don't ask, since she will inevitably say "no thank you," yet to simply accept her refusal and not give her any would actually be pretty rude.

(Normally she doesn't eat meals at our house at all, neither food we've cooked nor food she's brought, partly because I actually try to schedule her hours so that they naturally stretch in between realistic mealtimes. I know some people here who provide food for nannies or others working for them, although my guess is that this is not typical in Tajikistan. Really I just don't want to feel guilty for not feeding her on any given routine day; the reason we hired her wasn't to have another mouth to worry about feeding!)

Anyway, this was the typical Walkenfeld pizza special: Bittman pizza crust with a touch of cornmeal for crunchiness, pepperoni, mozzarella (hey, in Dushanbe it is not a given), mushrooms, and artichoke hearts. As Surayo was feeding Anya her dinner (pelmeni!), she saw that Dan was very active in the cooking process -- in fact, my usual role in the pizza preparation is limited to making the dough and helping cut or grate the toppings, and then Dan takes over with the kneading and stretching of the dough, the actual construction, and the decision of when it is done.

Surayo commented that, in her family, she's never had a male relative cook anything for her -- which she has actually told me before (when I offered her a leftover scone that Dan had made), but it is still kind of surprising to me.

We were partly just trying to make conversation, I guess, but Dan and I started trying to explain or put into context the fact that Dan plays an active role in cooking this dish: we explained how he worked in a pizza parlor when he was in high school; how I had no idea when we started making pizza at home how to stretch and form the dough onto the pizza pan, so the default from the start had been for Dan to do it; how, when we started making pizza, we were both grad students, so it wasn't like one of us worked and the other tended house...

To some extent I think she understands all of these things. Her younger brother actually has lived and studied in the US for several years now, although she has never visited. But I also find it funny in such situations how little of some things can really be translated. It occurred to me later, of course, how in the Central Asian (or at least Tajik) context, the fact that a man is a student or not working or just plain out of work does not have any bearing on whether he cooks actual meals in the kitchen. Here, those are just completely unrelated aspects of life for most people, just like the idea of a couple building the elements of their life in relative equality, on equal footing, let's say, I think also really has no relevance or basis in reality.

There's nothing wrong with it, really -- it's just strikingly a subject on which it is really hard to find a bridge point; just one of those things that make you realize how far apart we are. (And probably we are the ones who are atypical from a global point of view, not the Tajiks.) I guess I'm a true Westerner: in the end I'm pretty glad that's the cultural context I grew up in, where Dan will do about 2/3 of the pizza-making, and everything that follows along with that.

Diary of a Long Weekend in Kolkata

("Impressionistic" still seems to fit for describing a 4-day whirlwind tour of Kolkata.)

Thursday:
Arrive from Dubai in the evening, proceed through passport control so slowly that it seems not so much due to the famed Indian bureaucracy but maybe that it's his first time doing this? Luggage takes forever to arrive, amid the many boxes and home-wrapped misshapen packages that workers from Emirates apparently take home. (Aside from the fact that Tajiks don't go to and fro UAE so much for work per se, the arrival experience in Dushanbe and Calcutta via Dubai is surprisingly similar in this regard... Also striking that both airports seem a bit forgotten and long in need of a renovation.)
Mosquitoes begin to nibble even as we await the bags, and of course the one with the repellent is last to appear!
Met by L and driver outside, and then head into the city and gather our first impressions of India in the dim light of evening.

Friday:
D takes the day off to show us around. We begin at Mullik Ghat flower market and plunge into the human mass and sensory overload that is Calcutta. Flowers, flowers, garlands, and more flowers. The brown, soupy river and people actually bathing in it -- somehow it's a shock, even though I was aware of it already.
Zip up to North Calcutta and take a stroll through some back streets lined with vegetable and food sellers. Stop into old Tagore home. Circle back to Flury's on Park Street for lunch. Our introduction to fresh lime soda (salty or sweet?). Anya enjoys watching some stripey fishies in the aquarium before we head out again: Asiatic Society. We get a personal tour for the manuscript section, with its interesting old Persian and other texts. And the original wing of the AS, with its airy vaulted ceiling.
Home for a rest/nap and our exploration of the city continues in our conversations with our hosts.

Saturday:
Morning starts out again in the human crush: Kalighat and Kali temple. First a stroll through a nearby neighborhood to admire some old Art Deco buildings. We end up at the temple dedicated to the deity that some say gave Calcutta its name: the fierce goddess Kali. Saturday and Tuesday are the special worship days, the height of crowds. People line our approach -- sellers of various devotional items, priests or guides eager to lead us in for a fee, pilgrims from near and far. A quick stop in Mother Teresa's Missionaries hospice and then into the temple territory.
Take our shoes off as we enter and give them to a shopkeeper for safekeeping. It's striking how much my sensibility balks at walking barefoot in the courtyard, swarming as it is with people, animals, all manner of being. But there's barely time to reflect; it's almost all just instant reaction to the throng and noise around us. We linger for a while by the altar for goat sacrifice (Anya and Dan wait nearby out of eye shot). The little black kids are led bleating to the pair of plinths (which people have been leaning over and in between in a symbolic show of prostration before Kali), and the large blade comes down quickly to behead each animal. They're then dragged back to the butchering area (leaving a squishy bright red trail and big droplets of blood in its path, right through where we entered and will exit, of course).
After a bit more looking we retrieve our shoes and leave. We pass a train of shaven-headed pilgrims from Andhra Pradesh, who peer at us with smudged yellow faces (marigold? saffron??), before we make it back to the car.
From the masses to the few: Tollygunge Club and the dip in the "swimming cool," as Anya continues to call it. Fried prawns and a lassi.
From "Tolly" to Fabindia for fabrics and gifts.
Home for our daily rest.

Sunday:
A tour of colonial Calcutta. Begin at St. John's and Job Charnock's tomb, in a sleepy little grassy pocket of downtown. Then to Dalhousie Square (BBD Bagh) and the big, red brick Writer's building: the home of bureaucracy.
A walk around the center, picking our way through the people simply living on these streets and sidewalks, going about their Sunday business, washing pots, clothes, even giving themselves a splash amid all the old neoclassical bank facades.
Anya continues to draw smiles (one of the biggest differences from our usual, post-Soviet surroundings is this culture of smiling!). A lunch back on Park Street at what seems to be another old grey lady: Kwality. Fresh lime sodas: Ah! Papadums, pickle, tandoor chicken, dal, palak paneer, and pineapple raita. Naan. (Indian 'non'!)
More subdued quiet and shady lanes at Park Street cemetery, where the preponderance of early 19th century deaths in their 20s and 30s makes me want to read more about the health situation in colonial Calcutta.
A stop at St. Paul's Cathedral and the famous Burne-Jones stained-glass window (but which window is it?). More colonial deaths memorialized in marble plaques as we contemplate what the century between 1756 and 1857 meant for the British and for Indians and for India.
A very quick look at the Toria Moria (Victoria Memorial) as the sun lowers in the mid-afternoon sky.
A respite while Anya naps and then out to sample famed Indian Chinese food (whose distinction from "regular" Chinese food I sheepishly admit I didn't quite grasp...). Veggie drumsticks and hot-hot stir-fried crab and chicken in plum sauce.

Monday:
After Dan's mid-morning departure, Anya and I continue to take it easy and play at home. (The last morning with the beloved music box! The plink-plink tune of "Me and My Girl" is so deeply lodged in my brain that it makes a comic resurfacing later on our late-night Dubai airport wait amid shalwar-kameezed and henna-bearded passengers bound (I assume) for Karachi and Kabul.)
A trip out with L. to provision for the journey home. Then the surprisingly salty-sweet explosion of a raj kachori.
A trip to Oxford children's books for some plane diversions and home for a nap.
A relaxing last evening with our hosts, a short night's sleep, and an early morning departure in the misty-smoky, greenish-grey light of a Kolkata morning.

A February Update

Some recent video:
http://www.youtube.com/lkwalker71

Other recent Anya activities:

• watching water in the ariq go "up and over" a rock and a leaf
• going 75 paces away and watching the neighborhood kids playing streetball, coming back, going away again to watch the kids, etc.
• progress on the temper tantrum front: a new ability to relent, stop crying, and ask nicely and calmly for what she wants
• words & phrases: iagodki (strawberry hair bands); bear says "salaam"; "Anya's running-Anya's running-Anya's running-Anya's running!" (while, of course, running); "A-B-C-D-Elmo-Judy"

What we're listening to/watching:
Sigur ros
I'm on a boat
Finally, the last bits of Scrubs, season 6

What we're eating:
spinach and greens quiche (first time! not bad)
coffee cake muffins a la Bittman (surprisingly quick and not overly sweet)
tasty mantu (boiled dumplings) with chakka (creamy fresh cheese) at the teahouse

The Dinnertime Dispatch

Successful cooking ventures since arriving in Dushanbe:

• Beef curry stew with potatoes and peppers (secret ingredient: Kazakhstan packaged spice mix "Karri" [one of my more positive purchases at Sadbarg!]; secret technique: browning the stew chunks after first dredging in flour mixed with salt, pepper and spice)

• Cabbage, carrot and turnip/rutabaga? soup (the squat, roundish yellow root vegetable sold here in the markets remains a mystery to me -- even after scouring the Wikipedia page... I guess this is closest to a rutabaga, although the way it looks when sold really doesn't look exactly like the images I can find online)

• Apple tart -- gradually adapted from several recipes on Epicurious.com; just your basic flour-sugar-butter-salt-icewater dough, plus sliced apples, with cinnamon and honey and some more sugar, arranged on top, raisins optional (unless you are Anya, then they are de rigueur)

• Oatmeal cookies -- from this recipe (with the sole adaptation of substituting anise liqueur for vanilla extract -- thank you, Istanbul Airport Duty Free)

• Simple ground beef pasta sauce (secret shortcut ingredient: letcho [Hungarian stewed peppers] from a jar)

• Roast chicken and roasted root veggies (simple, but good...)

• Marinated strips of chicken breast (marinade ingredients: a whole lotta minced garlic, onions, lemon juice, and kefir and yogurt, coriander, cumin, and cayenne), pan-fried and eaten in a flatbread sandwich or over cilantro rice
  

• Pan-fried steak (well, it sounds easy, but can you really be confident you won't screw it up?)*
  

• Sour cream pancakes (quick and easy, and pretty tasty, too; recipe c/o The Big Book of Breakfast, often substitute some combination of kefir and yogurt for actual sour cream or local smetana)

* Meat/poultry note: I am still working my way up to the confidence to purchase the butchered meat sold hanging out in the open at the bazaars. So the beef we still buy from the counter at the nicer supermarkets in town, and the chicken is almost universally the Brazilian frozen imports sold in the same Western style supermarkets. But this week maybe I will screw up my courage and get some lamb, at 18 somoni or so per kilo.

Christmas Press

Not to be all Debbie-Downer on you, but Tajikistan made it onto the front page of the New York Times today with this article. We hear about this kind of thing a lot from our friends here, the fear of how the financial crisis ultimately will affect migration to and employment in Russia, which together produce the remittances that seem to keep Tajikistan's population afloat.

In other news, the weather turned much warmer for Christmas Eve day and now on Christmas Day, too. The sun yesterday made it positively balmy, and a warm breeze wafted in as I rode the marshrutka (fixed-route taxi van) back to town after a morning of work at the Embassy. It was great, until I sat for too long and the marshrutka made an unexpected (for me) turn, and I had to backtrack to get to sadik in time to pick Anya up. (One thing Dushanbe really needs: transport maps!)

We have had a building-themed holiday week, with Legos and Intelligence Blocks (a lego-type toy that Anya received as 2nd prize in the 2-and-under coloring contest) coming our way, and the two most favored things to build are apparently: 1. towers, and 2. Christmas trees (sometimes expressed in Russian as "Yolochka!").

We (well, OK, I -- unfortunately Anya wasn't really in the mood to make cookies, just to sample them; and Dan was out doing our grocery shopping) made a big batch of oatmeal cookies for the two parties on our circuit last night. I need to get moving on whatever it is I'm making for the family Christmas dinner that some fellow expats in our neighborhood are organizing this afternoon -- I think it's going to be apple tart, for lack of much imagination or energy for anything else.

Happy Holidays!

Seen Today in Dushanbe

• Snow: big, fat, wet flakes falling in a beautiful mess, and still falling steadily now, at 3 in the afternoon (and forecast to last into a chilly weekend!)

• Turkeys: 30 somoni (a little less than $10) per kilo, labeled for some reason in Greek, in the supermarket

• A Russian guy buying only hot sauce, and nothing else, at the same supermarket (I guess stereotypes are made to be broken)

• Historically inaccurate bright orange bell-bottoms in the 1976 Soviet film version of Firdausi's Shahnameh, "Skazanie o Siyavushe" (this afternoon's offering on TV Safina, one of the 3 local channels we get at home)

Market Rounds, Part 2

(Hey, I'm an American, shopping is what we do, right?)

Seems like this is the norm for me: getting to know a new place is apparently tied pretty closely with figuring out where to buy stuff. I suppose that isn't very strange, after all. You appear in a new place, and you need to eat. You need your daily stuff, like soap, shampoo, etc. You need a few comforts that you may not have brought with you. You may have the benefit of a whole container-load of your existing stuff being sent behind you, but while you're waiting you probably need some things that, at packing time, didn't seem essential enough to stuff in the suitcase. DVDs to watch. A toy or two for the kid when the ones you've got are getting old or when she seems to be reaching a new stage. Warmer shoes when it starts to get colder and rain a bit. A hat or a scarf. Tupperware, or what passes for it in Tajikistan. Spices! You get my drift. So where do you find all this stuff?

Actually, it's sort of appropriate too that I'm thinking so much about shopping and "marketing" -- and not because we're in some ancient, bustling node on the Silk Road. Apparently Dushanbe ("Monday" in Persian/Tajik) was the site of a little settlement whose market day was Monday. The modern city, though, is pretty much a Soviet creation, and it dates to the 1920s, when the Red Guards rolled in, put down local resistance to Soviet-Russian rule, and took over the emirate of Bukhara. That was when they started to reshape this area into the republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

The central, older part of Dushanbe is kind of laid out along a roughly north-south axis, along the river Varzob. (If you look at the link, you've got the river pretty clearly cutting through the center of your view; the main downtown of Dushanbe is laid out to the northwest of the hippodrome -- the easily identifiable oval to the east of the river. And all of that sprawl on the river's west bank is comprised of much more recent neighborhoods and prefab construction -- "novostroiki" -- built more after 1970.) We don't tend to venture out too far beyond that basic center of town, but we still seem to do a fair amount of traveling here and there.

In the beginning, it seemed like TsUM and the Green Market summed up our most frequent shopping experiences. TsUM was an obvious place for us to go, working as we were on the post-Soviet model, when we needed basic household things after we moved in, like plastics or kitchenware (we got the interim Minnie Mouse potty chair there, and some random plastic tubs for laundry and other stuff, those sorry excuses for Tupperware, that sort of thing).

Most of the expats or American diplomatic folks we met from the start tended to do their fresh food shopping at the central "Green Market." That place is impressive! And luckily I have already gotten fairly used to the dirty, loud, chaotic market experience and now can do it better than I could at one time. If in Vladivostok it just seemed like the wisest choice, where you ought to go for good quality produce at the right price, here in Dushanbe it seems to me that the Western style supermarkets really are almost not an option for produce. They carry some basics and some things that bazaar sellers just don't apparently bring in (although I'm still learning -- maybe oyster mushrooms really are available at the bazaar), but if you need a good range of basic fresh staples and root vegetables, you've got to just hit a regular open market and save the supermarket for what it's good at.

Without a car, the Green Market -- in the very center of town -- really isn't that great an option for me, so now I tend to go to our local bazaar, up at the north end of our neighborhood (and almost at the north end of town). It's much smaller than the Green Market (which really is defined at its main corner by a funny greenish building in that kitschy Orientalist style -- imagine a built style to match the cheesy "Sindbad" type lettering on the railroad station and the airport, and I think you get the picture). Ironically the Green Market is actually looking a little grey and sooty ever since about the time we arrived. Apparently warring bandits who were vying for control of the selling there set fire to the main building literally on the morning that I was first shown the market. When I walked past it the other day, it wasn't smoldering any more, but it still kind of just looked like charred heap of greenish metal. That doesn't mean the selling in the other parts of the bazaar doesn't continue unabated, though -- the market is really a sprawling entity that sort of starts at that green corner, but encompasses larger structures, smaller structures, outdoor territory, etc.

The Varzob neighborhood bazaar is more my speed, although of course it doesn't have the selection and variety (or the kind of rich-feeling Central Asian-y experience) you get at the Green Market. It's kind of just a plainish corner market -- it has a rectangular permanent building with sellers set up inside, food, housewares, clothes, etc. all piled up on glass-front display cases; several semi-permanent metal kiosk or trailer types of storefronts, each divided up into little cells and each of those with a seller inside; open produce areas, where people set up their wares on old dusty blue metal countertops; and then there are the butcher section, the hardware section, and the cooked food sections.

And while we're on the subject of fresh produce and where to find it (before I take a break and continue my shopping descriptions at a later time), I have to comment on the excellent dinner we had for the second time this week at the restaurant Yangtse Tian (I hope I'm spelling that correctly), complete with green and just a tad crunchy stir-fried bok choi. I don't know how they do it, but these people evidently truck the veg in from China! Some of our friends have named this place as their top restaurant in Dushanbe, and I think I'm close to placing it at the top of the personal favorites I've accumulated so far, too. And apparently a hall full of Chinese people whom I have yet to see on the streets of Dushanbe agree.

Market Rounds

Where do we go when we need to buy?

Shahmansur Market, or "The Green Bazaar" -- produce and foodstuffs, also all kinds of manufactured household goods and hardware, right in the center of Dushanbe

neighborhood bazaar "Varzob" -- small produce market (with plenty of other food and other stuff) within walking distance of our house

supermarkets Orima and Paikar, a couple of blocks west of Dushanbe's Opera and Ballet theater -- more imported and higher quality foodstuffs, more reliable freshness, more comfortable shopping experience for the Western expat, more likely to come closer to one-stop shopping, and all of it costing more money

Sultoni Kabir -- a pretty amazing Central Asian open-air Home Depot

TsUM, or the Central Universal Store -- state-run department store conveniently located right in the center of town, a reliable option for plastics, toys, larger manufactured household items, some souvenirs

Sadbarg -- clothes, shoes, toys, toiletries/personal care, stationery goods

the wholesale shops next to the railroad station -- all kinds of food and drink at wholesale prices. We mostly go for the juice, milk, and beer, for the chance to buy a "blok" of 12-20 units all at once and get a ride home, rather than lugging the tetrapaks on foot, piecemeal.

(Where are we? We live in the neighborhood that lies just to the north of the Botanical Gardens.)

The Day the Nanny Quit

Perhaps that title offers a nutshell explanation of why the blog is still sporadic in nature. True, even in Vladivostok I never got myself together enough to post as often as I'd have liked, but establishing a routine for myself in Dushanbe is proving even harder for me (or maybe my memory is just fading).

My trip to the US was great -- an amazing break and weeklong opportunity to sort of go back in time and experience independence for an extended period of time, reconnect with friends, family, colleagues, professional networks, etc. Probably even Dan has not really ever had an equivalent experience since Anya was born, despite his more frequent short trips for work. (And added culinary and shopping benefits on two continents: several hours wandering in Istanbul in addition to three east coast US cities.) No complaints there.

Highlights (yes, I admit again, a culinary theme):
* a series of visits at home and out on the town, with friends and family, all up and down the East Coast, starting with a cozy burger and beers with Auntie and Uncle on a cold fall night in Bethesda
* gourmet-street-fare-inspired Mexican -- including grasshopper tacos, which I admit I didn't try, and spicy chocolate cake, which of course I did -- at DC's Oyamel
* the whirlwind experience of the Slavic conference for the first time in 4 years
* Chungking Garden restaurant, Philadelphia's Chinatown -- cheap and excellent (and the company wasn't bad, either)
* Reading Terminal food market in Philly, for an eye-popping shopping browse -- through baked goods, fancy cheeses, cured meats, and the entire gamut of takeout foods -- especially fun for someone visiting from the former Soviet Union
* the pierna adobada (spicy pork) platter at Viva el Mariachi, in Astoria, Queens -- alone, but thus with all senses alert!
* hot-hot-hot Thai dry spice paste tofu and green beans in midtown Manhattan while catching up on 12 (12?!) years gone by with a dear old friend
* walking through Beyoglu, the area southeast of Taksim in Istanbul, for cafes, people watching, browsing through the boutiques and sellers, admiring nineteenth century Euro-influenced architecture

My 2 new addictions, thanks to Turkish Airlines:
* hazelnuts
* sour cherry juice

But then I got back home to Dushanbe, and while it was wonderful to be reunited with Dan and Anya, I've found the transition back, even though (or because?) we've only lived here a little under 2 months, a little bit harder than expected.

The nanny lent indispensable help during my absence, but already there were signs that our communication with her wasn't great, that her expectations were different from ours and that despite our attempts to clarify, certain information wasn't totally making it through. When we spoke about things the first Monday after my return and she was ready to leave, I wasn't inclined to protest or make it worth her while to stay. Luckily, Dushanbe is more of an employer's market than what we experienced in Vladivostok, and we already have 4 potential candidates in mind for Round 2 of The Nanny Hire.

But, in another wrinkle: Anya began pre-preschool on Monday! This is a major step for us. It's a little daycare/preschool run by expat parents in Dushanbe, with space for about a dozen kids between 2 and 4. A spot opened and we decided to give Anya the chance for some social interaction. It's held on weekday mornings in part of the house of another expat family here in town, has two Russian-speaking Tajik teachers, and apparently includes some lessons or activities in music and crafts with teachers who come in during the course of the week.

We're still in the getting-used-to-it stage, of course, and this morning yielded the comment "Want an English sadik [preschool]?!" (which was then followed by commentary on a "lady in an orange shirt" that made me realize it might not be the language so much that she is protesting, so much as that Anya thinks it would be more fun to be at the house of one of her peers than with him amid all the hubbub of sadik -- when we first met him, we spent the morning together at home and his mom was wearing an orange sweater). Anya had a lower level of enthusiasm for the hour that I stayed at school this morning, but I'm hoping that we'll gradually get on track and learn to like the new regime.

What we're reading:
* just finished "March," another very good historical novel by Geraldine Brooks
* haven't decided what's next for the nightstand, but now will dig in to several non-fiction books on Central Asia as soon as they arrive in the mail

What we're saying:
* "[you] want me to help you" -- quickly followed by the requested correction: "*I* want you to help *me*.... pweeez!"
* "Bear's a good-girl"
* "I'm a girl"/"Ia devochka"
* bioo-ful (as in "Anya's bioo-full hair" or "Mommy's bioo-full hair")

What we're eating:
* tunafish and bear[-shaped] crackers
* homemade yogurt (even without the yogurt maker! the old-fashioned way, setting the milk in a jar close to the radiator overnight, yielded surprisingly positive results!)
* Dushanbe burritos (more authentic than you'd expect, between the contents of my suitcase and consumables borrowed against future shipments from our colleagues)