I have to apologize for not posting in the past week, but there has been a lot going on in this part of the world and I simply haven't had a lot of time to go out looking for interesting things to post about.
Instead, I have put several random photos together in order to show a sampling of what kinds of stuff we encounter on a day-to-day basis.
Hope everyone has a great Halloween (if you are so inclined to celebrate that tradition).
This is Katie.
She is a teacher at Sharon's school (teaches 5 year-old class).
As you can see, Katie is not 100% normal :)
Actually, she took all the suggestions from her class as to what she should dress as for "dress up day" (since the school celebrates traditions from multiple cultures, they don't call it Halloween).
So Dolce & Gabbana may be branching out into toilet paper!
You never know what you're going to find when you visit the store here.
We came home from the store to find the neighbors outside lighting the yard on fire.
They were trying to get rid of the remainder of the dead weeds before winter sets in but they didn't get much burned before giving up.
It was interesting to watch the young boy (maybe 12 years old) was the one with the matches and starting the fire. More interesting was watching the small girl (probably 3 years old) wandering around the fires, putting stuff in the flames to get it to burn better, and using a stick to flick burning material onto a fresh area of weeds in order to spread the fire.
In the U.S. someone would have called Child Services on this family for neglect and endangerment, but here (and when I was growing up), children are seen as a little smarter and more capable than we typically give them credit for. Its interesting to see (as my Psych instructor would point out) that in all cultures, the children try to emulate the adults and their actions. It's just in other cultures, they are actually allowed to do so with less restriction and craziness from the parents :)
Monday we had a 70 degree (21.1C) day and we went out for a walk.
As usual, Moose drew attention and people all day wanted to stop us and pet him.
We were told that "Muslims don't like dogs", but it looks like 9/10 people are enthralled by them.
Out looking for a few local craft/artisan shops, we ended up walking for several miles (it was a nice morning). Along the way, we saw this cool downspout on a local house.
By the way, the Lonely Planet site states there are several shops that sell local arts/crafts but after several hours, and several miles of walking, we can definitively state that these are no longer in business.
A few houses down from the downspout, there was this great double-door on a driveway.
Tuesday was also a nice day and we went out again to enjoy the day off (Sharon's school was off all this week). We went with a local friend to a pet store called Alligator to look for some dog food for Moose. Stores like this one don't show up on Google or on any maps program in Dushanbe. So, in order to find most places, you need to know someone who knows where it is. Then they either give you really good directions, or actually take you there (which is the case 99% of the time) because there are times when a local "store" will simply be someone's house and has no signs or any other indicators of what's inside and you just have to "know" that they have what you are looking for.
Driving past the Dushanbe nuclear power plant. This was actually never completed and there was discussion that it would be converted instead to a particle accelerator facility (not sure how easily that conversion would be).
Tajikistan has quite a bit of power issues. They have times when the power will be turned off in different parts of the city (rolling blackouts). This summer, we had several times where the power would go out for an hour or two and then come back on. Additionally, I have been told by locals that during the winter, they basically shut off power to the outer towns/villages for all but a few hours per day in order to make sure Dushanbe (the capital) has enough power. I can only imagine that all the power concerns would have been resolved had the reactor actually been completed. Unfortunately, after Chernobyl and then Fukishima, the decision was made to not go forward with completion due to negative sentiment for nuclear power.
Yesterday however, we lost power at 5:15 am and it was out for 16 hours! We have heard stories of the power going out for several days during the winter months so not sure what we're going to do for heat if that happens. Since it was cold and raining yesterday, it got fairly cold in the apartment after only a few hours. We dressed up in warm, winter clothes and sat under blankets and watched movies on an iPad.
Moose dressed in his pajamas and a sweater in order to stay warm!
Of course when one of his pajama legs comes off, it looks like he's walking around with an extra, floppy leg. When this happens, we refer to him as "mutie stock" :)
Because we were without power for so long, we took some food over to Katies house to have some warmth and to cook dinner. Katie had power, but for some reason (which has become our new normal), the lights in Katies kitchen were't working so we had to cook using a flashlight and the light on my iPhone.
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