We Are the Champions

Following up on my last post, I am pleased to announce that my office won the Halloween decorating contest at the embassy. I don't have any pictures yet because we aren't supposed to take them inside, but there was an embassy photographer who may send them out soon. Our prize was a delicious German chocolate cake, which was well worth the effort.

For Halloween itself, one of my co-workers had a party so of course we got dressed up. I brought out an old favorite (since it's all I had)

and we were able to put together an outfit for Stephanie as an 80's valley girl.

The saga of our road continues apace. When we left Saturday night for the party, the road was open. When we came home later that night, it was completely closed. Stephanie had to drive onto the sidewalk and up some steps for us to get home. Say what you want about our tiny car, it gets us where we're going. Unfortunately, even our trusty steed couldn't surmount the obstacles confronting it on Monday. There were several steam rollers blocking us in and due to the first real rainy day since we've been here, there were no workers to move them. Hot wiring seriously crossed my mind, I was so mad. But I opted not to push the limits on my diplomatic immunity and took a marshrutka instead.

I hadn't realized how strange it was to go so long without a rainy day, until I realized how strange a rainy day looks in Dushanbe. For whatever reason, it made it feel more European to me.

Fortunately, the rain gave way to a very clear day and I was able to snap some pictures of the spectacular views we had yesterday (Tuesday) morning.

I was in this part of town, so I also got a shot of the peacock statue adorning one of the traffic circles near the river.

This afternoon, we had a volunteer activity, where those of us who could get away went to clean a local park. It went well, but the locals seemed to think it was really strange that anyone would do something like that. Given the state of the park, I could see that littering is not a no-no here.

To finish things off, when I was downloading my pictures, I came across this one of me with our friends' dogs. I must have passed out on the couch while we were all watching a movie cause I definitely don't remember this picture being taken.

Enjoy, but Mom and Dad, please don't show Xena. I don't think she would approve.