A Happy Ending

The great thing about a week that starts bad is that it usually ends better. This one was no exception.

As it turned out, another benefit to not having a car was that I didn't have to drive in the heaviest snow we've had so far this year, which fell Wednesday night and Thursday. It only amounted to about 4-5 inches, but I saw enough people fishtailing on the roads to be glad I wasn't behind the wheel.

When I went out to go running Thursday morning it didn't look like it was snowing that hard or that it was sticking to the roads. But when I got to the place where I usually meet my running buddies, it was becoming a bit much. My running buddies, being more astute than I, stayed home. By the time I got back (moving much more slowly due to the increasingly slippery conditions), it was snowing so hard that a pile had accumulated on my head. Good times. As always, the snow was very pretty and Stephanie was nice enough to take some pictures for me since I can't do it from the embassy.

On Friday, we were invited over to the Ambassador's house for a night of poker with a couple of other folks from the embassy as well as the Russian Ambassador and one of the folks from his trade section. Aside from having a great time, it was interesting for several reasons. First and foremost, neither Stephanie or I really knew how to play poker so it was a learn-as-you-go sort of thing. Second was that I, along with the help of one of my colleagues had to try to figure out how to explain the rules of various games in Russian to the trade advisor as he didn't speak English and the Russian ambassador was at the other end of the table. It was great practice for my Russian skills.

As I said we had a great time. Stephanie lost all her money, (it wasn't a high buy-in as we were playing for somonis), but I ended up with the highest take for the night, beating out the Russian trade advisor by about 70 dirham (100 dirham per somoni). I won enough to almost make up for Stephanie's loss. I'm thinking I only did so well because the Ambassador (ours) went easy on us. Apparently he's quite good and has even played in tournaments. Regardless, I think we'd both enjoy doing it again.

On Saturday I went for a run with one of our security officers, who I'm friends with. It was a nice run and we went down along the river with great views of the snowy mountains in the distance. Coming back however, we had another first. We were finishing up our run through the big park near the President's palace when some police officers started blowing their whistles at us. Not knowing what infraction we were guilty of, we went over to talk to them. They were perfectly pleasant to us, and seemed impressed that we had been running. They asked where we worked and we told them we were with the embassy. The whole time, they were kind of sidling us over behind the park gate so we were out of plain view. This was apparently so they could make their request for a bribe more discreet. Again, they were very polite about it, and when we explained that we aren't allowed to pay bribes, (not to mention the fact that I don't run with money), they took it in good humor. And that's the story of my first shake-down in Dushanbe.

On Saturday evening, we met some friends for a show at the opera. It was Russian, but I had trouble hearing clearly so I only understood bits and pieces. Regardless, it was a nice show with the most elaborate set I've seen so far. Finally I was able to take some pictures...

After the opera we all went to the local Hispanic Restaurant for dinner. It's always a nice change of pace from the usual cuisine. We wrapped up the night at our friends house. They introduced us to a game called Frustration, which is a lot like 'Trouble' for those of you who are familiar with that one. We also got to sample some delicious brownies with candy bars baked into them.

Today, (Sunday), is shaping up to be a nice day around the house. The mechanic brought the car over and I'm going to wash it later after doing some work in the garden. I'm also planning on incorporating some significant R&R. All in all, it seems that the next week should be starting out much better than the last one!