Hi-ho, hi-ho...

As predicted, this week has been almost entirely about work. The whole embassy seems particularly busy. At least all you readers can rest assured that your tax dollars are hard at work. A few key highlights from this week:

I've gotten to work a bit more with the political section as some issues I've been having overlap with some of the current hot topics on the local scene. It's always neat to get involved outside my little fiefdom in the General Services Office.

Also, an important lesson for one of my staff was that if you substitute the 'u' in 'guys' with an 'a', it changes the meaning of the word entirely. Especially when you meant to say '...contact the guys if you need help'.

Then, an epic e-mail throw-down between two local staff caused an inordinate amount of time to be spent sorting the whole situation out. Just call your friendly GSO for all of your conflict resolution needs.

In other notes, I'm appreciating the company of our sponsoree on my daily commute. Since he lives so close, we usually meet up in the mornings to catch the marshrutka. The experience is a lot more fun with someone else along to enjoy it.

One day we had a particularly bizarre ride. I was sitting in the front seat and he was sitting behind me with his back to me. We soon discovered that the back of the seat was rather thin and not very sturdy so that when accelerating and braking we each had to work not to fall over on the other.

And now that the wintry weather has passed, our running crew has started up again. We're now running six strong and make for quite a sight on the early morning streets of Dushanbe.

Other than that, we went out with a group of friends for dinner at a local Indian restaurant on Monday and went to a Salsa lesson on Tuesday. Stephanie has been very busy at work as well so we haven't had as much free time as we'd like.

Now, it's just a little over 24 hours 'til I depart for DC. It will be nice to get a taste of home, but I'm a little disappointed to be missing the parliamentary elections in Tajikistan. If I were here, I'd probably be participating in observing the elections. It will be interesting to hear if anything notable happens.