Winter Finally Caught Up to Us

Good old Murphy and his law apparently maintain a stronghold on the events of life even in Dushanbe. So of course, over the weekend after we learn our car is worthless, we get hit with the first real blast of winter weather so far this year. The weekend itself wasn’t too bad, mostly rain, but it was enough to keep us mostly homebound. On Sunday night, it started to snow.

Usually rain will change over to snow in the evening and then back to rain in the morning, but not this time. We were fortunate to have a friend who was willing to give us a ride to the Marine house on the compound to watch the superbowl at 3:30 am on Monday morning. We were also fortunate that we could watch the game there instead of at home because the snow blocked the signal on our satellite dish. (The Marines were able to go out on the roof to clean theirs off - we would have fallen off if we tried that). All in all, it was a great game, and we had a good breakfast while watching it. The only thing I really missed were buffalo wings and the commercials – we don’t get to see them on the Armed Forces Network.

The snow continued all day Monday and into Tuesday morning – making for very beautiful scenery and very treacherous commutes. First, when I tried to leave the house, I discovered that our large metal gate was frozen. Not having had a large metal gate previously, I was unprepared and had to run inside to get hot water to melt the lock so I could leave. Then I had to go back inside again for more hot water when I learned that I had to melt the outside of the lock too in order to close it behind me.

After a rather treacherous walk to the bazaar, I managed to catch a marshrutka relatively easy. It even had a pair of red fuzzy dice on the mirror. Alas, that wasn't the end of my adventure. About a kilometer or so from the embassy, the marshrutka gave up the ghost and ceased working. Any other time I probably would have just hoofed it, but the conditions were not conducive to walking so I caught another one and got to work almost an hour late.

Tuesday night, Stephanie and I had planned to go to another salsa lesson, but then we realized that we couldn't both go out or we'd be frozen out of our house when we came home.

Today (Wednesday, has still be quite cold, but things are improving. No issues with the commute this morning and the facilities team came to unfreeze our gate. We're getting ready to head out to dinner with some friends and tomorrow is supposed to be warmer. Almost Friday!