Hello From Tajikistan! From Taylor Feb 15, 2011

Dear All,

  

   Hello from Tajikistan!  We have only been in Tajikistan for a little over five weeks and we are very settled.  I guess I will start from the beginning of our trip.  Our group of three adults, seven children and our twenty seven bags arrived at the airport at around 12:20 PM with the help of some great friends.  We took off for Munich Germany at precisely 5:50 pm and were officially out of the US at approximately 6:20 pm.  My flight was particularly fun due to the fact that the guy sitting next to me was holding a bag for several hours thinking he was going to be sick.  Luckily, he wasn't.  When we arrived in Germany, we had a wonderful meal of schnitzel, apple strudel, and apple shorle.  Our next plane was from Germany to Istanbul, Turkey.  The final and much awaited plane ride was from Turkey to Dushanbe, Tajikistan!!!!!!  We landed in Tajikistan at exactly 4:43:42 am!.  We were met by some extremely helpful people from the embassy who helped get us and our bags to our new house.

   Our new house is a huge story alone.  It has a basement, two floors and an attic!  It is by far the biggest house we have ever had.  People tell us that it used to be the "Comfort Hotel".  I think my favorite room is the attic.  The   huge window has a great view of the mountains and our street.

    As soon as we were in Dushanbe, so many things began to happen at once.  All of us kids now walk down to the bread store and the cookie store everyday and we are quickly making friends with both the cookie men and the bread lady.  I think the egg lady is still getting used to us.  We also walk to the bazaar almost everyday.  

   We have an amazing house helper whose name is Tanya.  She teaches us to make either a Russian or Tajik food twice a week.  She also takes us shopping to the big bazaar which is called Green Market.  We have an amazing violin teacher who comes to our house twice  a week.  She is Russian and is very intense but also nice. We have just finished our first week of Russian lessons.  Our Russian teacher comes everyday and is a wonderful teacher.

    The boys jumped right in with the neighborhood boys playing soccer (football).  The guys are picking up some Tajik/Russian and the neighbor boys are picking up some English.  Grace and I like to hang out with the little girls who play jump rope, cards,"hide and seek"and some form of "rock, paper, scissors".   

   We have built a rabbit hutch and now have the cutest little gray rabbit who we named Pippin.  He is very loved and spends much of his time in the kitchen being feed and held.

   We will try to write more soon and post some pictures of the people, stores, and lots more.

   Taylor