Potholes

Now that the weather is in the freeze/thaw cycle, driving here has taken on somewhat of a video game feel. As you drive along, you must be on the constant lookout for potholes, and making important decisions about which maneuver to try: The Swerve, the Straddle, or the Slam on the brakes? Usually following the car in front of you is a good choice, just in case you didn’t see the pothole they’re swerving around, but since our van is so much bigger than other cars, I can sometimes successfully Straddle what they cannot (and if I tried to Swerve in the same spot as they did, I may not have enough room, depending on the width of the road or the width between potholes). Then again, it depends on how many potholes there are in a given spot and just how deep they are. And of course, you must also check to see if there is a car coming (in which case you cannot avoid your pothole by driving on their side of the road. Then, of course, you simply Slam on the brakes and drive Slowly. :) It’s amazing to see new potholes developing all the time. I thought there were a lot of potholes when we arrived here, but...I was wrong. Maybe because we have a big police center on our street, though, they actually fixed about 2/3 of them so that you only get a smaller bump up instead of down along a good portion of our street--I haven’t seen other roads like that, though...just ours. Other potholes have dirt, rocks, and sometimes even garbage thrown in to fill them. On the bright side, people don’t speed as much here in Tashkent as they do in America!

Happy Women's Day!

Thursday Jared and the kids got a day off for International Women’s Day--a big holiday here. We had decided that we wouldn’t celebrate it since we already have American Mother’s Day. But Christoff and Megan had made cards for me in Russian class, and Megan and Mia decided they needed to make me a present. When I walked in the door after going out, the kids had hooked up Christoff’s ipod to speakers and there was an applause sound effect going on right outside the closed living room doors. I walked in and everyone jumped out and shouted, “Surprise!” They gave me their cards (and Megan had helped Mia make one, too), and Megan and Mia presented me with a homemade scarf and skirt, held together with tape (kind of reminded me of the dress I made for Christy’s birthday when I was that age, but I loosely stitched mine together) and a bracelet and earrings they had made to go with it. Christoff turned on some music and we all danced around together. Kade gave me some baskets he’d made out of pipe cleaners. After the celebration, I told Jared he might as well give me the Mother’s Day gift I’d ordered for myself (a DVD--it had arrived two days before) and we could just call it good for both days. :) Since we were now celebrating, we made a day of it and went out to Babour Park. Everyone rode bikes (except Caleb and the adults), and it was fun to see Mia starting to balance on her own more and more. We got to try a new ride (it’s now our new favorite!) and a brand new bouncy house with a giant slide, so it was a great time.

Goatee Man

Jared grew out a goatee over Christmas. He ended up shaving it off, but might try again for a beard when we go to Beijing this summer. :) The girls and I liked the red color.

Valentine's Day

Much to Christoff’s relief, the president of Uzbekistan canceled Valentine’s Day this year That meant that he and Kade didn’t have to make valentines or celebrate it at all at school. Megan’s class celebrated “Appreciation Day” with their school unit and made appreciation cards for each other, which made her supremely happy. She had so much fun making them (though I had to laugh each time she slipped and called them valentines). Her teacher told me afterward how much she enjoyed watching the excitement that came over her face as she looked at each card and delivered it to each classmate. So it worked out just perfectly for us. :) Megan surprised us in the morning with a table all decorated for Valentine's Day. She had made each of us a valentine to use as a placemat.

Penguin Plunge

In honor of the cold temperatures, Jared decided it would be fun to have our own “penguin plunge” like they have in New Hampshire (they go in the icy ocean), but with a different twist: everyone who wanted to participate had to go outside in their swimsuits and bare feet, and whoever lasted the longest won. Of course, this was behind our gate, where nobody could see--though it might have been funny to hear the shocked tirades from anyone, especially any old babushkas, who would have walked by and seen us that way. :) Jared, Megan, and I stayed out for a long time but none of us thought it was that cold (it was about 10 degrees, I guess)--maybe we lived in Central NY and NH too long. In the end the younger kids got bored so we called it a 3-way-tie and ran down to the pool which was really hot. It made our feet tingly and numb-feeling at the same time.

Stitches!

A few weeks ago as I was tucking Caleb in bed, I heard a cry that did not sound good coming from Mia. Knowing something was wrong, I rushed out to see her head gushing out blood and all the kids screaming that she was going to die. Of course, what was going on in my mind was, “Why today, when Jared is staying late at work and I have no car and both American Embassy doctors are out of town for training?” After stopping the bleeding, we drove over to the International Medical Clinic with the Uzbek Embassy doctor in the motorpool SUV (which was nice since the roads were really bad, as they don’t plow here) and he and another guy stitched Mia up. Then he put a bandage all around her head to keep the swelling down and told me that since we had been unable to find out what had caused her puncture wound, we needed to do a CAT scan to make sure there was no problems with chipped bone or other complications. Wow. So we then drove to an Uzbek clinic. I was a bit nervous about this, but it turned out to be fine. The scan turned out normal, and I was very happy to discover it had only cost 62,000 som (about $32)! Mia felt pretty proud of herself by this point, and when she arrived home and saw that she had achieved something of celebrity status with her still-awake siblings, she took the part happily, sharing all her experiences and celebrating with Kade that they’d both had stitches now, and seriously informing the others that she had not gotten a single lollipop or sticker! :) So all’s well that ends well.

First Post--Sledding in Uzbekistan

Okay, after over 5 years of saying I was going to get around to it, I have finally actually created a blog for our family! Now the test will be...can I keep up with it? Seriously, though, I am going to give it my best shot. :)

So I have decided that our first post-worthy experience was sledding in the Chimgan Mountains the day after New Year's. Of course, these pictures don't quite capture the thrill of downhill sledding with the horses and snowmobiles, but we tried our best.