Winter finally came

We have had a fantastic winter here in Tajikistan. Until this week we've had more mild days than cold days and more sunshine than rain/snow. We've felt most days like it was fall or spring not winter. We've also had WAY more electricity than we anticipated. In winters past there was only a few hours of electricity every day (when there was electricity) and I'd say that we've averaged 23hrs of electricity a day. For the last week we've finally had winter - snow, cold and ice and subsequently spotty electricity. We were completely without for two days and when it came back our water didn't work. We live in a 4th floor apartment and have to use a motor to get water up to our apartment so when there's no electricity, we don't have running water. This would actually be more of an inconvience in the states since much of our lives there rely on convenience (ie: expecting water to come out of the faucet when we turn it on) and though it certainly isn't convenient here, it's normal and therefore the rhythm of life includes (actually revolves around) getting water every day. Our apartment "dues" are for the outdoor running water stations, the tandoor ovens and the sweeping of all the common grounds. No pool, work-out room and sauna here! :) We keep a large garbage can full of water for these kinds of situations and actually got to the bottom of the can this week. Rees hauled water in 3 or 4 trips with two buckets a trip up to our 4th floor home and we replenished our supply. If you stop and think about how much water you use every day, it's pretty impressive. Washing anything (clothes, dishes, hands, etc), cooking (including rinsing off veggies and stuff), flushing the toilet (if you don't have running water, even a flushing toilet won't flush), cleaning, etc. Even while preparing a meal that doesn't require any water, you frequently get something on your hands while you're preparing it and you can't just turn on the sink and rinse it off. All this to say, we have a great appreciation for how most of the world's population lives and how much time it takes just to live when you don't have an easy and reliable water source. We've read a fantastic book called "The Hole in Our Gospel" since being here and it spends a whole chapter talking about how having access to decent water is crucial to progress of any kind in any part of the world. Highly recommend this book whether or not you consider yourself a Christian. It may actually help you understand why we are here in a new way. I'm going on an on about this but that's not actually what I intended to blog about. Actually, I don't really remember what I was going to write about. I've sat down to write this post three times now. I got interrupted by about 4 different knocks at the door and a really awkward situation with a good friend of ours bringing his second wife (who we don't think is actually his wife. second wife here means in addition to the first, not instead of - a little different dynamic) over and thinking they could take a shower together in our shower all while the electricity guy was trying to get a bribe out of us (at least that's what we think was happening). All in all, we really didn't understand what was happening and sure as heck couldn't communicate well enough to convey everything we wanted to. I probably said, "Nameshavad!" (nah-meh-shavad) which more or less means, "not okay!" at least 10 times to everyone and we think our friend got the picture and the electricity guy said "mylee" (which means something akin to "ok" or "fine") but currently everyone in our building has electricity except us so maybe it wasn't all ok. The developing world sparks plenty of creativity though and we just hooked our electric line into our neighbor's. We're really thankful they're so generous. Don't worry, we are doing really well. Language continues to slowly build and improve and we continue to make friends and strengthen the relationships we have. Yesterday my neighbor who is two years older than me with 5 kids came over for the first time. I've been to her home probably 4 times but she's never come over to ours (two of her kids have). She lost her husband just after we moved in here and she was a second wife. She said she was feeling sad and thought she should just come sit with me. She has a lot of things to pay for and there's no such thing as life insurance here so without her husband she's in a tough situation. Even tougher because she's a second wife so all the customary gifts of money that people give when a husband dies went to the first wife. I was a little worried that she was going to ask me for money but she just wanted someone to think about options with and to brainstorm work options. Her only daughter, Farzona (she's about 10) comes every Mon, Wed and Fri to play with Hannah and keep her busy during our language lesson. It's a good informal language lesson for Hannah too. After talking to our friend and teammate Laura we decided to have Farzona help us out a bit more and pay her with stuff for school (paper, pens, etc), clothes for school and surplus food stuff. Money gets really tricky here. I'm too tired to really go into it but a lot of the "tricky-ness" comes from being a post-communist country. Anyway, that's where we are for now. I would include pictures but our camera broke 2 months ago. Nan found us a new one that our friends are bringing back from the states this weekend. Til then, I'm signing out.