Our Fall Photos

We found a small patch of leaves with just the right lighting to catch a couple fall pictures!

Love these kiddos!

What's wrong with this picture?

Our milk has come the last couple times in a 2L Pulsar (beer) bottle. There's just something that doesn't sit right. Of course we pasteurize it, to ensure no chances of toddler drunkenness.

What is threading?

This is how Wikipedia described threading:

Threading is an ancient method of hair removal which originated in the Persia, subcontinent, spread to the Middle and Far East, and is now gaining popularity in Western countries. Practitioners use a pure, thin, twisted cotton thread which is rolled over untidy hairlines, moustaches and so on, plucking the hair at the follicle level. Unlike tweezing where a single hair is pulled out each time, threading can remove an entire row of hair, resulting in a straighter line.

And that's pretty much what happens in my little bread lady's chair! It's amazing how she works the thread ever so precisely.

A trip to the bazaar

Brace yourselves, I anticipate this to be a longer blog. But several have asked to see what our bazaar looks like. Rather than a slide show that limits the narration that I can add, it will just be a little longer.

These are my 2 shopping buddies. Some time Ethan rides on the back of the stroller, standing on one of the bars. I love my huge "basket" under the stroller. My biggest shop so far was 70 pounds of produce, including Elli. Needless to say, I paid the 25c to have someone load my stuff onto his cart and push it up the hill to my house.

This is the view of the bazaar coming from our house, the main gate from the front and from the back.

This is how we buy meat. Granted we don't buy the goat heads, but I thought you'd like to see them. I'm still intimidated by buying beef hanging on the hooks. It's not so much the pieces of meat as it is the butchers. Regardless of what I ask for, they won't give it to me. Every time I get a little more confident, taking the pieces of bone and fat off the scale. They just don't understand why I would want to buy meat without those things. We get frozen chicken legs and thighs from the States and our family eats those most often. We've even seen Tyson chicken pieces. Apparently we get all the pieces that remain after Americas demand for frozen, skinless chicken breast is met.

In the center of our bazaar is a "rotunda." This is where I buy my fresh produce, nuts and raisins, and spices by the grams. You can kind of see in the back of the pictures how the rotunda wraps around. The large basins are full of Elli's favorite . . . chaka. She even calls Ranch dressing chaka! :) The third picture is of the only person who sells the carrot salad our family loves. Her and her husband take turns at their stand and if they are sick, there is no carrot salad to be had. They speak no "Aobistani" and I know no Russian, so the vegetable seller to the side usually translates back and forth for us.

This is the gal who does my eyebrows. They don't wax here, they do "threading." I usually buy a snack (nan and some juice) for my kids and park the stroller to the side while she quickly does my eyebrows. It only costs 50 cents and last so much longer than waxing does. The passer-byers get a kick out of the foreigner getting her brows done. She actually sells nan and does brows on the side; thus the picture of us together holding nan. The picture with my kids doesn't even capture the treatment they get every trip to the bazaar. All our regular stops know all 3 of us by name. They love to give my kids pieces of fruit or bread whenever we stop. Ethan has gotten really good at answering questions that are typically asked.

Remember the marshmallow cream? This is the sweet man that sells it all year long. And these are the massive containers he sells it in!

Other random things available at the bazaar: the baby cribs, the re-directing pee-pee sticks and the pee catchers. They even have the baby cribs for baby dolls, the painted one in the center of this picture. This may be part of Elli's Christmas present to go along with her local baby doll we found in Dushanbe.

And if I didn't find it at another spot in the bazaar, there are rows of these little kiosks where I can buy canned corn, canned peas, kielbasa (pork-less) sausage, and mayonnaise; the essentials in every local salad. In one of these little stalls is where I discovered the now team wide favorite; puffed rice balls!

Well, there you have it. You have completed your bazaar tour. Now if only I could capture the smells and sounds you'd really feel like you've been here. I guess for that . . . you'll just have to come and see for yourself.

What a road trip!

We've actually been back from our trip for a week. Even though they're a little late, I wanted to share these pictures from just our road trips. We usually travel through a 5km long tunnel to avoid having to conquer the mountain pass. The tunnel is currently undergoing some construction, so we traveled the pass (11,700 feet) for the first time. Our camera fails to capture the majesty of the mountains that surround us! But hopefully you get a glimpse, at least. Each trip I feel like we are getting better and better at road trips; the kids being content to sit for long amounts of time on bumpy roads; Mom knowing better how to pack and prepare for long hours on bumpy roads; and Daddy fine tuning his off-roading skills.

On a side note: Ethan's response to the large herd of fat-tailed sheep is just to priceless not too share. Keeping in mind that this is what met us at the end of a 8 hour trek, with 9 people in one vehicle, 2 of which lost their lunch in buckets on the trip. So by the end we were all a little slap-happy. None the less, Ethan's comment: "Look mommy, their buns are jiggling."

Out of pocket!

We arrived back from our trip to the capitol and the midwifery training on Monday night. We had a good and very full time while we were away. The trip was quite a bit rougher as well, since the tunnel we usually travel through is under construction (I have some great pictures that I hope to post soon.) Less than 2 days after we returned we moved into our friends' home while ours undergoes some minor, but majorly dirty repairs. Thought I'd share why life has been a little out of shorts as of late.

This was the only picture I had of the window to our bedroom, I guess I've always taken them from the opposite direction.

The door to Ethan's left is the door that adjoins our room and the kid's room.

We're making a door to our bedroom. Until now we have either climbed through the window into our bedroom or come and gone through our children's room to access both our bedroom and the bathroom. The window, that you see right upon entering our front door, has been removed and we hope to fill the hole tomorrow with a newly made door.

Sorry the before picture is so dark, maybe you can see what the floor was like before.

We're re-doing the floor in our bathroom. Right off of our bedroom is the bathroom. Due to some very poor construction (which we only fully uncovered the extent of the construction upon ripping the floor up), the tile in the floor was breaking up. Not so kind on the feet. The floor has been removed and a new tile floor, with a solid concrete foundation, has been laid. We'll have to step down into the sink room and then up into the bathroom, which will take some getting used to, but we are glad to have a more solid floor beneath us!

I'm so glad that we've been able to stay somewhere else while work has gone on at the house. Both my kids love B, the guy who's been doing the work. So I know they would give him no rest or time to work had we been there. We're hopeful that Wednesday I can go over and do a hard clean so we can sleep in our own beds again soon. I'm also looking forward to going in and out of our room through our own door; not near as much tip-toeing required during nap time and bedtime!

Hoping for a special treat!

2 cups of sour cream
1 1/2 tsp. salt
and let it drain in a cool, dark place for 3 days . . .
that's the "Backyard Homestead's" recipe for homemade cream cheese.

You may not remember, but cream cheese was a special treat from our previous home and one that I have gravely missed. So this week, I thought I'd take the cream cheese task on and see what it would yield us!

So the top shelf of my new pantry became "the cool, dark cream cheese spot."

Last night ended the long 3 day wait! And when we went to taste it what did we find . . . chaka! I can buy chaka by the bucket full if I want from the bazaar. I don't quit know how to explain chaka other than drained and fermenting sour cream. My cream cheese chaka was a much milder version so I thought I'd see if I could hide the "zip" in some yummy Cream Cheese Brownies. I doubled the amount of vanilla and . . . they were AWESOME!!!

Last night "the guys" (which included our right-hand handyman from the capitol and the random internet installation guy who happened to be working at their house at the time) got together for a game of Settlers. Nate, don't you love that?? I figured who better to share our long awaited special treat with than my friend T and her family. So, the men enjoyed their game of Settlers.

and the moms and kids savored every last bite of our chaka cream cheese brownies. They were so good!

When we get back from our trip to the capitol, and I have 3 days to wait and watch my sour cream drain, I think I'll try it again. Next time I'll do 1 part sour cream and 1 part cream and see if it's less zippy. Our sour cream is a lot more sour than American sour cream. I'm still holding out hope for a yummy cheesecake!

And for my thoughts on gaming with friends from the 3rd world . . . we stand no chance! Our friends barter for everything from tomatoes to chaka to services. They've got us beat, for sure!