Somehow, they make their way to Central Asia.  Brightly colored windsuits from the 80’s, crushed velvet skirts from the nineties, chunky heals from five or six years ago – even puffy, rarely worn snowsuits from all eras – somehow they all found their way to the “second hand” bizarre in my city.  Don’t ask me how they get here because I have no answer.  All I know is that I bought a black, crushed velvet skirt from Express at the bizarre today for $3, and a Liz Claiborne crushed velvet shirt for $1.25 – clothes that are beautiful by the aesthetic standards of nationals here, but would earn me some pitying looks from my fashionista friends in the states.

DB bought and planted 3 rose bushes today, which will hopefully produce lovely red roses in our yard, and we have patio furniture for our rooftop patio.  We are preparing for spring, while wearing two pairs of long johns and doubling up on wool socks.  Supposedly, spring will be here soon and we are very much looking forward to it.  We heard a rumor that we will have electricity almost all the time in the warm weather months, which will be very convenient – it is still taking us an average of 2 days to wash a load of clothes and 3 days to dry.  You can imagine that our laundry situation is dismal at the moment.

After 5 days of language we are doing remarkable well.  We have improved our vocabulary greatly, and are learning how to form sentences.  One of the shop owners today was clearly making fun of us about something – our lack of understanding, maybe how much we were paying for items that he would have sold us for less – I don’t know, but I was humiliated for some reason.  I guess that goes with the territory of living in a foreign country where you understand about 2% of what is said and guess at the rest.  Also, I probably sound like a 2 year old when I speak.  The driver told me today that when someone quotes me a price for something, I need to respond with half as much, and argue a little bit.  I just learned all of my numbers yesterday, so hopefully I will get better at “bargaining” in the future.