Happy Groundhog Day

As of yet, we haven't figured out if there is an equivalent custom here for determining when winter will end.  There aren't any groundhogs here, so that can't be it.  Currently we're enjoying an unusually warm couple of weeks with highs during the days of 50s and 60s (Fahrenheit), so maybe we'll get lucky and escape with a mild winter.

We've been MIA for the last few weeks not only because we've been battling some head colds, but also because we just welcomed several new teammates to our city.  We've been incredibly busy getting their new houses set up for them, and introducing them to life in Central Asia.  We've watched with empathy as they've begun to struggle through some of the same things we experienced when we first arrived: working out a schedule around inconsistent power, cooking in something that resembles a reasonable amount of time, and keeping a house running with shoddy appliances and faulty plumbing.  Already one family has passed the standard Central Asian rite of passage - they've had to call the plumber out to their house 5 times because each time he shows up, he fails to fix the problem.

Yet to a certain extent, watching them and helping them has been very encouraging for us.  We're certain they will catch on quickly, but they arrived with absolutely no idea of how to live here and not a single word of Persian.  It's very easy for us to only look at how far we still have to go - how many words we don't understand or how much we can't do - and never notice how far we've come.  After only a couple of months, we can easily perform all the basic life functions and carry on full length conversations...in Persian.  Although we're far from where we want to be, we're much farther along than we realized, and we're still making progress.

We were walking home from school today, passing shops selling carrot juice and camels grazing in trash heaps by the roadside, when it struck us how few of these things even strike us as strange anymore. It's no longer unusual to pass a Corolla with 4 women riding the popped trunk because there are already 7 people in the car, or to have to plan the clothes-washing schedule around the times we'll have city power. We wouldn't go so far as to say we feel "at home"....maybe we're just caught off guard less!