Coming Down

Most of the posts up on our blog are Cindy’s, just like most of the updates are Matt’s. However, just like Cindy sometimes writes part of the updates, sometimes Matt wants to blog some interesting info about life, so here you go.

Where we live is, in a word, remote. It’s not like stuff isn’t available there (see the post on Cindy’s favorite foods available here) or that it’s particularly uncomfortable (see our house, not bad) but it’s just a really long way from anywhere else. Distance wise, it’s not too bad, about 600 kilometers (370 miles) from the capital city. It is just a really long drive in time. The roads are not good, the vehicles you use are usually old and heavily used, and it’s just not a comfortable drive. If the weather is good and everything is perfect, it can take as little as 15 or 16 hours to make the drive. If everything doesn’t go perfectly, it’s longer.

Now of course, there are plenty of things that can go wrong. The road is through mountains, so avalanches, landslides, falling rocks, or just heavy snows can block the road. Wrecks are not uncommon, and one side of the road is a cliff up, the other is a cliff down to a river, so there isn’t a lot of room for forgiveness in wrecks. There is road construction and repair here, but there isn’t any room to make a detour, so they just block the road until they are done. There are two river crossings (no bridges), so if the water is too high at either one of those, you have to stop until it goes down. The vehicles aren’t always the best, we ride in shared SUVs that are pretty much taxis that run up and down to the capital. They are usually old, a bit beat up, and can break down pretty easily, which will slow down a trip. Cindy and I were very fortunate to come up with nearly no incidents in travel, making a good 16 hour trip in the rain over two days. Coming back down in December, it was a bit different.

We left the day after Christmas, knowing we had a flight to catch on the 29^th to Turkey. About 9 in the morning we got a call that the car arranged the week before had backed out, so our supervisor and his wife were looking for a new truck to take us down. They soon found one, we packed up our luggage and headed into town. We had a slight dusting of snow the night before, but not much and we had yet to get a heavy snow over the winter, so we had high hopes for a quick trip. We left around 10, and it started snowing just as we pulled out of town. It proceeded to keep snowing for the entire day as we drove on the cliff side road for seven or eight hours of daylight. We stopped for dinner and decided to keep going; with the snow it might close the road if we didn’t.

Driving at night may be harder on the driver, he’s tired and can’t see well, but it’s easier on the passengers because, well, they are tired and can’t see well. This is a blessing while driving on a cliff, believe me. An Iranian road crew working construction delayed us a bit, but the crane moved out of the road enough for us to pass on by, so we kept on. It was just a slog on, a bit cramped, but doable.

Then midnight came along. By then we had left the river and were crossing over mountain passes on the way north. It was usually snowing at the top of these passes, but raining as you went lower. We were heading down one of the down slopes when the fog really started to get thick. Before long, our driver could no longer see the road. It’s not that he couldn’t see far down the road, or that he couldn’t see the edge of the road, he literally couldn’t see the road out of the window at all. My supervisor and I jumped out of the car with our handy headlamps (yay Black Diamond) and started to run down the middle of the road so he could follow us. I put a headlamp on backwards so he could see me, then held one pointed at the sides of the road so I could see where I was. I could rarely see both sides of the road, but could keep one in sight and judged the middle pretty well. The driver sometimes decided to keep to one side, something I had to motion him to stop because in places there was a hole in the road. Did I mention it was raining? Yep, freezing rain, and my rain jacket is in my house. Why would I possibly need a rain jacket? I did have a synthetic insulated jacket on (props to Mountain Hardwear here) and so kept a bit warm and dry, but before long my jeans were soaked and my hands went pretty numb before I managed to pull out some gloves. All that said, running downhill will keep you pretty warm. I have friends that do this sort of thing (also known as “jogging”) for fun. Rob Pengelly, you are a friend and a gentlemen, but patently insane, sorry.

After an hour of this, a couple of miles down (and by a couple, I mean it felt like 10 but was probably only 2) the fog lifted and we pulled into a little restaurant to get some food and rest. I had a bit of tea, stood next to a stove to dry off a bit, and caught my breath. Both of us were soaked from the waist down, but not too bad. Then we got back in the car.

Now the battery had been giving the driver some problems, so to be safe he left the radio off for the rest of the trip. We were fine with this, 14 hours of Tajik and Russian music is plenty for most people. He also decided to leave the heater off for the remainder of the trip. I soon noticed that in wet jeans and freezing weather the inside of a car can get a bit chilly. Luckily my jacket had kept most of me warm, and my lovely wife lent me a down jacket to cover my legs up a bit for warmth, but it wasn’t a fun remainder of the journey. We finally pulled in to a snowy capital city around 9 in the morning, found a taxi, got to the guest house, changed clothes real quick, and fell into bed until around 2 in the afternoon. 23 hours down on what was really a pretty average trip. I wonder why our supervisor and his wife decided to fly up this time? Hm, go figure. 

Bottom of the hill, trying to warm up a bit by a little stove before the drive out. 

Good Eats

We may be stuck in the capital for a bit, so wanted to get on board taking advantage of the free (and faster!) internet where we're staying. To start off a possible string of posts, welcome to our kitchen at our home in full swing. Some things that we would keep in our house as staple items in the States are either just not the same or not available here.

We're thankful to our dear friend Sky Scott for this tortilla recipe that we've used at least 4 or 5 times in the month and a half that we've been in this house. We have made numerous tortillas and tortilla chips. One of our teammates says they are quite "must-y," which after thinking she meant stale, really means that they must be eaten. We couldn't agree more (hence several of the tortilla batches being turned into chips).

Matt is the expert tortilla roller. His mom trained him well!

This is the amount of "must-y" chips that one recipe makes. Delicious!

And several of you have commented on the homemade bread that was referred to earlier. Confession: I hadn't actually made bread yet. But there have been 3 loaves since then, and all of them were quite successful! Hip Hip Hooray! And with it just being Christmas cookie season, we learned another trick for one of the slices from this loaf: put it in with your cookies to keep them soft. Somehow they absorb the moisture out of the bread, which subsequently becomes as hard as a rock. But hey, it makes the sweet things taste so yummy!

It may have a pretty dark top, but it still tasted mighty fine!

Videos!!

So now that we are in the land of good internet for a few days, we've got a couple videos to share with you.The first is the tour of our house. The second is our ridiculously scary-sounding Christmas tree lights. You may only want to leave it on for 3 seconds so you don't walk away with a headache. I'm pretty sure that even tone deaf people would cringe at the sound of this thing. Anywho...enjoy!

Our First Packages Arrived!!!! :)

Thanks for the ideas for future posts...we're in the process of working on making some of those happen. But beware: the grounding of beef looks pretty disgusting if you ask me.

At the risk of seeming materialistic, we want to share with you some of the treasures that have recently come our way. It's really hard to express in an e-mail, FB post, or even a phone call how excited we are to receive boxes of love from people in the States. So, we'll do everything we can, including possibly embarrassing them on the internet, to let people know how much we appreciate the time, effort, love, and finances that they put into shipping us a box of goodies. Until a hug, squeeze, and smile can happen face-to-face, this will hopefully at least partially do the job.

As soon as we got to country, we learned that the water filter that a group of wonderful ladies donated to us arrived at my parents' house. So inside, we also requested a few other necessities that we could not find here at the time: index cards, (colorful!) permanent markers, contact solution, and rubberbands (which have since been found, but the more the merrier and we know that we'll use them all). Thanks to my parents for sending all of this our way!!! :)

What started as this...

...contained these (hooray for clean contacts and language learning!) and...

FILTERED WATER in large portions!!! We were using our hiking filter, a bucket, and a scoop. This is much more convenient!

 THANK YOU TO CINDY'S PARENTS!!!

Mailed exactly one week later, but arriving at our place on the same trip from the capital due to the generosity of some friends there, was a package from Matt's brother in Texas. Boy, does he know Matt's tastes well! He told us he was mailing a Christmas gift, which will be the one we will be able to open on Christmas day (some others from other loving family members should be meeting us when we go in to the capital just after Christmas day). But he decided to fill the rest of the space with light food items. So now we can have flavored water, spice up our food with chiles (Matt was SUPER pumped about this), and enjoy some more salad dressings (which may be used for things other than salads since the salad selection is minimal to none...hooray for chicken flavorings!).

What started as this...

...dumped out these yummies...

...and gives us something to look forward to on Sunday.

THANK YOU MICHAEL!!!

How to Keep up a Blog...or not

My biggest hope with starting a blog is that people (like you!) would get a glimpse into life here. But my biggest fear is that I wouldn't keep up with it. Life here through my eyes just seems so hum-drum sometimes. We have a semi-routine, which includes a bit of language class, making flashcards, flipping through flashcards, writing out some sentences, making 3 meals, and catching up on e-mails. Nothing about this seems very noteworthy, so it's tempting to not share any of it.

I also have no desire to turn this into an "I'm-going-to-pour-my-heart-out-for-everyone-to-see" blog. No thank you. We'll see if that ever changes.

I'm trying to think of things that you would be interested in knowing/seeing. Hopefully they would be things that can be handled with words since pictures take crazy-long to upload (I think that the 5 pictures from last time took about 45 minutes). That, and I'm really not good about taking my camera out and about.

So...any topic suggestions??? Comment or e-mail and I'll see what can be put together for you!

My Favorite Things

First off, a little shout out to the Sound of Music. Thank you for influencing my life.

Now on to sharing a bit of life here that, honestly, surprised me quite a bit. To start off with, I don't like cold. I am also more of a beach girl than a mountain girl. So, moving here was not for the scenery. It was for the people, who I just LOVE!!! (Well, those who I have been able to interact with via English, limited national language, and charades...usually a combination.)

That said, there have been several surprise blessings with living here. Several of my favorite things are found not only in country, but in our town! Enjoy today's listing:

• OLIVES!!! They have canned black and green olives here, so both Matt and I are happy. We tried the whole olive route, and I discovered that Spanish black olives taste different than ripe black olives (ripe are much better...nothing against Spanish in the big scheme of things...just in olives). And they have pitted ones, so now we don't have to try to cut the wonderful tastiness away from the seed.
  
• CHEESE!!! There's mozzarella, gouda, tilseter (no idea, but it tastes good), and something in a red package that we bought last week...worked well as a cheddar substitute. Needless to say, pizza and mexican have both been enjoyed multiple times in the few weeks we've lived in this house.
  
• PURPLE!!! Um, yes, my favorite color is found on many women around town. I was a little nervous about my 2 winter coats standing out because they are purple (as opposed to a more neutral color). But much to my surprise, purple is easily spotted on fashionable young ladies multiple times each day. That said, I'm on the lookout for a long wool PURPLE coat...maybe with faux fur around the neck and cuffs...wait, don't let Matt know. ;)
  
• DOVE SHAMPOO!!! This little item came into my life during my senior year of college with the phrase on the bottle "weightless moisturizers." Marvelous! I brought one bottle just to give me some room to be able to look for other options once we were here, but low and behold, the exact thing I want is available in almost any local little shop that sells shampoo. Happy hair, and happy Cindy!

So yes, these are a few of my favorite things. Hope you enjoy the little things in life where you are and also rejoice in the fact that every good and perfect gift comes from above. Guess someone knew what He was doing sending us here, and He has taken care of some little things that make it so much easier to live here than I anticipated. Happiness :)

Welcome to our Warm House!

We took a few pictures of our house to give you an idea of what life is like for us. Though it may not look like much from the outside, the inside is GORGEOUS! Though these pictures are not bad, they don't do justice to the feel of the place. This is the fourth house we saw, and immediately it simply felt like home. Below are the main rooms where we spend our time.

Potentially when we get to better (and free!) internet on our next trip out, we will have a video to upload. We'll see. Then you could get a better feel for things. In the meantime, thanks for rejoicing with us in what has been provided.

You can also use this as a sort of virtual way to lift up the places in our home asking for them to be used as a blessing to the people around us.

Rock and mud walls...check! Tin roof...check! Garden areas around 2 of the sides...check! 4 sheep and 1 cow that like to wander through the yard...check!

What is a dalids? This is one! It is the room that is first entered in a house that is raised. Right now, it is probably the coldest room in the house since it is just by door (which is to the right by Matt's shoes). But in summer, the coolness of this room will make it a great place to sit and visit with friends. To the left is the doorway to the foyer/hallway.

Oddly enough, this is my favorite room based on appearance. I couldn't quite get a good picture, but it pretty much serves as the foyer/hallway in the house. Off of it are 4 rooms: kitchen, guest bedroom, western-style living room (still working on furnishings, as this was the master bedroom), and our bedroom.

Welcome to the kitchen! This doorway is off of the left wall from the foyer (you can't see it due to the trees that are being kept inside during winter). It's cozy but quite functional. If I had a picture of Matt you would know what our dishwasher looks like. :) What you can't see is the wood-burning heater to the right of the table and the gigantic blue container that holds 100+ pounds of flour...yes, you read that right. Bread anyone???

 

This is the room that heats the best...current outside temp. is 38.5 F, while this room is 67.3 F...nice! Between the heaters (which we have to turn off around supper time in order to be cool enough to sleep at night) and the down comforter on the bed, it seems as though we are set for winter.