March 21, 2012

It looked like beautiful weather outside with blue skies and lots of sunshine. By midday, the warmth was having an impact on the intransigent snow, and I could see rivulets coming down the hills. I decided to stay put and take care of all my household chores such as doing laundry, dishes and paperwork.

Ruth called to say she had run into Munisa at the Internet café and had been given a copy of her statement of intention for the Fulbright program. While she acknowledged it wasn’t Shakespeare, it was a lot better than what her students could put together. She agreed to email it to me for comments. I found it excruciating to read based on the lack of proper tenses, wrong word choice and lack of punctuation marks. Ruth and agreed to go to the American Councils to contribute to their fundraiser by watching/stirring their sumalak tomorrow.

If today was the official day of Navruz, I saw no activity around my building or heard any music as a sign that any celebration was going on. Do I feel hurt that not a single one of my acquaintances has bothered to extend an invitation to celebrate such an important holiday? You betcha. I think that after Zoir and Aziz realized I wasn’t going to be their ticket to the United States, they dropped me like a hot potato. Neither Pariso nor Nigora, my former and current counterparts, has ever inquired as to my plans during any of the holidays. I owe to pay my neighbor Maryam a visit, but I don’t even know what the proper thing to do is during this holiday.

Someone knocked on the door and it was the utilities guy. I was surprised to see him distributing the electric bill on a holiday. I signaled to him I didn’t have money to pay on the spot and would go directly to the office to do so later. I now owe 108.72 somoni, or $22.65, which is not bad given my constant use of the wall unit to heat up the living room area.

I hope businesses are open tomorrow so I can finally get a haircut, for which I’m overdue. I also need to make more lamination and photocopies for the Saturday workshop in Qurgonteppa. It’s also time to go back to the embassy for more money. I just realized today that when I lost my wallet, I also lost my U. S. stamps and the two chips for the cell phones I had accumulated. Damn, those guys!

I stayed up late trying, unsuccessfully, to finish the book on the biography of cancer. Just about twenty more pages to go.