March 25, 2012

I got full night’s sleep and felt much better this morning. After my coffee, I reheated the rice pudding I cooked yesterday and took some down to my neighbor Maryam whom I hadn’t seen in almost two weeks. She was alone with the baby and thus a conversation between us was impossible. I signaled to her that I wanted to help her husband whenever he started to plant his spring garden. It was raining heavily by then and she indicated with a shrug that who knew when planting time would come this year.

I went back to my place to marinate the beef in anticipation of cooking dinner later on in the afternoon. Ruth called to say she had met another American teacher from Florida working at one of the private schools here and wanted to introduce Corrie and me to her on Wednesday at the Aqua Bar. I finally spoke to Yoomie who told me she had wanted to borrow my coffee grinder to use some of the coffee beans Hillary had brought from Dubai. I sent a message to Marydean inviting her dinner at my place sometime in the future.

I prepared all my materials for the three classes I’ll have tomorrow and then took a nap.

I learned today that the average Tajik makes $19.00 a month or 93.00 somoni. And to think that I just spent 69.00 only on the purchase of two kilos of beef. The sun came out in the late afternoon and lots of children could be seen playing in front of my building. All in all, a very quiet Sunday.