THE AIR UP HERE

Every day I walk outside and am amazed and enthralled by the view no matter which direction I cast my gaze. For those of you who have connected on WhatsApp you have probably seen some of the spectacular pictures (find our WhatsApp numbers in the right-hand column). We have had two wonderful dumps of fresh snow and Jonny has enjoyed throwing it, making a snowman and lying in it to make some sort of snow angel. The ice is slippery but one learns to be careful. You also should adjust your expectation of how long things take. It truly takes 30 minutes for our family to get ready to leave the house together. We have had water off a couple times with frozen pipes and a couple of electricity outages, but in general the utilities here are pretty reliable.

MARIE’S CORNER

FROM BIG SMOKE TO MOUNTAIN AIR

We are in our final month in Dushanbe. The next update will come to you from the crisp clean air of the Pamir Mountains – God willing. We have had great culture coaching in our orientation, we have made a start on language learning, we have settled into a new and different place, we have a level of familiarity and comfort in the capital city which will help us as we will come through here probably 3-4 times a year.. We are now starting to collect all we need to transition one more time. Pray for sanity as we make our list and check it twice. We have a long cold winter to last through in the mountains before we will be back. But we are happy to go. We are happy to re-establish friendships (Marie) and make new ones (Jono and boys).

JONNY PEACE’S PIECE