How many people can say..
Yesterday afternoon we went to Duchanbe, Tajikistan. I have not seen many cities as beautiful. It's no Switzerland, but one day people are going to discover this place and it will become a major vacation spot. There are rivers throughout the city that run a blue gray color. It is tropical green and the city has statues and fountains all over the place. The buildings are all old and have a classic romantic feel.... Mariam will laugh at that because most of them are from the days of the soviet occupation.
I took this picture out the window on our flight in.
Diana told me that Duchanbe is the sister city of Boulder CO. It did look a lot like it, but with more deciduous trees.
We went to the opening of a new US Embassy building and got to greet the President of Tajikistan who was taller than I expected. He's been the president there for over 10 years now. That didn't actually seem so exciting because right before we left our office in the Kabul Embassy my boss was in a meeting with Secretary Rice. Seeing her was really cool.
I like this job.
posted by jo portnoy @ 12:56 AM
4 Comments:
Wow! By the way, Val Snesko said Gen. Eik remembers you!
The university of Maryland XA is in taj right now. You could have run into them. Weird. Cool job Jo.
I was just going to write that! But actually, they aren't leaving for a couple of weeks. They went to Cancun for two weeks, and now I think they are on an Alaskan cruise for one week. Gonna be a big change to go straight from a three week vacation to a three week missions assignment.
They are going to love it. Do any of them speak the language? I didn't talk to people outside the Embassy so I don't know how much English is spoken. The people are VERY nice, the country is beautiful and it is inexpensive. It has a very central america feel.
They play a part in our drug problem because lots of the drugs from Afghanistan go through Tajikistan to get to Europe or the US or where ever they go.
It's a place our Embassy workers all vacation to, they will love it.
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