This is going to be shorter post just because I am completely exhausted. I apologize in advance for any typos.

Yesterday was the big kick off event for my project. The Ministry of Public Education held a press conference and invited important members of the ministry and the Director of Cultural Affairs for the US Embassy. I was interviewed but the local TV station and had to give a presentation for all the officials. It was well received and everyone there seemed to enjoy the relaxation breathing exercise I ended with. The one bad thing was that the person assigned to be my translator apparently did not do a good job. The head of the project was very upset afterward with how he translated (she also speaks English, Russian, and Uzbek). We will have to get this sorted out before next week when we begin the trainings with the local school psychologists.

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This press conference was really making me nervous so I’m happy to have that behind me. Afterwards, my team took me our for a traditional Uzbek lunch. As with many other buildings here in Uzbekistan, the restaurant was beautiful. The food was also tasty. I have some kind of lamb dumpling served with sour cream, a chicken kebob, and of course, traditional Uzbek bread. They have bread with every meal and it is delicious. It’s also considered sacred and cannot be wasted. Lucky for us that we love bread and have no problem eating it all.

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The past few days have absolutely flown by. There’s been a ton to do to get ourselves set up here in Tashkent. I got my son enrolled in school. His first day is tomorrow and I’m hoping he adjusts well. It seems like a very welcoming place, at least as far as the adults are concerned. The bad thing about the school is that it is a bit out of the way. There’s no metro stop near it so I’ve had to higher a private driver to take him to and from school. That sounds so snooty, I know, but here in Tashkent a driver is shockingly inexpensive. It cost me $6 to have the driver take us to and from school yesterday for the tour and placement testing. To have him drive everyday to and from school costs just $10/day. Oh and while Dillon was doing taking his placement test, the lovely British principal arranged for tea to be brought to me while I sat in the office doing some work. I just love the British. This is the proper way to serve tea.

I also got to visit the US Embassy here in Tashkent and get acquainted with some of the staff there. My main point of contact at the embassy prior to my arrival has been one of the political affairs officer. Her name is Saida and it was great to meet her in person. She gave us a tour and introduced us to a bunch of important folks there, including the Chief of Mission. There’s currently no US Ambassador to Uzbekistan so the Chief of Mission is in guy in charge. Everyone we met was incredible friendly and helpful. There aren’t a lot of Americans here in Uzbekistan so I think they are always excited when someone new arrives. I’ve already been asked if I can help out with some of the US Embassy outreach programs, like American Corner and Education USA. I’ll post more about those programs later. One other observation about the US Embassy, it’s a fortress. I’ve never had occasion to visit an Embassy before so this was an interesting experience for me.

The next huge thing on our to-do list was to find an apartment to rent. We went out with one of my team members from the Ministry of Public Education (MPE) who has been tasked with finding us an apartment. She is fantastic and speaks great English. (BTW, many people here speak English and having only limited Russian skills hasn’t been a problem.) Zulfiya showed us four apartments the first day. One looked like it was in a sketchy neighborhood and the building felt like a WWII bomb shelter. The apartment inside was very nice but we passed on that one right away. The third apartment we looked at was very nice. My son’s word for it was “fancy”. It had nice oriental rugs everywhere and crystal chandeliers. It was on the expensive side at $1000/month but had 3 bedrooms, one more than we needed, which we could use for yoga/exercising. The landlady seemed like the stereotypical stern Russian woman. She never smiled and seemed generally unhappy with life. Still, it was a nice apartment in a good neighborhood next to the French Embassy. We agreed to take the apartment only to find out the next day that she wanted more money for rent. Zulfiya was pissed and very offended. She said this is very un-Uzbek. They had agreed on terms, at least verbally, so to try to ask for more money was extremely rude. Zulfiya said that I should not even consider renting from this woman now and we started the search over.

So, on Tuesday afternoon we headed out to see two more places. Luckily, we saw one that I liked even more. It is a bright and sunny two bedroom for $900 and it overlooks a park. If all goes well we will sign the paperwork and move in tomorrow.

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The last big item on our “getting settled” to-do list is to get Uzbek cell phones. We brought our current phones and are using them on Wi-Fi but that’s not a good long term strategy since free Wi-Fi here is NOT widespread. My friend Jordan, who has been here since August as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, told me to bring our old iPhones if we had them and just get them unlocked. This allows us to keep our current American phones for using iMessage and Facetime with friends back home (when we are on Wi-Fi) and use the old ones as local cell phones. All I need to do, assuming I was successful in getting AT&T to globally unlock our old phones before I left MN, is get a local sim card, pop it in, and buy some minutes/data from a local provider. This is on my list for today. I’ll try to post again tomorrow with another update after move-in day.

So we had a little stress at the beginning of the trip to Tashkent. We arrived at the London airport about 4 hours early to collect our luggage from the Excess Baggage Company where we left it upon our arrival in London. (This was expensive but well worth NOT having to lug 4 suitcases through the London Underground.) As soon as we stepped into the departures area to check with for our flight, I realized that I had left our passports and a bunch of cash in the safe in our hotel room. I was very lucky that my husband had decided to come with us to London and was staying a few more days in the hotel so it wasn’t a catastrophe. He immediately hopped back on the Tube to take the hour ride back to central London to retrieve the money and our passports from the room. My son and I spent an anxious 2 1/2 hours hanging out in the terminal by the ticket counter waiting for him to return. in the end we had just enough time to check-in, get through security, and even grab a quick snack before boarding our 6pm flight to Tashkent. Thank God we were so early and that my husband was with.

The boarding process for the flight went smoothly as the flight was only about half full. That meant my son and I had a window seat and an aisle seat with no one in between us. This was a much appreciated bonus after the stress of earlier in the day. The flight was smooth and we even got to watch a movie in English, Jumanji. There was no in-seat entertainment. Instead the plane had the drop down screens about every 4 rows. My son, who is an experienced traveler already, commented about the dated look of the plane. It really was like flying 20 years ago. But everything was in good repair and they gave us a ton of food. We were even able to get a few hours of sleep on the 7 hour long flight.

We arrived in Tashkent at 5:50am local time. Since it was so early the airport terminal was empty except for our flight. We only had to wait a few minutes at passport control to get our visas checked and our passports stamped. We made over to baggage claim before the bags had even started coming out. We had been there for only a minute or two before a man from the US Embassy come up to greet us. He introduced himself and gave us an emergency contact info card from the embassy in case we ever need it. Once our luggage came out he helped us get all our bags out of the airport and to a waiting minivan. In total we must have spent only 20 or less in the Tashkent airport. He drove us to our hotel and came inside to make sure we got checked in okay. I have never had such an easy arrival in any foreign country before. This could not have been any easier.

Out first impressions of Tashkent are that it is very clean and quite pretty. We’ve stayed pretty close to the hotel so there is much more to see but what we have seen is beautiful. The building are mainly white tile or marble with decorative accents. Today we ventured into a grocery store to buy bottled water and notice that the walkway into the store was fancy marble with decorative tiles every few steps. The floor inside the market was similar.

We also spent a few hours at the Amir Timur Museum. This place was stunning. The exhibits were interesting historical items from mainly the 1400’s. We saw old weapons, pottery, tapestries and a variety of other items. But the real beauty was in the building itself. Its hard to describe in words so I’m just gonna leave a few photos here, which really don’t do it justice.

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We are spending the rest of the day hanging out at the hotel. We are going to hit the fitness center and then relax in the pool for a bit. Tomorrow we go apartment hunting!

We had a smooth first leg of our journey to Uzbekistan. Our flight to London was uneventful and we even landed a half hour early. Still, an overnight flight is always a challenge for me. We spent our first day in central London exploring and just trying to stay awake until a proper bedtime here. My hope is to let my body adjust to London time (+6 hours from Minneapolis) over the 4 days we have here in the hope that the jet lag won’t be as bad when we arrive in Tashkent. (It’s +11 hours from MSP.)

One day 1 in London we mostly just did some sight seeing to stay awake. We took the bus to Harrod’s and wandered around the store for a hour or so before heading into Hyde park. It was sunny and dry in the afternoon so walking through the park was lovely. it was strange to see green grass again. Dillon wanted to walk past the Princess Diana Memorial playground (aka the pirate ship park) since it was his favorite park when we were staying in London 12 years ago. Its one of the few things he remembers from our time in London.

After the park we grabbed a bite to eat at Bella Italia near the Bayswater tube stop and then headed back to our hotel for a bit of rest. We managed to stay awake long enough for a proper British fish & chips dinner.

We spent our second day touring the Imperial War Museum which has an amazing collection of items from World War I and WWII. This was a very interesting, if not depressing, museum. We required a little pick me up after a day spent learning about the history of war, so we stopped into a little pub called The Tankerd near the museum. This was some of the best pub food I’ve ever had. One of my favorite British dishes is the Steak and Ale pie and this one did not disappoint. Although I could do without the mushy peas.

Our last day was spent touring the Harry Potter Studios. This was a spendy tour but well worth the money if you are a HP fan. We got to tour many of the actual sets used in the filming of the movies and learn all kinds of behind the scenes tidbits. The enormous model they built of Hogwarts castle was the most impressive thing we saw. The model is massive and all constructed by hand. It took 90 artists 7 months to create and was used for all the exterior shots of the castle. Its hard to tell the scale of it from the photo but it took up an entire 2 story studio.

In between all of these fun tourist stops, I’ve been communicating with the US Embassy in Tashkent about my arrival and the Ministry of Education about my schedule for next week. It looks like I will need to hit the ground running as I already have two full days of meetings set up with ministry officials and and a press conference. (Yikes!) I need to give a formal presentation of my project to a team of Ministry officials and about 15 reporters. So, I’ve spent time in the mornings and evenings this week putting the slides together for this. It was actually a great exercise for me to do before arriving since it required me to read over a bunch of research I had been meaning to get to. I feel more prepared now having this done.

It has been a nice few days in London and certainly better than an 11 hour layover in the airport. I’m glad that we split the trip up. By the time this blog posts we will be on our way to Tashkent.

This past week has just blown by. I was lucky to be able to meet up with several friends for long lunches or breakfasts. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to connect with everyone I wanted to see.

We are all packed. The boarding passes are printed out and sitting with our passports on top of a suitcase. Despite my natural desire to travel light, there was no way we were getting everything we (mostly “I”) wanted to bring into just one suitcase a piece. Everything is packed and we we have two large suitcases plus one small carry-on sized roller bag and one backpack each. Dragging all that through the airports is NOT going to be fun.

I got all signed up for the medical insurance through Fulbright and finally completed an online visa application for the Fulbright conference in India for myself. I still need to apply for visa for my family.

I emailed off a bunch of materials to the person at the Uzbek Ministry of Education who will be doing the translation for me and confirmed that someone from the Ministry will be meeting us at the airport in Tashkent and taking us out apartment hunting.

I also received a schedule of meetings with various people within the Ministry of Education with whom I will be working. I’m definitely going to have a full first week in Tashkent, and that’s not even considering the jet lag.

Thanks for reading along this far. Things should get a lot more interesting from here. My next post will be from Uzbekistan.

Stay tuned.

After successfully packing both of my suitcases I realized that one of them was an inch over the 62 linear inches size allowed without paying the oversize package fee. So…I repacked in a little bit smaller suitcase, leaving out a few of the items I had purchased to bring as gifts for various people I will be working with.

I had picked up some local MN products, like maple syrup and wild rice. I also asked the woman in charge of the team that’s helping me find an apartment and get my visas if there were any specific items that I could bring for each of them as a thank you. It turns out that two of them have studied in the US before, hence their excellent English. One asked for a bottle of hot sauce and the other wanted a bag of Chile Lime Doritos.

So, I’ve learned that they don’t really have spicy food there. I was warned by my friend, Jordan, who is a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant living in Tashkent, that the food there is bland and that I should bring my own spice blends if I want them. Being from Minnesota, I told Jordan that I am just fine with bland food. The joke in my house is that Minnesotans think ketchup is spicy.

So with only one week left before we leave, I’m feeling pretty good about where I’m at with preparations. I even forced my son to pack one of his two bags yesterday. I’ve got all the important documents printed out and ready to be put in my carry on bag. I went into the college and got VPN installed on my laptop and had them update any software that needed it.

In fact, I’m feeling restless and ready to leave now. With this government shutdown and talk of the TSA workers not being able to work (because they aren’t getting paid), the air traffic controllers suing over being forced to work without pay, and the pilot’s union saying they have safety concerns about continuing to fly given the shutdown (FAA inspectors are part of the shutdown) I’m not feeling great about our upcoming air travel. Will it be better or worse in a week?

ACK! Only two weeks to go and I do NOT feel ready. Seriously, I’m in a constant state of very low panic over all this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very excited but I also feel like there is no way I am going to actually be ready.

I did start packing. I’m relatively sure that I could fit everything I need into one large suitcase, but it is likely to be over the weight limit. That means paying a luggage fee AND having one very full suitcase. Knowing that I will want to buy some items to bring home from my travels, I’m leaning toward packing in two less full suitcases. I realize that this will make the trek in and out of the airports more difficult. Normally I wouldn’t worry about that but since we’ve opted to break up our connections by spending a few days in London that means lugging the suitcases out of the London airport and onto the train both to the hotel and back to the airport. Ugh. I guess we will manage it though.

I was also just informed that there is paperwork I must complete to obtain my “conference” visa to attend the mid-year Fulbright conference in India. I think someone forgot to tell me about this because when I asked, I was told that the US Embassy in Uzbekistan was given all the information I need and I should contact them ASAP. Did I already say “Ugh”? I should have thought to ask about this sooner. So I sent off an email to my contact at the Embassy and expect to hear back once she is in the office on Monday. I’m sure it will all work out but Fulbright can’t purchase my plane tickets to India until I have the visa.

Oh, and I received the first installment of my grant money. That was nice to see. For grants that start in January, scholars have the option to get the first payment in December (the payment is typically made one month prior to your grant start date) or for tax reasons, in Jan. My accountant said that it would be better to wait to get the first payment until 2019 so I did, but I had to buy my plane tickets and pay for other items like our visas in December. I was happy to see my payment come through right at the beginning of Jan.

Speaking of money, I spend over an hour at my bank yesterday taking care of all the financial arrangements. For example, I needed to wire money to pay the tuition at the school my son will be attending. I also made sure my ATM card would work while overseas and got some cash for travelling.

The big task for this coming week is to print out any remaining documents I need and finish packing everything except my carry-on bags. With all my good clothes packed, I’m afraid that I am going to spending these last two week wearing my husband’s sweatpants and my old/ugly t-shirts. If you see me around town, you’ll know why I’m dressed like a hobo.