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.
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.
Experience Fulbright 