The demise of the Xmas tree brings snow...

Well, finally, after everyone started worrying...snow arrived in Kabul. No one wants to see a draught again and it was getting late in the season. We stocked up on wood again. Three puppies left, and they like to stack up on top of each other like Yertle the Turtles and peer in the window looking at Ahmad Zia at work who has an intense fear of dogs. The "pee shoe" gang took down the Xmas tree. We are coming up on Eid when muslims go to Mecca for the Haj.

Mahbouba is back and has moved into her own house with her husband. Nothing works all at the same time...and she has spent the summer fall watching me struggle with my household difficulties-vastly amused while living at her sisters well established house...now the tables are turned and I am really unmoved and unsympathetic. Today, she had no water because the pipes are frozen. I think it is funny.

I was unable to get pictures New Years Eve but Norm and I went to Mahbouba's party at her brother-in-laws-Daoud's. I realized shortly into it that I was with the old royal family-grand daughters of Zaher Shah, and everyone a cousin to the next. It was so interesting to hear all of them talk about Afghanistan, past and now. And to realize that each of them are trying to recover and to assist their country in their own way. It was very different than being with expatriates because the expats are here for a very short time and the feeling is of such transiency and no depth to their commitment to this country-with special exceptions of course. Yesterday I was coming back from bazaar and a 30 year old woman came up to me asking for work. She was distraught because she had been working for some "koragee" or foreigners and they left to go back to Germany. She seemed so bewildered and surprised that they could just leave and she could be without work or money to feed her daughter. How we must seem to them, coming here for such a short while and then going.

I love being with the Afghans who have such a long history of this country and who are back to stay (although they might go back and forth to their foster country).

Days and days of proposal writing and writing to finish the survey. I sit in my cozy office by the wood "bukhari" now watching the snow and I have such a beautiful view of the snow covered mountains that ring Kabul. I am from the Northwest where we are lucky to get one day of snow a year. And after the initial wet snow and dealing with "choo chay" who became a mud dog from head to toe wresting with mother dog I decided I was finished with winter but now I am loving the beauty of it and I am glad we can afford wood.