Month: December 2015

Enjoying Winter & С Новым Годом!

by pennypostcard • December 31, 2015 • 6 Comments

A few weekends ago, my husband and I took a two day trip up to Charvak Reservoir, a man-made lake about 60 miles northeast of Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent.

The reservoir is located in the western part of the Tien Shan mountains, and it definitely feels like Central Asia. Because of the road conditions, it can take a good 90 minutes to get there. Nearby Chimgan is also popular in the winter for skiing and sledding, and features lots of bare mountains, daunting as they are treeless. We stayed in a hotel some people call “the pyramids”, set literally right on the water. I’m sure it’s very crowded in the summer, but in the winter we had it all to ourselves.

Foreign Service, Travel, Uzbekistan

My Blue Passport Hits the Road, Part II

by pennypostcard • December 23, 2015 • 5 Comments

This post is the second of two in my travelogue about my November trip to Prague, Sarajevo and Istanbul. If you would like to read the first post, you can find it here.

Sunday, November 8 was the first night that I was in Prague, and I slept deeply in my white, fluffy hotel bed underneath the vaulted wood ceiling. On Friday night, I’d been awake for most of the night, coughing and congested, and on Saturday night I’d never gone to bed at all, instead attending the Marine Corps Ball and then catching a 02:00 motor pool ride on Sunday morning to the international departures terminal in Tashkent. It was going to be my first trip outside of Uzbekistan since my arrival six months earlier, and I was thrilled.

Foreign Service, Travel, Uzbekistan

My Blue Passport Hits the Road, Part I

by pennypostcard • December 9, 2015 • 4 Comments

On November 7, my husband and I attended the United States Marine Corps Ball in honor of the corps’ 240th birthday. The celebration was held here in Tashkent, and although I had a brutal cold, was lost and late, and forgot to have my dress hemmed, we rolled with it and had a good time.

Foreign Service, Uzbekistan

Secretary of State Visit

by pennypostcard • December 2, 2015 • 4 Comments

On November 1, Secretary of State John F. Kerry visited Uzbekistan as part of a whirlwind five country tour through Central Asia.

A Secretary’s visit to an embassy or consulate is a pretty big deal. It’s like your boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss has come calling. And the amount of preparation that goes into an “S visit” would probably surprise even a seasoned officer that hadn’t yet experienced one.

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