And the Winner is...

Bridget, again, with her guess of Tajikistan!  All of you who did not guess Tajikistan can now breathe a sigh of relief because you won't have to be shelling out for plane tickets to come and visit us in Tajikistan.  If you'd like to come, of course, you're welcome.

When we've told friends here at post about our assignment, everyone has been rather underwhelmed.  Usually their response went something like this: [scratch head]...[silence] "Tajikistan?  Really?  Isn't that kind of... well... remote?"

"Yes, yes!" we would respond, "it is remote!  And covered in mountains!  Isn't that awesome?!?"

Because the truth is, I kind of like remote places.  I don't know exactly why, probably part of it is just pure hubris [yes, we're with the Foreign Service.  Where are we posted?  Tajikistan.  Never heard of it?  I didn't think so].  Other than the torturous plane journey to get there (minimum of three legs on three different airlines with flights landing at 3:45 AM only two times a week), it's fun to be out in the strange  crazy places of the world.  Everyone's been to Europe, and after a few cities it honestly starts looking similar, but not everyone's been to Tajikistan.  But maybe there's a reason?

And there's no traffic.  After Cairo and Baku, no traffic will be absolutely wonderful.

Right now we're planning on leaving at the end of this year or the beginning of the next after which we will be in Virginia for nine months while Brandon learns Tajik (yet another never-to-be-used boutique language) and I take the children to the library, the park, the library, and the zoo.  And Target, which deserves its own sentence because it's so awesome.

We'll finally get to Dushanbe at the end of 2014 and settle down to the next crazy place we get to call home for at least two years.  If everything goes according to plan.

I will now leave you with some exciting facts about Tajikistan to make you jealous.

Ninety percent of the country is mountainous.

Over fifty percent of the country has an elevation over ten thousand feet.

It borders Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and China.

It is the smallest, and poorest, country in Central Asia.

We get mail deliveries once a month.

The population is 98% muslim.

It has the tallest mountain, Qullai Ismoili Somoni (formerly Communism Peak), in the former USSR.