suprise visitors

Last night Yodgor invited me to dinner at the Chinese restaurant in the Hotel Tajikistan, which is right across the street from Rudaki Park. I walked into the weirdly spacious but low-ceilinged hotel lobby and who should be there but Dr. Najmiddin and Romin, the regional manager and deputy regional manager of AKF in Afghan Badakhshan. I'd met them both last year at the start-up workshop in Kabul. Lovely guys, and Romin has one of the greatest voices I've ever heard in person. Matter of fact, another top-ten voice, Shodmon, works for us here in Tajikistan. But Romin's voice is top-two for me. Deep but with unexpectedly high overtones and incredibly musical. The word mellifluous comes to mind. The food was whatever but it was great to sit around with those guys and Yodgor (and a few others) and hear about what's going on, what the potential is for Badakhshan and the border areas.

This morning I panicked briefly when I woke up to an email that my ticket change had gone from $300 to $1400, but MJ approved the change anyway, so panic subsided. I've spent the day catching up on normal work and going over updates to the MIAD proposal with the health and rural development teams. Need to call my colleague at FMFB to get his updates and education will come in tomorrow, by early afternoon if I'm lucky. Tonight and tomorrow will be spent integrating everything, creating the summary budget, and combining all the backup information for the summary budget (each department or agency has its own way of breaking things down). I should be able to get that out tomorrow and then take Sunday mostly off. Home on Monday!