courtyard kids

We have been in our new digs for about a week now, and we've had internet since Wednesday, so I suppose its about time that you hear from us. We haven't got around to taking any pictures of our part of the house, or even any pictures of us with the family we are staying with, buy we will get to it. For now all we've got is a few pictures of Ella with some of her new friends.

First an explanation: Houses here are situated around a courtyard. Some courtyards are small and only have enough house for one family, while other courtyards are large and have several separate family units. This may be the biggest I've ever seen. Including us, there are 6 families off of our courtyard, 9 kids under age 5, and from what I can gather, about 21 people.

So Ella has been having lots of fun with her new friends. Since our courtyard is such a fun place to be, the neighborhood kids also come over, and I still haven't figured out which kids live in our courtyard, and which ones come from the neighborhood. But when these kids get together, it can become chaos as they run around like a pack of wild animals.

The Tajiks/Uzbeks have a proverb that goes something like this: A house without children is like a grave (mozor) and a house with many children is like a market (bozor). Sometimes this place is more like a zoo. We managed to get some photos of Ella with some of her friends in the calmer moments.


We put up the swing for any of the smaller kids to use, but they are all afraid of it. The bigger ones like to play with it by pushing Ella in the swing though.