Presidents/Botanical Gardens/Computers, etc.

Hello Everyone
and
Happy Birthday Dad!
Life is getting on - I'm busy with work #2 - editing an entire book on Dialogue between the government and religious opposition. Work at the Bureau on Human Rights is also continuing, albeit slowly, and there will be little grief on my part when I leave this job. It's especially fun when the computers don't have internet for an hour or so, and everyone takes this as a reason to leave work for the day. This happened last Thursday.
This past weekend, I was a tad lazy, but I did learn to make two unusual salads - as my host sister is an expert of crazy Tajik salads, and I learned to make a cabbage dish. On Saturday, we went to the botanical garden of Dushanbe, where there was an exhibition of everything "Tajik Village" from all the regions of the country. I took many many photos, and I hope to upload them tomorrow. The highlight though was when the President arrived and I got a spot pretty close to the VIP seating area, where I could hear him give his speech. President Imomali Rahmon is far more pleasant to look at in person than on TV, where they do a closeup shot and you can see his HUGE eyebrows. It's recently been the 15th anniversary of peace, independence and constitution, and all kinds of "love tajikistan" days. On Friday, the President was speaking to the Congress which had signed the peace (I believe), and I was amazed to realize that from the podium where Rahmon was speaking, the wall facing him was draped in a huge portrait of himself. In essence, the man was speaking to himself! Later, when he took his seat, the President kept his head down, and eyes 95% closed. I joked with everyone that the President was sleeping through the ceremony, but my host mother (who loves the President very much) took offense at this joke and told me that this was simple reverence. I tried to express in Tajik that if everyone expressed their reverence for peace in this way, the whole auditorium would appear to be sleeping. She was with me at the Botanical Garden when we saw the President speaking, and besides for when she answered her cell phone (not so laudatory of the President), she would be the only woman in the crowd to say loudly "Spasibo" or Thank You and then break the silence with applause. We arrived late to the exhibition and so parts of it had already closed, but there were all kinds of animals and village labor demonstrations. There were many cows and goats and even camels, which scared the poor Tajik teenage girls. For some reason, though, and I can't understand at all, the host mother ran away from tied-up cows. She ran! I asked her if she was afraid, and she exclaimed that indeed she was! I could understand this from a city person, but she's from the villages and have lived for years with cows. I asked her to explain, and she said that these were "city cows". I don't mean to make fun, but it was really strange!
Nothing much else is very interesting. For those of you looking for updates, I will be leaving here on the 17th of December for Dubai. I will stay there for about 9 days, but I don't have a return flight yet. It's not clear when or IF I will get to Kazakhstan because I have not yet managed to acquire all the necessary documents for getting a work permit from the government of Kazakhstan. See you soon! Wish me luck getting the entire book on Religious dialogue edited in the next month!