VICTOR 2001/2002

In the summer holiday of 2001 we went again to the enclave of Shakhimardon, this time with Ingeborg and Anne. High up in the Kyrgyz mountains there are two lakes, the white and the blue lake. We crossed the blue lake by boat. The mountains are very young and have very high, impressive peeks. When we were caught by thunder once, we left the area as fast as we could. Which is not easy, because you need a mountain lift to get there and back. From there we went to Ferghana, where we saw ceramists, a silk factory and a knife factory.
After this holiday, the three of us started in German School. In the beginning this was a little bit tough, since we only spoke Dutch and English and not a word of German. My mother hired an German teacher who was supposed to already start teaching us German during holiday, to give us a head start. However, after two lessons the woman did not turn up any more, which made my mother sigh: "This is Uzbekistan".

In the beginning of December, we had a period of winter. Here in Uzbekistan winter is normally modest, a clear blue sky and sunny, temperatures between 5 and 10 degrees. Two or three weeks will be really cold, with snow. This year we hit minus twenty. Which was not very nice, since we lived in a very big house that had a heating only sufficient for a small apartment.  So temperatures inside the house stayed below 14 degrees. We would sit in the living room with two sweaters on and covered by blankets and sleep with our coats on.
This year, we celebrated Christmas and new year in Uzbekistan. As every year, Santa Claus was coming to the Intercontinental Hotel giving out cookies. I had to sit on his lap which made me a little embarrassed. Therefore, afterwards I run off with a friend of mine and managed to almost destroy the fantastic cookie house that the hotel had on display for Christmas.

Here you see me with my brother Vincent, who is also my best friend. The sunny pictures are taken in the mountains, where we used to go for picnic in the weekends. The other one is on the pass between Ferghana Valley and Tashkent. We had been driving for 4 hours and it was raining cats and dogs. We had to pee enormously, so we stopped on the side of a road since there was no restaurant anywhere. My mother sneaked out of the car and took this picture. I really hate her sometimes!
So now we are in the year 2002 and we can already speak German quite well. I found a very good friend, Valentin, who is from Germany and lives very close to us. That is to say, close to our new house, because we moved by the end of last year. We have a very nice house, it is very small but cozy, and we children have a small house of our own with a big veranda.

For summer holidays we decided to go to Turkey, we had been in Uzbekistan for a long time and it was time to go out and see the world. We stayed two weeks in the south of Turkey and one week on the west coast, and we had a great time.
Before I knew it, another year passed and Santa Claus was back on his old spot. And again I sat on his lap, even though I am already nine years old. What a disgrace! We also got a very nice Christmas present, a little dog, Tobias. For holidays we tied a red ribbon around his neck. In the beginning, we locked him in the kitchen at night because he was still doing his thing all over the place. But after some weeks, he turned out to be very destructive and tore the linoleum apart. So then we set up a tent for him in the garden with pillows and he slept there at night. Luckily the nights are not too cold in Tashkent. But after some months, we had to discard the tent since Tobias had torn it to threads.