Cultural Differences and Experiences

This Saturday was an interesting day. This morning we had a team meeting, and I offered to make the breakfast. I cooked scrambled eggs and bacon- very American, but I have heard that they eat pretty much the same thing. Well, everyone liked it and was commented that it was very tasty. So I thought, good another well liked breakfast.
After our meeting I went to play baseball. Ira picked me up and we went to the park. It was a very nice park, though I’m still getting used to seeing garbage everywhere. There is no law against littering here. So I find it very sad and often have the urge to pick up all the garbage. But alas, that would take a very long time. Back to baseball….we had a lot of people show up enough to have at least 8 on each team! Ira said that I could explain the rules. So I stated the basic rules without getting too complicated. And we began the game. It was a lot of fun!! Everyone did really well and liked the game! Which will make it easier to get people to come back for more baseball! :) Maybe I’ll add on more of the complex rules as they get more familiar with the game. We only played two innings. After the first inning, there was a water break, and after the second inning, more water and snacks too! It was a good time. When baseball was done I walked with Ira and two other girls and we were going to get ice cream (I guess baseball and ice cream just naturally go hand in hand).
On our way we passed a street vender selling ‘sho-ro’, a national drink here in Kyrgyzstan, and one of the girls asked if I had tried it yet, and I said no. So we stopped and we each got a cup. Well, let me tell you that there is nothing comparable that I have ever had back home to even describe the taste. But I will tell you it is made from corn, wheat, spring water and maybe another grain like substance. It is like a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick in the mouth! With a weird aftertaste. It wasn’t terrible, just extremely different!! I couldn’t help but to make a face after every sip- because of that kick in the mouth. We finally made it to the ice cream shop. It is in the food court of a very nice shopping mall. You have to walk through a metal detector as you enter! They even have the GAP. They had many nice looking treats like ice cream cakes and different drinks. I ordered my ice cream, 2 scoops of chocolate and 1 strawberry, and got mine in an ice cream cone. Though they use this tiny little scoop and you only get three of them. But with the exchange rate I guess it cost less than $1 so really it was proportionate. It was interesting as I looked around. They had four big screen tv’s set up near us and kids and people can just sit down and play video games! They had Playstation2, and a few other consoles. It was pretty weird. It was the first time I’ve seen anything like that here. It is definitely not the norm. But I don’t think the average people of Kygyzstan shop at designer stores either. After our nice treat I returned home. But the cultural lessons were not over yet!
Soon after I returned, Tanya also came home. We were both hungry so I made some pasta. As we were in the kitchen, we started talking about this morning and how I had cook the bacon good and that it was tasteful. It turns out that, they don’t usually fry their bacon. They don’t cook it at all! They just eat it on bread, raw. And it isn’t called bacon. They have something called ‘saloo’ which is just pig fat, and bacon is called ‘saloo’ with meat. As we continued to talk, I also found out that scrambled eggs are considered an omlet. Whether it has other stuff in it like cheese and meat or just milk, they are called omlets. So when I said that I was making scrambled eggs, and cooking them on the stove she thought I was making a bunch of fried eggs, which would seem really odd if you thought someone was making fried eggs and went to the corner store for 25 eggs to feed around six people! So it brings my view of their reaction to breakfast this morning in a whole new light!