The Food

The food here has been great so far! All four families eat lunch at a restaurant each day. Larissa, our translator, takes us all to the restaurant and translates the menu to us. She is a very funny lady, and we all love her very much. She describes each thing on the menu and tells us “is good” or “ is not very good.” Then, she orders for us. All of the restaurant owners/staff know her and are used to her bringing groups of Americans to their establishments. Larissa did not have any families during September and October, and when she would go to a café, the staff would ask, “Where are your Americans?”

On our first day, we went to a restaurant called Koffeeman. I had a chicken panini and Stan had a chicken croissant. These were ho-hum, but the French fries with a mild barbeque sauce for dipping were really yummy. We were just happy to have something familiar like fries!

We have eaten at two more restaurants since then. One place is called Istanbul Picnic, but our translator calls it “the Turkish café.” The restaurant is owned by a Turk, and the cuisine is Middle Eastern. We had lamb shish kabob with rice. This meal was REALLY good. I’m sure we’ll go back again.

Today, we ate at a Chinese restaurant next to a bowling alley. We had some kind of pepper steak dish and also a sweet and sour chicken dish (not exactly like the sweet and sour chicken at home). It was very good, though. We also ate “Chinese bread,” which was like a savory pancake thing with chives baked into it. Larissa suggested we order lamb pie. It was a little lamb meat patty wrapped in dough and baked until crispy. It was all very good.

We eat breakfast and dinner at our apartment. We have a refrigerator, gas stove, and microwave. Breakfast has been a choice of dry Cheerios (we are advised by our doctor not to drink the milk), bananas, peanut butter and/or jam on bread, oatmeal, coffee, or juice. We brought the Cheerios, coffee, and the oatmeal from home. The rest we found at the store.

Juice is called “cok” for those of you who enjoy potty humor. The box it comes in says “100% cok.” The bread here is always prepared fresh in a bakery. There is no packaged bread like Wonder Bread. Kazakhs do not typically eat peanut butter, but the mini-mart near our apartment had ONE jar, and we paid the equivalent of $9 for it. It was worth every penny. There was no strawberry jam, but there was strawberry-orange, so I tried it and it was good.

Dinner is sort of an afterthought, as we are both pretty worn out by the time we get home. I mentioned in my last post that we both fell asleep at 7:00 yesterday evening (and wanted to wake up at 1:30 a.m.). Well, we had a very strong urge to do the same thing today! Anyway, tonight was the first time we made our own dinner. We had spaghetti. We have very few pots/pans, so we had to boil the spaghetti in a tea pot. It worked well, because we could drain the water by pouring it out the spout. I have no idea what we’re going to eat for dinner tomorrow! It seems as if we make poor Vladimir or Pasha drive us to the store every night! They must think that we are pigs!

We have to drink bottled water and brush our teeth with bottled water. We buy a lot of water! The supermarket sells water in great big huge bottles. I don’t know how much water is in one bottle – maybe 3 gallons or so?

All of us will be here for Thanksgiving, and today we were discussing what we might do to celebrate together. The apartments are sparsely furnished, and there are very few pots/pans, so I do not think that cooking a meal for everyone will work. We are hoping that Larissa might be able to take us all somewhere for dinner. I am so excited for Thanksgiving, as I have SO VERY MUCH to be thankful for this year!! I can’t even think about it without crying. This will be a Thanksgiving to remember!!