Sunday.....

I took the day off from typing and Jim submitted the following to our publisher after our outing today.

Our trip to the Green Market…

It was about a 2 mile walk through the park and down a very busy street that leads to downtown Karaganda. We drove by this place last week when we ate hamburgers downtown. I have to say that I wasn’t too excited to go here, for it looked very overwhelming with all the people walking around. Well, since it is Sunday and we were not going to see the babies, we figured we might as well walk there and see what the market had to offer.

The first part of the trip was the walk. It was just like walking down High Street on a Sunday afternoon (with a little different scenery). There were a lot of cars and buses. Not as many people walking the streets, but it was a very nice walk.

As we entered the market there were smells of barbeque, fish, and cigarette smoke. There were about 300, if not more merchants selling items from baby socks to generators and satellite dishes.

At first I did not like walking through the rows. All the people, and I mean A LOT of people, kept bumping into me and passing me, and looking at us for they knew that we are Americans. I also think my Steelers AFC Championship winter cap told everyone that we are American as well. But as the day progressed, I was having a better time, for every toy, shawl, coat, and pair of socks that we bought the people were all very nice to us. Maybe it was because they knew that we were American, or they were just happy we were buying their stuff.

Then we had lunch. We went to this restaurant, the chef was sitting at a charcoal mini grill, grilling shis-kabobs and behind him, and there was a large bowl of rice being cooked. Of course, the waitress and cook did not speak English, so we ordered the old fashioned way: Kari got up and pointed to a man eating rice, and pointed at 2 raw shis-kabobs and that was that. The food was terrific….I got chicken, and Kari got pork. Beth ate bread, two bites of chicken and one bite of pork. A girl came over to us and started to speak some English. She was very nice and said that she has a friend in the United States. We will go back….especially since not unlike at home, my wife decided after we left that we “needed” something else that we did not buy…..