Americana

Spent the day reconnecting with my roots.

There is an American style restaurant in town. It's relatively close to the Peace Corps headquarters and is usually filled with Westerners, especially weekend breakfasts (which I haven't tried yet. It is called "Peter's Tex-Mex Grille," but is usually just called Pete's. It's a welcome respite when one gets tired of struggling with a Chinese menu, or of Chinese food in general. But of course it is not cheap. But not bad either. I had a big "Chicken cheese steak sandwhich" with fries goes for a little under two bucks. I have primarily gone there for dessert. It's about as close as you can get to a choclate milk shake over here, but it is still quite a distance away from the real thing.

Across the street from Pete's is "Sabrina's Country Store," a small place that stocks a number of foregin goods, and a lot of American products you can't find anywhere else. I have picked up Grape Nuts there, but sadly when I went in there today they were gone, and the woman did not understand my request and tried to show me the "nuts" section. They also have tomato sauce and brown rice there, which is what I picked up today. I have probably eaten more white rice since I have been here than I have in my entire life and plan to switch to the brown rice once I get out on my own. And peanut butter. They have "Skippy." There is also a small import section at the "Carefour," which is the big chain grocery store (based in France, I gather) that everyone goes to (and right next to a McDonalds). They have a fairly decent pasta selection (while for some reason Sabrinas has none). About the only thing I definitely will not be able to get here (provided that Sabrina restocks the Grape Nuts) is Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice. If anyone has any pull over at Tropicana, you might want to drop them a line. I think there is an untapped market here.

One thing I have yet to find is a toaster. This is in part because no one eats bread over here. I have picked up at" Carefore" something that is a pale imitation of wheat bread, probably more like whole wheat Wonder Bread than real wheat bread. But I've yet to find a toaster, though I have seen toaster ovens (which cost almost as much as microwaves).

Coffee. I had planned on going cold turkey, figuring "when in China...." ANd in truth at my training site I really have not had any coffee, because there isn't any, just some instant which I have only tried once or twice. But this week I could not resist and bought some ground coffee at the "Carefour" and put it in my french press. The only thing is that it was ground way too fine for my french press, so it didn't come out quite right. Still, it was definitely coffee, and now I wonder if I'll be able to go back to just tea. To make matters worse, there are three Starbucks in town, though the whole bean coffe prices are pretty outrageous, over fifteen dollars a pound. My guess I will probably be sticking to the import brew I found at "Carefore," which seems a grade up from Folgers but certainly no starbucks.

I think these small ways of connecting with dietary routines are one way to maintain an equilibrium over here. Or perhaps it is just a form of denial.