My husband arrived in Tashkent this week. It’s been wonderful having him around. He’s done some cooking for us and has cleaned up after us everyday. Apparently, he missed his calling as a homemaker. He really is quite good at domestic chores. I’m so grateful that he could come for an extended visit. (He’s staying for about a month.

He also arrived just in time for the first and probably only substantial snowfall of the winter here in Tashkent. It was quite beautiful and since they have had such little snow in the past few years everyone in Tashkent that I know was excited for the snow.

Since my husband was new in town, my team at the Ministry insisted that we visit the most famous Uzbek plov restaurant. (See my previous post to learn more about plov.) My husband was a very good sport and ate his entire, heaping, plateful of plov with lamb on it even though he is mostly a vegetarian. We also learned from my translator that the legend behind plov is that Alexander the Great needed an easy meal to feed his vast army as it was marching through what is now Central Asia and plov was the answer. It is easy enough to make in huge quantities (see the photo of the giant plov vat below) and is a complete meal in one dish.

My project is moving ahead on schedule despite some delays last week with my translator. We finished the cultural adaptation portion of the project, created a roughly 125 page document containing the full curriculum for teaching positive psychology and stress management in the four pilot schools here in Tashkent. Last week the Ministry of Public Education approved the curriculum in its entirety without any further changes. So I was able to hold another week of training, this time for the school psychologists and assistant principals from the four pilot schools.

It was a bit of a struggle for me this week to have the same level of enthusiasm in the training as I did the first week. I had to essentially the repeat essentially the same training this week as we did two weeks ago and about half the people were the same. Still, it was all very well received and when we wrapped up on Thursday with our last day everyone wanted to chat and take photos with me. It’s quite odd to feel like something of a celebrity here. There are just so few Americans in Uzbekistan that we are kind of a novelty. Everyone wants a photo with “The American”.

The next phase of my project is to train the teachers in the schools so they can use these techniques in their classrooms. The teacher trainings at each of the four schools will happen through March, with the teachers beginning to use the curriculum in the classrooms starting April 1.

We’ve had quite the time getting adjusted to food here in Uzbekistan. I’ll admit that I’m not a great cook, even in the States, and cooking at home here is proving to be quite the challenge. I have basic kitchen tools, a frying pan, a stock pot, large wooden spoons, silverware, and a large mixing bowl. That’s about it. No food processor, blender, whisk, or any other “fancy” implements.

There’s also not much for processed foods or mixes here. Everything seems to be made from scratch, like my grandmother used to do. I wanted to make chicken tenders but could find any bread crumbs at the store, so I’m spending my Saturday night making my own bread crumbs. Oh and onion powder too since I can’t find that at the store. I was so excited this week to find garlic powder at the large Korzinka (grocery store) in town so at least I don’t have to make that.

I did succeed in making my homemade fettucine alfredo this week. I made the noodles from scratch so those tasted the same as at home. I figured out the I want the milk that says 10% on it to use as cream and found something a lot like Parmesan cheese at the large Korzinka. My son and I both enjoyed a meal that tasted just like at home. This may become a regular weekly meal, assuming I have an hour to make noodles from scratch.

Given the few successes I’ve had in the kitchen so far, we’ve been eating out a lot. Like, every day. On the bright side, a typical meal usually costs us between $6-$12 total. That’s right. We had a nice meal tonight at a neighbor burger place called Burger Embassy. We had a burger, chicken tenders, fries, onion rings, and an ice tea all for just under $6.

We also found a pizza place just three blocks from our apartment that serves reasonably good pizza. According to the menu, the cheese pizza has “German cheese” on it, then in parentheses it says Gouda. Pretty sure the Dutch would disagree with that description but still, it’s nice to have a nearby place with good pizza.

There’s a large Korean population here in Tashkent so there are quite a few Korean restaurants. We met up with some other Fulbrighters in Tashkent for dinner last night at Seoul, a local Korean place. I have know idea what any of the food was because the menu was in Korean and Russian, but it was very good.

Of course, we’ve also been taken out by locals we have met. They are excited to share local Uzbek cuisine with us. We’ve tired the plov, a rice and meat dish that is famous throughout Uzbekistan. Our fabulous driver took us out for plov last week. We had a plov made with lamb. It was better than I expected after hearing from my son that an Uzbek kid at school told him NOT to eat the plov. He called it “greasy rice” and told us to steer clear. With that in mind I was pleasantly surprised by the taste. The lamb was very tender and flavorful. It was served with tomato and cucumber salad, fresh & hot local bread, some kind of sour cream, and of course, hot tea.

We’ve also been treated to a variety of Somsa meals. I first had a potato somsa at the Chorsu bazaar and it was fresh hot, and delicious. Somsa is a type of handheld pocket sandwhich, kind of like a pasty or empanada. My son has discovered that the meat and cheese somsa they sell during the morning break at this school are delicious. I’ve been out for lunch several times to try somsa. I prefer the potato to the pumpkin somsa. The pumpkin ones are in a different type of crust that is more pie like and less flaky. it is also served with ground beef and onions on top. I did NOT care for this one.

Another local dish we’ve tried is Shashlik. This is Uzbek for shish-kebab. On a related note, they have the word kebab here but it refers to a dish that is more like a meat stew than grilled meat on a skewer. Shashlik is very tasty but the meat here is also quite fatty. They don’t trim the fat off at all and the shashlik is a skewer of alternating chunks of meat and fat. (FYI-locals eat the fat chunks too.)

I thought that my MN trained digestive system would be fine with this diet of meat and starch but…not, so, much with the fat…

Good thing we brought a bottle of Pepto along with us.

Today marks two full weeks of being in Uzbekistan and one week in our own apartment. Now that the newness of everything is starting to wear off a kind of mental exhaustion has set in. My first week of trainings for the school psychologists and Ministry of Education officials went extremely well. All of the material I presented was well received and after the first day they asked me to include more hands-on exercises. I led trainings from 9am-1pm each day and then spent the evenings reworking material and finding more exercises for the next week. I think my poor translator is on the verge of a breakdown over how many documents I have sent him this week to translate with only a day turn around time. Luckily, the deputy minister has agreed to hire a second translator to help. The bad part is that good translators are hard to find here.

Aside from working very long days, I’m also listening to everything I say being translated to Uzbek and then their replies getting translated back to English for me.

On top of the work aspect, I’m also building a mental map of Tashkent, trying to figure out how to navigate an unfamiliar city that is laid out in circles rather than on a grid system. I really appreciate the grid system.

Even simple things like going to the grocery store, requires what seems like an enormous amount of mental energy. For example, my son and i were in the market and saw Lay’s potato chips. Yeah! A bag of nice familiar chips sounds really comforting, but what are these flavors? Shashlik flavor? That’s Uzbek for shish-kebob. I’m gonna have to take a hard pass on that one. We settled on onion (without the sour cream), based on the picture on the bag.

Don’t even ask me about cooking here. I’ve mostly failed at that so far. I tried to make a simple alfredo sauce for pasta but sadly bought keifer instead of milk at the store because, you know, I can’t read Russian. I don’t even know what keifer is and why anyone would want to buy it but it is NOT good for alfredo sauce.

On a bright note, I did manage to bake passable chocolate chunk cookies yesterday. Chocolate chips don’t exist here so we bought a milk chocolate bard and chopped it up. I have yet to find brown sugar her so i had to use all white sugar. The butter here has a little different flavor and the only vanilla I saw at the store was little packets of powdered vanilla. That definitely tasted different than my liquid Mexican vanilla at home. Oh, and I have nothing accurate with which to measure ingredients. I’m a pretty experienced baker so i could eyeball most ingredients. I used a coffee cup and odd sized soup spoon to guestimate everything. The cookies actually turned out to be quite good, even though they were thing and a bit crispy rather than cake like.

Still, I’m calling this a success. My husband visits in a week and he will be bringing me a set of measuring cups and spoons from my mom so I will certainly do better with the next batch.

These first two weeks has given me a whole new appreciation for what immigrants go through in adjusting to a new home and unfamiliar culture. And I’m very privileged. Right now is a great time to be an American in Uzbekistan. I have been welcomed with open arms. Uzbeks are excited to test out their English with me and even strangers are eager to help me figure out things like how to put the produce codes into the scale and print the price sticker out. I also have a generous grant and a working ATM card that allows me to access funds from my bank in the United States and I have staff at the US Embassy who have given me their personal cell phone numbers and told me to call anytime if I need something. I have a fantastic support system here and I’m still exhausted, every, single, day.

I know this will get better and in a month or so I hope to be more energetic and independent. I’m sure I will feel right at home just about the time I head back home.

Oh and I apologize for any typos in this blog post. I’m just too tired to care enough to proofread tonight.

Until next time…
До свидания