Failure, Uzbekistan, and the New American Pastime

Suprise, suprise, once again it has been a very interesting week here in Poltava. If you know me, you know I am a nocturnal creature. Well, early (2 am) Tuesday morning I was lured onto Youtube where I proceeded to watch a several videos from fail blog. This is just a bunch of videos of people failing at various things, kinda like AFV. Anyway, after 30 mins of seeing people fail at everything, I decided to brush my teeth and go to bed.

I got up, walked to the bathroom, turned on the light and blew ALL the electricity in the entire apartment. Lightswitch: FAIL. I couldn't stop laughing, it was so ridiculous. So I went to tell Erin, who was well into her REM cycle by now, however I knocked over her water bottle and scared her to death. She then tried turning on the light, to which I responded, "Yeah, that's not going to work" and then laughed myself silly.

Nine hours, twelve Russian/English phone conversations, one translator, and one old Ukrainian landlord later, we got the electricity going again. Now I have Erin turn on the light every time I go into the bathroom. ;)

New food experiences this week: Fried Chicken Potato Chips (not a fan), various types of chocolate, lots of tea, ear cookies, zucchini, and Uzbeki food.

One of Erin's teachers, Margarita, is from Uzbekistan. She is such a kind woman and on Friday she invited us to dine in her home, Uzbeck style. We had Samsa, which is bread stuffed with pumpkin (not a sweet pumpkin, I couldn't exactly pinpoint the spices). There was also an eggplant and red pepper salad mix which is served cold and eaten with bread. Margarita then proceeded to heap mountains of plov onto our plates.

Plov is apparently the slavic equivalent of chili, because everyone has there own spin on it, however the base consists of rice and a chopped meat. Ours also had white raisins in it so as I was eating rice and meat I got a fruity burst of flavor. Suprise. I kept referencing the episode of friends where Rachel accidently makes a trifle with beef, peas, and onions. Luckily this did not taste like "feet" as did the trifle, actually, the plov was rather tasty.

We also visited the trendiest restaurant in Poltava; McDonalds. According to many Ukrainians, we Americans eat McDonalds every day. I would never in the states, but I could consider it here simply because the McDonalds here is awesome, and trendy, and the workers smile-it was quite the experience. You never would have guessed it was McD's from the pics. The only thing that might have tipped you off that you were not in America was the orthodox priest...in full regalia...sitting right behind us. Welcome to Ukraine.