Central Asia here we are.

48 hours here and we are already feeling at home. Its been an incredibly busy, interesting, stretching and special time with lots of people already. We arrived at 7pm on Sunday night, were taken out for dinner at an open air restaurant on a beautiful balmy evening, then it was off to the supermarket to buy some basics and then to our apartment, home for the next 6 weeks for me and 8 weeks for my travelling companions.

We are going to be very happy here. Nothing special but certainly all we need and more. I plan to take some photos and post them soon. 

Today's BEST adventure was to the bazaar with a beautiful young woman from our organisation whose English was good enough for us to make ourselves understood most of the time. Of course my Russian and Kyrgyz are both non-existent. The bazaar seemed to go on for miles and the atmosphere was much more friendly than I had expected.

 

 This lady was on for a chat and trying to practice her English as we engaged to buy some her of tasty sweet treats.

 

And I must say that a whole heap of fresh fruit and vegetables always delights my senses. Today was no disappointment.

 Dried fruits and every nut I can imagine. We bought salted, roasted broad beans to try. Probably not my fave.

This guy wanted me to photograph him holding some lepeshka, some of the local bread. Could I say 'No'? Hardly!

 

And I hadn't ever seen a table at a restaurant like this. Have you? Possibly only in Central Asia. We bought a pot of green tea and sat and enjoyed our edible market purchases here.

Two guys chatted with us (well, really to my companion who did all the translating) and both asked my age! It's just not what we do in Australia - ask the age of an older woman. When it happened the second time I said that it was unusual to ask an older person their age, especially when they did not know each other well. He apologised and said that he had meant to ask 'How are you?" and not 'How old are you?' Little differences make a big difference when it comes to communicating between languages. I guess that's why they call it a 'language barrier'!