Peculiar place....

To say that this is a peculiar place is an understatement. I think I've talked about the corruption that seeps out of the pores of this country. I have talked about the bread being sold from the trunk of a car (no wrappers on it), the way I've seen a sheep in the back of a car in the middle of town, the way you can get a pack of gum as change, or buy three diapers at a time.
I haven't talked about a few other things that are "strange", but maybe it's just strange to us, as Americans; so, here are a few observations. There are traditional, older Kazakh women who are randomly scattered on the streets, parking lots, etc... and they sell various things to eat or drink. You get a bowl of some sort of traditional concoction dipped out of a bucket. The bowls are regular bowls like would be in our kitchens. After the customer eats the food, it gets rinsed out in another bucket (along with all the other bowls of the day) and placed back out as "clean" for the next customer. This is sort of like fast food here in Kazakhstan. In this photo, a man who took some time for lunch during a work day stopped to get some food from this lady, including courld which is like a salted curd ball (like cheese I think) and mare's milk. yes, Mare's milk. (I shutter to think of drinking it) Many of you know that I was a vegetarian for most of my life, and then once we began farming, started eating meat again. At this point, I would be SO happy to see a McDonalds!!! LOL By the way, I asked for their permission to take their photo. They were happy to oblige.

Some of them make a drink from various fruits, vegetables, and grains. There are some people, mostly women, who have an ordinary bathroom scale, usually decorated with various stickers, and they charge you to use it. I think bathroom scales are a luxury here, so you might as well just pay from time to time. Keep in mind, this is just on random street corners, parks, etc... None of these "enterprises" are regulated by health/safety/food quality kind of people like would be at home. If you get the notion to set up a stand somewhere, more power to you.
There is very little rain here, but the mountains provide water for a long hot summer. There are concrete ditches that have valves in them, and we've seen people go and open up the valves to fill their water bottles. The other day, while we were waiting to cross the street, a man was filling a water bottle. The water was spraying Jasmine and Winston; I saw the sunlight catching the millions of droplets as they shot over the man and onto my husband and child. I have to say, it was pretty amusing, but definitely peculiar.