Pictures from Uralsk

On Saturday a little lady told me that she wished we had put more pictures on our blog. I finally downloaded them all to our computer so I thought I'd post some of the sights that we saw.

Every couple blocks there would be a magazine store -- in this small store the magazines are put away every night and set out again in the morning. We were never sure if the magazines were taken out of the building or left in there.


This is our neighborhood bread store. The bread is on display with the prices in tenge listed below. One of us would stand at the window and the other would point out the bread or rolls that we wanted. The average price of a loaf of bread was 40 tenge (about 35 cents) -- there were no bags here for the bread so we quickly learned to bring one along or the bread got a bit dirty on our way home.


We bought some candy from this beautiful lady and she was more than happy to pose for a picture for us. Notice the cookies that are without covering -- this was an outdoor market so we didn't purchase any of them. At our indoor market Jack and Hailee tried many different kinds - I don't think they found one that they didn't like.


The meat building at the open market. The building was huge -- there were many rooms and each room held a different type of meat. (you weren't supposed to take pictures in here but I snuck one in) It was interesting to see meat just lying out, not in a cold case -- anyone could touch it or worse yet sneeze on it -- yuck! There were boxes and boxes of meat stacked behind this counter for easy replenishment. The smell in these buildings is hard to describe, but gross would just about cover it! Can't help but wonder if the meat was stored in a cold place at night?


While shopping at the newer mall we found sliced American cheese (close to it anyway). We bought it for our hamburgers but also tried toasted cheese sandwiches - they didn't look the greatest because we had to slice the bread ourselves without the convenience of a sharp knife -- despite the look of them they were pretty good. Luckily we had brought grape jelly from home because Jack puts it on his toasted cheese - he says it's good????


Breakfast -- notice the milk, one side is written in Kazakh (cyt), the other in Russian. It is ultrapasturized and did not need to be refrigerated until it was opened. The shelf life on an unopened box of milk? Over one year! Hailee found a cereal that she loved -- we even brought a box home. It was a crunchy cracker type outside filled with a flavored yogurt type filling. This one was strawberry.


I know we mentioned the wonderful business lunches. Here we are with Yerlan (our driver), Luba (translator) and Yulia. The restaurants are beautiful and you are treated like queens & kings. Isn't it beautiful. This day we enjoyed borscht soup, a salad and a stew type dish. We were even served dessert, one of the best cakes we had ever tasted!


This is Hailee with Michalna, her daughter and grandaughter at the country house we were honored to visit.


Hoping to post a few more pictures in the next couple days.