1. Transportation difficulty. You never know if it is going to take twenty minutes or ninety minutes to get somewhere. Traffic can be horrible. The roads are not designed for as many cars as they now have. And the roads are poorly maintained. Another thing that frustrates the process – when there is an accident no one involved can move their vehicles until the police arrive – which can take hours. Accidents really mess up the traffic flow.
2. Clothes drying racks. Apartments only have washers – no dryers. You hang your clothes on drying racks overnight. Sometime we have a fan blow on them to speed the drying process. We didn't have a dryer when Christopher and Jared were young…and we used cloth diapers. They were like cardboard after they dried on the rack in front of the wall heater! Our bath towels are wonderful after they have dried on the rack…nice and coarse and scratchy the first time you use them.
3. Dill...we have eaten a lot of dill since we got here...it's in soup, on the shashlik, on the rice...
4. Carrying groceries. One of our senior missionary buddies said his arms are three inches longer because he has to carry so many plastic grocery bags such a long way. We take a taxi if we have more than four bags...
5. Pork. In Russia pigs have not been bred to be lean. Pork chops taste like pork chops used to taste when I was a kid.
6. Fat. No one trims any fat off meat. When we serve ham the fattiest pieces go first. They have a beef soup that has fatty pieces of beef in it - or it has each time we have eaten it. Sherry puts all the meat in my bowl and I give her all the veggies...not sure if that is True Love or what...
7. Sandwiches. A "typical" church activity meal would be a slice of bread with a slice of meat on it. Maybe a slice of cucumber...and the cucumbers are sliced lengthwise so they fit on the bread better. Why didn't we think of that before? We'll be slicing cucumbers lengthwise for sandwiches for the rest of our lives. We have made deli sandwiches a few times, American-style, and many people take the top piece of bread off and eat it separately. When I found out before we left home that a typical Russian snack was bread and meat I knew I was going to the right mission!
8. Mayonnaise. They put mayo in soup.
9. Ketchup on tacos. I know you won't believe this but some Russians put ketchup on tacos. No TrueBlue American would EVER do that!
10. Kvas and Diet Pepsi and Root beer. It's really difficult to find diet soda here. Or root beer. Kvas - a popular Russian soda - is NOT root beer, by the way. Let's just say Kvas is an acquired taste. We made homemade root beer and then made root beer floats once and not very many people liked them. And the homemade ice cream and cookie sandwiches we made were not a big hit...they took them apart and ate everything separately.
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