Top 10 Most Interesting Things about Tinystan

We’ve been here a whole month now, and it seems like the right time for a Top 10 List. So, in honor of our late night hero David Letterman, here it goes:

10. Eating Osh with our happenin’ host family
They have fed and fed and fed us! Osh – an epic rice dish cooked over a wood fire – is our favorite!

9. 25¢ pots of tea!
I’ve never been a big fan of hot tea. But I will overcome.

8. Our taxi driver who sped past a police roadblock and zoomed down a closed road where the military was preforming drills – all to get us home quickly.
Seriously. I am NOT joking.

7. Our host ‘Dad’ has a tattoo of Hello Kitty on his ankle.
And he gets incredibly embarrassed if you point to it and say, “What is that?”. He says he got it in the army. That makes it even funnier.

6. Brown Choco-Margarine
This is the kind of stuff you make you kids eat when they’re caught swearing.

5. Being forced to translate Russian words like шампунь и кондиционер укрепляющий just to buy a bottle of shampoo.
Thankful for Google Translate!

4. Fancy bathrooms, but no water.
The homestay we are in includes a really nice indoor bathroom – a rarity for these parts, we’re told. Unfortunately, there is no water most days. EDIT: Yes, we do bathe. With a bucket. 🙂

3. Bread isn’t placed upside-down or thrown away. Ever!
Do this and you’re seriously offending your local host culture. Not a good way to impress your new friends.

2. The waiter who flipped out when he saw my Google Translate on my iPhone translate the menu in real time.
Really. He flipped. And he sat with us for 20 minutes as we translated the entire menu and taught him English at the same time. 🙂

1. Our wonderful host family.
Who’ve been like an adoptive family and helped make Tinystan home for the past 4 weeks!