Saturday April 13- PDay

Today is PD and I spent the day washing clothes and getting caught up on personal chores. Then we went to the large 4-story mall with the Murdocks to look for some items we could not get at the mall close to our place. I bought a curling iron that actually works with their electrical system here and we tried to find some adapters for our camera and cell phone chargers. This mall is so huge that I was glad the Murdocks were with us, because we would have been lost for sure. The Mall is VERY crowded with mostly Indian people, some blacks (and almost all workers in the stores) with just a few whites. We are definitely in the minority. Elder Kyle was trying to buy some Tylenol in the drugstore and was informed that he needed to wait in line for the pharmacist to okay it. They do not have regular cold, allergy or pain medications on the shelf. He had to wait a long time and they did not know what Tylenol is. They ended up giving him a non-aspirin pain killer with a strange name, but we are not sure if it is Tylenol or not. It doesn't use the same ingredients on the label. I also had trouble finding a curling iron or curlers for large curls. They have different hair issues here than in the states and my hair would not be the norm....Ha. I tried to find a keyboard that attaches to my Lenovo note pad, but the store did not have much variety and we couldn't get anyone to help us. The ones we did find that might have worked were way more money than I was willing to spend.

The grocery stores do not have the same spices here that I used at home. I could find no ground oregano, only the leaf kind. I had trouble finding black pepper that was already ground. Hamburger is called mince. Ketchup is called tomato sauce and tomato sauce is called tomato puree. The tomato sauce tastes very bitter and the ketchup is very sweet. French fries are chips. Beef Jerky is called Biltong. Powdered sugar is called icing sugar. Brown sugar is in kind of crunchy pieces instead of ground. White sugar is crunchy too, so you have to look for castor sugar to get the refined sugar. They do not have chocolate chips at all or pieces of nuts...only the whole nut. They do not have a large supply of green leafy vegetables. You have to buy your spinach at Woolworths in small packages of organic spinach. If you buy it at the main grocery, Pick and Save, it goes bad pretty quickly.

Fruits are great. Their potatoes are different...no Idaho type potatoes. Their pinto beans are called red speckled beans and they have no black beans. None of the restaurants so far even serve any kind of bean. It seems so strange that a country like this wouldn't use lots of beans. I have cooked one pot of beans and they are almost all gone. You can't get any corn tortillas here and the white tortillas are not plentiful and not all that great. The only chilies that are used a lot here are jalapenos. It's hard to find a boxed cake mix here and the only ones I've seen in small quantities is chocolate cake. They do not sell Pepsi or Doctor Pepper here, mostly coke and sprite products. They do not have 100 orange juice, only OJ blends all of which have sugar in them. Their bread selection is pretty small too. Luckily, we really like their brown bread that obviously has lots of grains in it, but it is not called multigrain, only brown bread. The choices are brown or white bread. They don't have natural peanut butter, only the one with sugar and oil in it. They don't have pie fillings. I made a chocolate cherry cake for the Murdocks and had to make my own cherry pie filling to put in the cake. There are lots more differences, but this gives you an idea of our grocery store selections. There is no Target, Walmart, Costco or any other store that we are used to at home. Woolworths is the closest to Target...It has clothes and a small grocery department. Since the only thing I cooked so far is a pot of beans, brown rice, cheese crisp, ground hamburger and chocolate cherry cake, I need to figure out some local favorites that we will enjoy. Even the pizza here is different...crust is not that great and sauce is different. No pepperoni here on pizza either and cheese is not the same. We've eaten out a lot and we've had some really good food, but it all seems pretty fattening. We will try to experiment with Indian food. All we've heard about it is that it is all really hot. Sounds good to us! Ha.

On the other hand, seafood here is great and very cheap compared to the states; however, their shrimp looks like a sea spider, because they leave all the legs and the head on. I wouldn't touch the stuff, but your Elder Kyle ate a place that was piled high with the critters. I'm trying to be creative and we certainly aren't starving. Every day is a new adventure, in food, culture, weather and people. We work hard, but get enjoyment out of the experience. I only wish everyone we love could be here too. What a party we would have!