August 9, 2006

• CRAAAZY

  So, I’ve been on the E. Coast for less than week, now… and already, some interesting encounters:

  
  

  
  
  • One taxi driver I talked to – his name was Shovkat, the same name as my Uzbek neighbor’s husband!  He was from Pakistan, but we had a lively discussion about current events. Even though Uzland is not that religious, I feel like I’ve learned a lot about Islam and understand things from the perspective of Muslims just a little bit more than I used to.
  
  
  • My mom and I were in Maine, visiting my sister, and we went to a restaurant in Naples, Maine.  There, our waitress happened to be Russian.  She asked my mom where we were from, then of course my mom asked where she was from… and then she came over and said “so, I heard you speak Russian!”  So we spoke a bit.  THEN, our hostess came over and said “I heard you live in Uzbekistan?  I’m Tatar and I’m from Tashkent ! I live near TSUM!”  Amazing, eh?  I spoke in Russian with her a bit as well. Random!
  
  
  • Another man I met was from the country of Georgia, which was part of the Soviet Union and is a part of the region know as the Caucasus.  He actually DID look like American Caucasian, i.e. light hair, light eyes,light skin..  and not like a typical Caucasian, which is typically darker hair, olive skin… remember my entry about how we call white Americans “Caucasian”, even though REAL Caucasians, from the Caucasus, don’t look like white Americans.. though parts of the Caucasus DOES include Russia as well, so maybe that’s where the terms comes from?

  • 4:04 pm
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