Shopping

The grocery stores here mainly just have nonperishable items. Most also sell homemade bread which is pretty good. They’ll have some produce but it doesn’t look very good and is usually expensive. The meat is pretty sketchy at most places too. They’ll just have big frozen pork chops and chicken wings thrown into a freezer with nothing around them. Some places don’t even refrigerate it. We were told that the AQM was the only place that was probably safe to buy meat at. I got ½ pound of chicken breast there for $14 tala or about $6 American dollars. I guess we won’t be eating fresh meat all that often. Dairy is hard to find here too. The milk is all boxed milk and cheese doesn’t have the same taste or consistency as the cheese we’re used to. I found sour cream at one store but it was very expensive and yogurt is also expensive, but available. Even the canned goods you have to check the expiration dates on everything. Most things are about to expire either in the next few months or already have in some cases. Andy had to go to 3 different stores before he found a bottle of coke that had only been expired for 1 month instead of 4. You can usually tell how expensive a grocery store is going to be too by how clean and cool it is inside. If its clean, well lit and has AC – that means its more expensive. Our favorite so far is MaKenzie’s. Its close to our house, has a lot of American foods for reasonable prices, and is kind of dark, dirty and has no AC. They also have a lot of other random stuff like kitchen items, towels, curtains, kids toys, and even a box of Penn tennis balls that Andy found in the back. My take too is that they have something one week and not have it again for a few months. Its just kind of hit or miss sometimes. So I think shopping will be an adventure and a learning process for me.