Perfect weather

Last night I saw the most beautiful sky during my walk home with Bekzod. It was the most perfect blue, slight breeze, warmth, and amazement combined.

Some idiot has been calling my room and last night was no exception. I got woken up at 2am only to hear a male's voice saying sorry, wrong number. The frustrating thing is you don't even know who it is so you can't even say, are you insane??!

Today I took another taksi to work, this time it was one of the 2nd hand benz's I've seen in the country. I was surprised to see several Mercedes here, but my colleagues told me that there are some wealthy ubeks, and that also many are sold secondhand.

For lunch we went to a local Uighur place, yay! I was craving noodles so we drove out to this local place and got Lakhman, their local noodles. They were so delicious and tasted very similar to Korean noodles, only these were handmade on the spot. The guy would take the long tough and twirl it in his fingers and slap it against this hard wood slab, so while you're eating in the other room you'd occasionally here these "whack whacks".

The teas are incredible here, as are the yogurt sauces you can dip your naan into. The silk road just amazes me. You can sense and feel the similarities throughout the region. The yogurt sauces remind me both of Greek and Turkish food, while also sharing similarities to Russian food. But the main Uighur dishes also remind me of certain East asian cuisines. Lakhman is very similar in spices and constitution to Korean "yoo-gae-jang", only the noodles are thick and white. But both are spicy soups with meat, some vegetables, and noodles.

I asked what the name of the restaurant is and my colleagues said there's no name, it's simply just a local place they know of. One guy joked "national uighur restaurant of Uzbekistan".

Again, the jetlag is slowly setting in. I got an email this morning from NY related to some boy/love drama in NY. It took me a few hours to just let it go and leave it behind. Coincidentally, a friend from back home happened to email me about her love drama right now. I just felt so sick of it all though. At the end of the day you can't influence a person's decisions or tell them what's right or wrong. All you can do is just let them be and decide for yourself if you want to stick around or walk based on how they are and act. Just a bit of a sticky situation I left behind, but hopefully this trip will keep forcing me to accept and let go when it comes to love. That's all you can do sometimes.