Overcoming the cow

So, it's getting colder here in the city. And, as you can probably imagine, we didn't bring too many warm clothes from Southern California... What does one do? Go shopping, right? So we went shopping.

Boots were our number 1 concern, and I must say that we all got them now, even though they were all rather expensive. Unfortunately, there are no real good thrift stores in Armenia yet. Not even Payless or China Town open market. Anyway...

The prices weren't fun, but some of the things we encountered along the way definitely were. For example, a conversation in a shoe store. It was crowded there, and only one salesperson, so we tried to find the size we needed ourselves in a stack of boxed boots. The associate was upon us immediately:

- Please don't touch the box. If you wait, I'll help you in a little bit.
- Sorry, we are in a hurry, - I told her, because Vicky had to get to work.
- Well then, you may leave and come back some other time.

Well, I doubt we will. We got the boots elsewhere.

Then, there was a small shop where the jeans carried truly outstanding labels like Nini Horse, JingPinFuShi, and, my personal favorite, Overcome the Cow. Have you overcome your cow yet? I know I haven't...

Finally, after much walking and freezing and trying on shoes and pants, we (Roxy and I) thought we should get a bite to eat. A new Chinese restaurant just opened downtown, so we walked there and sat down. There were red lanterns, folding screens, shining silverware and waiters in Chinese shirts. And when we opened the menu, there were truly exotic dishes that no Chinese would recognize as their own, such as (and I quote) Garlik Biff, Aromatik Chicken, Soy Souce, and (Roxy's personal favorite) Pork with Fish Smell. The place too, according to the menu, was called a Restourant... In short, almost every line in the menu had a spelling error, both English and Russian. After laughing all this off, we got up and left. If the owner can't hire a decent translator for his menu, one can only guess what he has inside those exotic dishes...

We didn't go hungry, in case you were wondering. There is a really nice Mexican restaurant called Cactus right next door to the unfortunate Chinese one, so we went there and stuffed ourselves silly. And, in all fairness, most of the restaurants we visited so far were really nice, too. And inexpensive. We just never had a chance to tell you that.