Foreigners and Chinese Food

If anyone knows me, they know I love food, cooking is one of my favorite things to do. I especially love America because the choice we have in food in the U.S. is amazing. On one street we have Chinese, Indian, Burgers, Pizza, and coffee. One thing I dislike about Kurdistan is that there is not much variety with the food. Typical Kurdish food is white rice, some sort of vegetable stew you eat with the sauce, and chicken or meat on the side. This is what we have 95% of the time when we go to someones home for dinner. For fast food, they have pizza (a bit different from American pizza), a gyro type sandwich called guz, and burgers. This sums up what I have had to eat the more than 3 weeks that I have been away. Not much variety compared to what I used to have.

Guz:

Thats not to say there isn't more variety. My cousin tells me there is a German restaurant, a few American like places, and a few chinese places. I love Chinese food, so my mom, my sister, and I went to one of the places we saw. As soon as we walked in, we were ushered to a table in the back, and given menues and ordered our food. Now this is not typical American Chinese food, this is real authentic Chinese food, so it was a new experience. Once the waiter left, we looked around, and saw that everyone else there was male, and that they all had an alcoholic drink in front of them. We soon realized this was mostly a bar, and the chinese food was just something they did on the side. My mother was very upset, and wanted to leave immediately, but we had already ordered food. Drinking is pretty common in Kurdistan, although women dont typically drink.

As soon as our food came, we quickly ate it and left. The food was delicious, we had fried green beans with garlic and soy sauce, a chicken dish sizzling in its own pan, spring rolls, and fried rice with cucumber and sesame oil. Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures of the food.

There are a lot more people from foreign countries are coming to Kurdistan and working as construction workers and maid, while the chinese have come and open massage places, acupuncture places, hotels, and.... brothels. This is one of the hotels the Chinese have helped build: