The Giraffe Supermarket

1/7/12 Saturday

We spent a lot of time at the supermarket today. It's a regular grocery store with a lot of other household items, some clothes and shoes. We have named this supermarket the Giraffe Store because it has a huge giraffe's neck rising up from the sidewalk outside on the corner. Maybe it's real name is the Giraffe Store, we wouldn't know. We're illiterate. But we're happy the giraffe is there because we wouldn't be able to get back to this one and only supermarket within 10 miles of home if it weren't for the giraffe neck landmark.

Grocery shopping was our mission for the day, so we took our time going up and down every aisle of the store.  The meat/ fish coolers had things in them that I kind of wish I hadn't seen...yet, I did take pictures!  They are not for the faint of heart. They include packages of heart, kidneys and livers together, a full-bodied duck with bill and eyes, white and red squid and the most tame of all, you could scoop your own clam shells into a bag from a shallow water tank.

The most unusual, not gross, item in the meat section was the black chicken...black skin, not feathers! 

There was also beautiful produce which balanced out the awful-looking meat/fish section.

In between the local dry packaged food, like bamboo shoot muffins, there were a few products we were looking for...Quaker oatmeal, corn flakes, orange juice, salt and pepper.

I have decided that we're going to eat American breakfasts. I just can't do soup, rice and noodles for breakfast. Also, American breakfasts are cooked on the stovetop, the only appliance I have to cook with. American breakfast items are a little hard to find, but this supermarket has a few of all of them. Dairy is especially hard to find...milk, cheese, eggs, and butter (which comes from New Zealand). The eggs are not refrigerated.

Bread is also hard to find. Considering I don't have an oven, I couldn't make my own if I wanted to. We did find a loaf of rice bread, but it has a strange consistency. I think I could get used to it, though, especially toasted. We also found jam and Skippy peanut butter!

Notice the Statue of Liberty logo on the jam jar.

We needed laundry soap...found it, but had to hunt for a reasonable size, something smaller than 10 kg!

It sounds funny to describe a day at the supermarket, but when you're in a foreign country even the everyday tasks become an adventure...and with a great camera on an iPhone, you can take pictures!