Our New Friends

Everyone knows that the pen is mightier than the sword, but we are here to tell you that a pencil will do in a pinch.

When we were at the noodle place for lunch in the Kashgar lamb market, the 3 kids at the lunch place somehow made it clear that they were very interested in the writing utensils stuck into the tactical loops on the outside of Michael's CamelBak. The Bic pen was a huge success while the mechanical pencil was deemed acceptable though somewhat less exciting as it was unable to write on the arm of the particular child who was testing it out.

But our favorite interaction with the local children was with this bunch. While some of our party was inside a rug shop, we decided to wait out front and watch the world go by. These three were walking/skipping/running down the street and upon seeing us, they yelled out the one word of English that every child we met knew. "Hello!" Then they all started giggling at their own brashness. At the same time they were all holding onto large handfuls of something and happily munching away. You can see how their ring-leader in the black top was using her skirt as the major snack receptacle. Seizing her moment, Cara asked them a question in Chinese, "What are you eating?" Although it is quite likely they didn't understand because
1) Cara's Beijing accent is radically different then the Mandarin spoken in Kashgar (and possibly different from the Mandarin spoken anywhere else in China), and
2) They probably didn't speak Mandarin (Uighur children, in general, only spoke Uighur in our presence)
Regardless, they immediately came over to us and offered the fruits they were enjoying so much. No questions, no hesitation, just an exuberant look on the face that declared 'here try this - its great!' Much to our chagrin, we saw that the things they were eating looked suspiciously like (as in identical) some other fluorescent green fruits we had bought and tried back in Beijing. Those had turned out to be fresh olives and they tasted absolutely awful. So bad in fact that we even threw out the initial testing bites as well as the rest of the fruits. And here these friendly little kids were offering us the same thing. Uh oh. But we couldn't deny their happy faces so we each took a glowing green olive and gave it a little bite preparing for the worst. But.. it was ...good?! We have since learned that there are two different olive types, one is round and one is oval. As subtle as difference sounds, it makes a huge difference in taste.

So thanks to our new friends, we had yet another new treat in Kashgar.