Out and About!

I finally have my own transportation! :) Yeaaahhh! Now that I am mobile, I can really get out and around to explore on my own. My car is a sweet little Chevy, and one of the best things about the car is that it's easy to park! Here's a picture of my "ride:"

This is the parking lot in front of our building. Notice the awnings on top of the spaces. Until you have lived in a dessert climate, you just can't truly appreciate "shade." Shade is so important here; the cars would get unbearably hot! I've hear tales of electronics and other devices melting and/or warping if left out in the cars for even a brief time at the height of the mid-summer heat! The other thing that makes the awnings important is that they shield the cars from a little bit of the dust. This morning when I went out to my car, I turned on the windshield wipers just to blow away the film of dust that had collected since yesterday. It left a fine dusting of dark sand like little snowflakes on the sides of the windshield!

I decided that the first trip I took in my car would be to run to the store to pick up a few things. It has not been fun using our evening and weekend time to do all of our grocery shopping, especially since produce needs to be purchased frequently and it usually takes more than one stop to get everything on the list.

The first store I decided to go to is called Lulu's. This store is kind of like a Walmart and a Sam's all inside one store. Below is a picture of the front of it at night time. It has 2 large HD screens outside showing commercials. It is a 2-story store, with grocery items on the ground floor, clothing, furniture, school/office supplies, bedding/bath/accessories on the second floor. It is just huge!

Other than its size, it pretty much has the same stuff as other stores in town, just more of it. I tried to respect the store's and it's patrons, but I wanted to take a few shots inside the store just to give you an idea of what's in it. However, even though the quantities seem big, I must admit that every grocery store  I've been in over here carries a LOT of these products. 

Now, I like yogurt, but these containers are huge! There was more yogurt (in fact, it filled up the entire length of this refrigerator unit) than just this!

Cream cheese #1

Cream cheese #2. I have never seen so many different ways to package cream cheese. And these 2 pictures are only about 1/3 of the selection!

This entire aisle, BOTH SIDES, is rice. Did you know there were that many varieties of rice?
I saw a young Indian man one evening carrying home about a 50-pound bag of rice on his head!

Spices #1: One thing the people like here is their spices. You can't tell from this
picture, but this aisle is as long as the rice aisle, and it was entirely spices.

Spices #2. I jut took this picture because I thought the tamarinds in the package were interesting!