A bottle of plain still water is usually 5,000 so'm--less than 50 cents. I often get fancier water, particularly imported mineral water from Georgia (I taught English there for three years). My favorite brand is Borjomi, which is salty, mineraly, and carbonated--and also roughly 15,000 so'm for a bottle.
The best meal I had this week was at an Azerbaijani restaurant in Tashkent. I love Azerbaijani food--I lived in Georgia for three years, and would occasionally visit ethnic Azerbaijani villages to teach. I had khingal--a dish of boiled noodles, caramelized onions, minced lamb, an yogurt sauce--with lots of oil! I also ate plenty of Uzbek plov at my university cafeteria.
I listened to a lot of traditional Turkic music--throat singing, songs about horses, and so forth. The song I enjoyed the most was the folk Tuvan song "Ezir-Kara," a song about a horse whose owner was killed during Stalin's purge. You can listen to it here.
Hanging out with my students at the American Corner in Qarshi was the most fun. It's a space funded by the Department of State with attached computer rooms and libraries where students and youth can come to work, hang out, attend clubs, and apply for university.
