a nice bacon, lettuce, and tomato where the bacon is nice and crispy...

 One of the less serious, but still frustrating, manifestations of culture shock is unexpected cravings for food. Before I studied abroad in the 90s, we were warned, for example, that we would miss peanut butter and should plan ahead and pack some. 

I don't recall missing peanut butter that semester, but I did develop a serious craving for root beer about eight weeks in. It started as just an idle thought one day, "Root beer would be nice, maybe I'll buy some," as I was walking into a grocery store near campus in center of Moscow. Not much of a soda drinker in general, I hadn't ever really looked at the shelves in that part of the store, so I didn't know I had just set myself up for disappointment. There was no root beer to be had there, in any other grocery store I visited, or in any cafe or bar. And once I realized that I couldn't have it, that it was impossible and out of reach for another eight weeks, I craved it fiercely. Days might go by without a thought of root beer, but then it would pop into my head again and take up prime real estate until I could distract myself. 

One element of culture shock food cravings is, of course, the dynamic of the forbidden fruit. I wanted the root beer so much precisely because I couldn't have it. Similarly, speaking stereotypically, US expats in some parts of the world crave peanut butter, Australian expats crave Vegemite, and southeast Asian expats crave durian. People living far from home crave the things that are difficult to find and expensive to ship. But there's also an element of social dislocation driving these cravings. 

In my childhood, my mom, my sister, and I would split a pitcher of root beer and a large pizza for dinner at the local pizza place in our town. When I walked into the grocery store in Moscow that day, I wasn't thinking about my mom and sister consciously, but, I realized many years later, the desire for root beer was the surface-level symptom of a deeper homesickness. At that point, it had probably been years since we'd had pizza and root beer together, but somewhere below my conscious mind, halfway through my time away from home, I was reaching for that sense of family and togetherness. The root beer was a comfort food.

Living in Armenia, I haven't experienced a culture shock craving as fierce as the root beer in Moscow in 1998, but I'm also much more connected to friends and family thanks to cell phones and social media. There are things I can't get here, but for the most part, I enjoy the other things that are so much more abundant, so it feels like an even trade. 

I have, however, been sad about bacon. There are many, many kinds of processed meats available in Armenian grocery stores, but most of them are in the bologna part of the spectrum, which is not my favorite. Frustratingly, there is a brand called BACON (written in Latin letters even!) that sells ready-to-eat deli ham and salami-style meats, but not actually bacon. Occasionally, "bacon" shows up as a topping in the burger section of restaurant menus in Yerevan, but what they mean in terms of cut and cooking temperature is not the same as what the word "bacon" means to me. 

Then, yesterday in the fancy grocery store: 

That, my friends, is honest to goodness, US-style, thin-sliced bacon! I bought two packages. I did a little happy dance right there between the processed meats and the macaroni. I will probably go back to buy more to stash in the freezer and to vote with my drams, as it were, so they hopefully continue to carry this product. 

And today I splurged on hothouse tomatoes on the vine and leaf lettuce for BLTs. 

Rice cakes are, of course, much inferior to a whole grain sourdough or a poppyseed Kaiser roll as BLT support vehicles, but this is my auto-immune dietary reality. Lack of gluten notwithstanding, these BLTs were so, so delicious, and I am very much looking forward to more of the same tomorrow. 

Culture shock craving are particularly challenging because they are so unpredictable. I did not know I would miss bacon until I realized I couldn't buy it here. And if you had asked me in August of 1998, I would not have guessed that I was going to miss root beer. They're also challenging because of their inscrutability. When I was pregnant and craved pie or potato chips, I knew that what my body really wanted was fat and sugar or salt, and I could satisfy that underlying nutritional need with other things on hand, like peanut butter on Saltines. Culture shock cravings aren't about nutrition, though. They surface a soul need, not a body need. And today, the bacon-shaped hole in my soul is full.