When all else fails….

When all else fails start back at the source of your Journey.
I don't exactly know if thats a real quote or not. Maybe I just made it up to suite my situation, however, I've found that my research trail has gone cold. Very cold. Snow cone cold.
Its been week six, and so far I've come up with absolutely no ethic diversity as to whether certain people eat more at once place than another. I don't know if I'm not looking hard enough, or if I'm looking too hard.
This week I returned back to Greasy Petes to try to get a fresh comparison all over again. I didn't recognize any of the people that were working there, so I figured the original crew must have not worked that day. There were two males that I could see, and that was it. Both of them seemed to be in good spirits, laughing and talking amongst themselves. One rolled pretzels and the other one sold them, and together they worked together as a well oiled machine. The one selling was a shorter hispanic from what I could see, and the one preparing the pretzels looked like he may have been  a mix. Either way, the two males were working hard and it seemed like they enjoyed each others company greatly. I attempted to focus on the people that were ordering food, but I kept running into the same problem. EVERYONE loved pretzels! Something about those greasy little bread balls charmed the pants off people! I myself partook in some that day too…. for researches sake.
By this time I felt as though I had hit a wall. I had been sitting outside of greasy petets for what was already half an hour, and I was no closer to hurdling my blocked observations. Stink Vally mall is such a vast place that there are hardly any regulars at any place that I had seen. Even the mall rats varied depending on the day!
By this point I sat and pondered. I watched the people go by desperately searching for any sort of tie or connection, but my desperation was in vain. There was such a vast amount of people going in all different directions that no hope could be drawn in trying to link or connect any of them in the slightest. Thats when it hit me. They were all linked by love for sweet or unhealthy food, right?
I watched more and more people pass by… all ages, all genders, all races. There was no bias in who partook in the food. That got me to thinking…
Perhaps it is our nation on the whole that enjoys such treats? I racked my brain back to the foreign places I had been over the years and thought. While I lived in Spain, people were not fond of junk food at all. Quite the contrary. Even the McDonalds there was pristine. I thought back to Russia, and remembered that most of my family there ingested meat, potatoes, and vegetables. Eating out for most people there was rare, as some of the poverty levels in moscow are shocking. People worry more about heating their homes in the winter than eating out. I thought about my family in France… and theres not explanation needed there. French people and their food? Good lord.
Thats when it hit me…. Maybe this is beyond the connection of people in Stink Vally mall. Maybe the eating habits that are portrayed in just a small slice of the world are indicative of how Americans on the whole eat. Maybe this enjoyment of food is so diverse globally, that trying to link such a small part of it without branching out on a much broader spectrum is almost impossible. Maybe the people who eat a greasy petets are so much more tied into the world through food than is understood.
Simply food for thought.