i asked the man in blue if he could take our photo under the tree. 

we had a weird exchange:

man (in an excited voice): you kazakhstan?

me: no?

man (still excited): uzbekistan?

me: no?

he then took our photo, went back to his store, back to hanging out with his friends who were sitting in a little room getting drunk in the early afternoon. as i was walking to the car to grab the roadmap, the gang of men stopped me and asked, "you korean? no!?" they then sat me down and poured me a drink. we all ended up hanging out with them as they fed us hard-boiled eggs, korean pancakes and popsicles. this is how we ended our trip....hanging out with some koreans who laughed a lot and just wanted to feed a bunch of foreigners, even if we weren't from kazakhstan.