The sites of Itaburito

I didnt have much time to write last week as we were anxious to explore the features of Itaburito, the local town where we go to email and food shop. There are three notable highlights here; the Christ Redemer Statue overlooking the city, ´Bin Ladens tralior´where you can get a mean burger, and the traffic (which even though it is one way, is still harder to cross than any i´ve seen before. They aren´t consistantly fast, but speed up when they think they might be able to maim you.) Since i need all my limbs to carry my backpack, and dont want food poisoning, we decided to go and see the Christ statue with Jeff.

You can see the whole town from the top (which really consists of 3 supermarkets- complete with giggly boys, 27 pharmacies/drug stores, an ice cream bar where you fill your own bowl (go for white chocolate and truffle ice cream with marshmallow sauce!) 13 shops that appear to sell nothing, and a statue of Orsen Wells comemorating the spot where he peed in the

river). It was a great day and on the way back as a treat Jeff took us to meet his Grandma, who kindly served us some cold water which tasted like it had been left in a watering can over night for extra flavour. Xss drank his and mine to be polite.

This week also marks the first time i have wanted to come home. Here they have some spiteful flying ants, who don´t even look before attacking, can sting through heavy duty canvas material and have now managed to get me twice. Both times it hurt a lot (more than a bee sting) and i almost cried but then decided that there was no point. Since these ants come hurtalling towards you from outer space with no warning I can find no way to protect myself from them, and have logically deduced that the only way to stop these meteroic ant attacks is to leave the country. It reminds me of when we were young and True cried because ants got all in her bed, i was a little bemused then, but now i am well on board as a fellow ANT HATER. I mean what do they do anyway, other than collect food for grasshoppers?

The group this weekend were all teenagers whom had a great discussion about whether there is a God etc. Although i had to sit in the corner and listen through translation, it reminded me that i do love teenagers. I love that they havent made their minds up about things yet, i love that if they disagree with your opinions, they are gutsy enough to say so, face-to-face. The kids seemed intelligent and insightful and yet again i marvelled at how children surrounded by such chronic poverty, alcoholism, and downright abuse from such a young age, can be so well balanced and still have their sights set high.

Lastly, the food! We eat at lunch times here, as one great big commune. Everyday there is rice and beans (like baked beans but not as much sugar), and then some massive chunk of meat or something (or on this day, unusually, sausage). They like to eat salt here, and unfortunately the cabbage in the picture below was inedible due to the salt water dressing. In the evenings Xss makes something small for us, or we eat leftovers. A nice thing about the diet here as well, is that it has broken most of my vices straight up. No chocolate, no tea (or cafine) no junk food, not much sugar. The converse is there are only three vegtables, potato, cabbage and onions!

Aims for the year.

I have actually managed to sit down a while ago to write down what my aims for the year were, but then didnt get around to sharing them. And in the absence of anything exciting happening this week i thought i write them here instead. As i began writing the list below i realised just how neeky it is to write objectives for my unrestrained wandering of world, but alas it is me, and i like order.

- To experience new things and have some adventures.
- To get to know Xss better
- To seek God and his purpose for us in the future
- To get back to basics
- To get a suntan
- To grow closer to God and get back into praying and reading my bible everyday.
- To learn a new skill or two.

I think for me the most important one is getting a suntan and i have been working on this regularly. Unfortunately wearing vest tops and working outside has got me an interesting mutli-tonal effect going on. Which is what i was aiming for, as it adds depth to my body.

Really, i am most concerned with (not worried) about seeking Gods purpose in my life. I know that most of you guys are not Chrisitians, but i believe we all have stuff we are supposed to do with our lives. Like being in the right place at the right time to say something encouraging to a stranger, or donating an organ to a certain person. I think that once we have fullfilled our purposed we die and God allows this as it is nicer in Heaven than on earth (however sad it might be for those left behind). However the converse means that i think we are all here for a purpose whether we are fullfilling it today, or whether we are waiting around for a certain task (we are not even aware of) well into our 70´s. I think we can use our lives for good, and want to know what to do with mine. There are unique things that only you can do, as no-one has the passions, talents and life situation that you do. I know i love teenagers, i have experinced eating disorders, i enjoy kickboxing, and i am passionate about chocolate. Now i just need to work out how these combine. As you can tell from my objectives list above i am very methodical, so now i want to know the aim, objectives, quater marks and scoring system.

In other news, i have now managed to have at least three very embarassing conversations with Gabi (Gabriel, male, 22, Brazillian, works on maintaince with me and Ailton). The first took part shortly after i arrived and involved me painstakingly explaining to him that florist and forest were every different words in English and pateintly explaining what a florist was (with actions), whilst smiling immencly, only to find out that Florista is the Brazilian word for forest. shame.

Last week, Gabi and Ailton were talking about ´Jonny be good´, so as i am getting to know them better and better i thought i´d be a bit bold and sung loudly, ´Go Jonny, Go, Go, Go´. At which both men looked at me oddly and continued sweeping leaves. In the quiet confusion afterwards, i could hear Gabi´s radio in his pocket (playing through speakers) playing a song with the words ´Jonny be good´ in, but not the original or anything that resembled the epic Chuck Berry track. They had no idea what i was talking about or why i had shouted ´Go Jonny, go, go, go´! I decided not to talk for the rest of the morning.

The third thing is actually a situation which occurs fairly regularly. Working maintance is very fun, partly becasue it is like being in first school again, trying to sort things out, ´does the yellow circle go with the circles or the yellow things?´ sometimes we sweep dirt off the road, sometimes we sweep the dirt off the dirt? i try to do as the others do and blend in, but sometimes Gabi stops me after i have been furiously sweeping for 10 minutes, and says ´LE, you dont have to do that bit, its clean´. Why do these things happen only when you are trying to be cool and make new friends?

Gabi and Xss. Or Ronaldo and Beckham.

Unfortunately, someone managed to dye Beckham´s t-shirts slightly pink in the wash with a red towel. No-one likes pink on men, but with only 5 t-shirts to his name, it will sufice for football.

Mama Mia here i go again.........1,2,3

We are settling into farm life well now. Xss spends his time on the building site, digging the foundations and making concrete for a terrace of three houses. It is hard work, but harder still because they start work at 7am!!

I am doing all sorts of things; somedays i help the cooks in the big house and others i help with maintanance. My favourite cook is called Luisa and i have managed to establish that she likes ABBA (and introduced her to Take That- Lovely you should be proud!). I managed to find out she likes ABBA through the one phrase we have mastered. Conversations mainly go a bit like this:

Me: You like music?
Luisa: Sim (yes)
A long pause
Me: You like Guns´n´Roses?
Long Pause
Me: You like ABBA?
Luisa: Sim (yes)
Very Long Pause. Luisa starts to peel a carrot
Me: You like carrot? (This has an accompanying point)
Luisa: Nao (no)
She then looks very thoughtful as we both wonder how to develop this conversation. After a lot of thought.
Luisa: You like (points to carrot)?

As you can tell our friendship is coming a long well. We are happiest when washing up to Waterloo, singing along (note some of us dont know the correct words and make noises in certain places - this is not Luisa). The other day i almost had a heart attack as she brought the hose into the house put it on the kitchen floor and turned it on!!! This is how she cleans the kitchen. I have to leave when she does this as my Britishness makes me feel that it is very wrong to have a hose on in the kitchen. Its all dry and clean when i get back. Luisa has reassured me (though a translator) that now i have learnt how to clean well and properly (the Brazilian way) i will be able to earn lots of money when i go back to Brazil. I haven´t the heart to tell her that we prefer cleaning to a moderate level and not having to replace the chairs, plaster and cupboard doors every two years.

I wont bore you with the details of my maintainance duties today as well, but Luisa´s husband Ailton runs that gig, he does not try to understand me but talks at me quite a lot. Sometimes he asks people to translate and they ask me if i know how to rake. Well thats a hard one to answer. I mean who doesnt know how to rake? But then again, is this professional raking and am i getting out of my depth? Well, i´ve been raking most of last week and they havent fired me yet. However, he (and Gabi another mainatiance worker) have both put effort into teaching me how to rake properly. I cant understand the difference so much to their amusement am persevering with my method.

Lastly, Claire (cool British girl we live with) and I went food shopping for the camp on Friday. this involved me buying innumeral vegtables in the veg section in close proximity to two gobsmacked 15 year old boys. I was obviously a curiosity and after 20 minutes of hovering near me he eventually asked if i spoke Portuguese. I´d barely managed to answer in the negative before he scuttled off to his friend to let him know he had spoken to me and that i had the power of speach, albeit a different langauge to him. So i carefully choose my 30 potato´s, 25 tomato´s and 40 onions, etc etc before Claire came back and told me i had the wrong potato´s. I was already paranoid about the fact that i was spending such a long time hanging around the small veg section, but this became even worse when i had to un-bag these 30 potato´s and stack them back up in piles. This was exactly what these boys were doing right next to me. I adventually became paranoid that these people would think i had a mental health problem because to all appearnances i had entered this shop, started hanging around (spending a LONG time) in one place and then was copying what the shop workers were doing, stacking potato´s. Having stacked the 30 potato´s carefully back up (and this takes a while- seriously see how long it takes you to choose 30 nice potato´s next time you are in Tesco´s- its much longer than you think), i then had to move on and choose 30 new potatos from the correct section. I was giggling perfusely by then and quite embaressed. I bet this helped me blend in even more.

Below are some pictures of us trying out the forest activities that the child use at the weekends for team building and problem solving.


The spiders web. Each child has to pass through a different gap and hence some have to be lifted through. Xss is a little scared to the spider here.

The ´air conditioning escape´. Each of the kids has to go through this tyre. The bigger ones have to help the little ones. Getting up there was easy. Getting down again required some thought. P.S you can see my war wounds in this one. The bugs have made it impossible for me to not declare war. I´m still currently losing, but am in for the long game.

Xss demonstrating that it is easy.

Me on the ladder, probably Jacobs ladder, every ladder is called Jacob. You have to move the bamboo slats one after another and pass them to the person in front to make it up the hill. XSS had already fallen off her but pretended it was because he wanted to take a photo.

What we have learned today....

No blog post last week as we went to Ouro Preto on our days off instead of going into town to the office to email. It was lovely. An old town build by slaves during the gold mining days.


This is one of the churches there. I think according to our guide there was sculptor called Alesandro or something who built lots of these churches, but then his arms stopped working and he had to tie chisels to his waist to finish. I think this is bizarre if it is true and imagine he might have been good at hula-hopping. How do you chisel with your waist??


Right is XSS and Rachel and James (a really nice couple who were visiting for 10 days) looking around ´the musuem´. We were given a leaflet which detailed Ínteresting Observations that Visitors Should Take Notice of´. One of these (number 11) was the view out of the window upstairs. Another was the ´structually fake´archway at the back of this photo!

Time is passing pretty quickly and on Tuesday it is not only Brazillian independance day!! but we will have been away a month already. One tenth of our time! So what have we learned.



- Dont stroke dogs, if you do they will think you are best friends for life even if you never stroke them again. This makes walking near them difficult as they walk into trying to get another stroke, or if you go near another dog they start fights.
- Brazillians only have cold running water and think the reason people get food poisioning is not because you are only using a running tap and washing up liquid to wash raw meat things, but because people do not wash the bubbles off well enough afterwards.
- Winter in Latin America means it is lovely during the day and cold at night, they are all awaiting ´summer´ where it rains everyday but is hotter. I am liking winter.
- Once you start a conversation with someone in a langauge you only know 7 words of, it is very hard to stop again because they cant distingish you trying to converse, and you trying to say, í dont know, ermm, well we will have to ask Claire (who speaks porruguese) later´. i think i might have walked off mid conversation several times.
- We are quite good at the pub quiz on the i-touch, and i know a lot about films i´ve never seen.