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.