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!