A Bit of Culture For You

Please don't be upset with me...but if you sent me a letter or something else, my mom just informed me that the address i gave her was incorrect. i'm so sorry! i don't know if this was my mistake or my organization's. in any case, i'll have to visit the post office to see if anything can be recovered. if not, someone else is probably enjoying whatever you sent.

i'd like to share a few more interesting things about life here. first, i forgot to mention that i often pass by this outdoor meat "market" place every morning. i think i never write about this b/c i desperately try to block it from my mind. picture a muddy parking lot with pick up trucks everywhere. on the truck beds are huge slabs of meat, or usually the entire animal after it has been skinned. and then walking around are guys carrying these huge pieces of meat on their back...typically an entire skinned cow looking all red and yummy! it's less the raw meat that bothers me, but the sanitary conditions. it looks really unclean around there. and i think about the fact that meat that i eat could very well have come from there. it's best not to think about where things come from sometimes. ignorance is bliss!

also in the mornings, we often pass this garbage dump. there is trash all over the sidewalk and all over an open field of land. the concept of burying trash doesn't exist. what really gets to me is that there are always people walking through the trash...looking for things, i'd assume. and the smell is overwhelming above all. the other thing that often happens with trash is that it is burned in the most random places. you'll drive down the street and see huge black smoke. at first i would think something is wrong. but no, they're just burning stuff right on the sidewalk.

a funny one--there are people paid to specifically control parking violations. they wear yellow shirts that say on the back "corruption is evil parking attendant." i hardly think that parking is the corruption problem that people need to be worried about.

then we have the traffic police. they carry these baton like things that essentially act as a whip...they stand by the bus station and hit the buses, as if they're whipping an animal, when they want the bus to move. it makes these loud obnoxious beating sound. dominic said someone should sue them for the way they treat the buses. sillyness. also, did i mention there are hardly any traffic lights in the city. i honestly think brookville has more. and thus there are major problems with traffic. there are tons of roundabouts everywhere and the cars simply force their way in.