Day 19

Today, like yesterday, I spent most of my day at Free Flight making ice cream in the ice cream store :) I have been feeling pretty great about life here this week, and my appetite has been much better, which means I've had more energy and have been able to do more than just watch other people do the hard work of making ice cream. Before, I have mostly helped with making popsicles, which involves more people and is a lot easier and more straightforward.

Yesterday and today it was just Catherine and I, so there was plenty to do but we both had company and the time went by pretty quickly. This morning Ivan (the director at Free Flight) brought a visitor in to the ice cream store to say hi, but the machines were very loud so I had SUCH a difficult time hearing the man's name, but I finally managed to repeat it and say "prazer" (nice to meet you!). This incident sparked a joke between Catherine and I about being an unpaid worker in a country where I don't speak the language. This led us to a conversation about health and safety regulations - we had to bend over a lot when the milk was delivered, because it comes in 200 1 litre bags, and they had to be moved from crates on the floor into a deep freezer. I said that WorkSafe would probably insist that we have tables for the crates so that we don't strain our backs. In order to put our Canadian stamp on the icecream store, we came up with a safety policy that before one person can plug in the machine that freezes the ice cream mix, the other person has to have their hands safely placed on the two corners of the machine, nowhere near any moving parts. This safety policy was little comfort, however, when a man came to fix one of our freezers. I'm not sure what was broken, but fixing it involved some soldering and also propane, and Catherine and I were imagining the news stories back in Canada if we were both killed in an ice cream factory explosion in Brazil.

Anyways, yesterday was a proud day for me because I knocked my first mango out of a tree - other times Brasilians have always gotten them for me. I love mangos... Eu gosto de manga!Today also had a bit of a highlight in that Catherine and I stopped at a grocery/general store on the walk up to Free Flight this morning, and I bought some lotion and nail polish, so my skin feels great and my toenails are painted! Definitely worth the R3.50 :)ALSO I finally have some pictures of horses and carts! I don't know why they make me so happy since I've seen at least one pretty much every day for the last two weeks, but they do make me happy, so I will share :)And lastly, a creature from the walk to Free Flight - Catherine saw it and bravely put her hand beside it so you can see how big and fat it is. Definitely cooler and tougher than the slugs we have in Canada!