“We're horribly mundane, aggressively mundane individuals. We're the ninjas of the mundane, you might say.”

Hey all!!

It's been a while, I think that I am currently still trying to get back into some sort of routine after the camps in July, there are so many things that we are trying to get done and to sort out that have taken up a lot of my time, so yet again I find myself apologizing. Sorry! Having said that there is so much to say, that really there is little that I can think of, if you really understand what I mean...everything and nothing to tell you all. So maybe this time I will tell you some of the things that I have been noticing around me in Brazil, that have made me stop and think, and really don't have much to do with our project but that you might find interesting....

Kites.

What is it about Kites that make them some sort of universal form of entertainment, I had kind of forgotten about kites as I grew up, but I can also remember playing with them as a kid, but as I grew up the only place I thought about kites when I was teaching kids their ABC's it seems to be the most common thing that people put for K that and kangaroo, but I think that that's too hard for kids to stay, so kite it was. In any case, recently kites seem to have been on my mind, I read the kiterunner and then saw the movie, and I remembered how in Canada the thing to do on a saturday was to go to this hill somewhere and show off your kites and people had kites of ALL kinds made of all sorts of material, and special kite flying clothes and high tech gear, as you can imagine that an extreme sport nation like that would have. Then you think about how kites are a big thing in the far east as well, all difficult shaped ones like dragons and....dragonflies... so things dragon related I guess. In any case, my point is, that just like teenagers problems, kiteflying seems to be a universal pass time.

Here, pass time, might be a little bit of an under exaggeration as it seems that they have become addicted to it. ANd I have learnt all sorts of things about kiteflying, such as, you need to put ground up glass and glue on the line, so that when you are 'fighting' in the air, you can cut someone's string down more easily - once a kite it let loose, or cut loose, where ever it lands it is finders keepers, so it is not unheard of for the whole territory of kids to be running after one kite, the other day we had at least 5 kite sightings at the project which meant that we lost the whole of the male population under 25 of the project for 20 minutes at a time when they chased flying kites through the neighbourhood. Also, they haven't a clue about spatial perception, so when a kite is blatantly not going to land anywhere near the 5km radius, they are still running after it!!! Or maybe that isn't bad spatial perception, maybe that is just wishful thinking, that all of us could do with. But I guess the thought of running 2km for a kite made of bamboo and tissue paper doesn't inspire those feelings in me.

Also this morning, rather this DAWN when I got up to go to the Cha project I went to pick up one of our teenagers on the way, and while at his house, half a sleep (more than that really) and i found myself staring at a birdcage with two birds in it, that were facing each other, really close, so that their curved beaks were almost touching, and one of the birds, the fatter one, was chattering away at the other one, in a long stream of tweets that just did not end, until I pulled my head off the wall that I was leaning it on, and I think that it startled her, and so the chattering stopped...for about 10 seconds,...and then started again at an even more a rapid speed...It made me smile...seemed somehow very human. We used to have birds at the house, but dad let one go by mistake and then the other one died of loneliness (read toxic water - it was green) and then we received another, as a present, and I think that fatima had had enough of cleaning cages out, so she let it go by 'accident' but then that one refused to leave and made a home in Hannahs room. It eventually disappeared. Maybe it's better that way. It's easier to nap when there isn't a bird chattering into your ear. But still, birdsong in the morning....

It has taken me a lifetime to write this short piece whilst at the project in Cha, mainly because of facebook chat, and the teens angling in to see pictures of men in skirts (they can't believe it) and my lesson is about to start. SO I'm off. I'm well, happy and well fed! Would love to hear from you guys.

Love.

Emma

title quote: alan partridge