Observations # 3

1. I am adventurous and like the outdoors etc.. but when it comes to somethings I am a total city girl. I think that coming closer to our food is great in theory. We would probably eat much much more healthy if we had to face our food in it's more natural form or slaughter it ourselves however-I DON'T WANT TO SEE THE HEAD ON MY FISH OR MY BEEF OR ANYTHING ELSE FOR THAT MATTER. I don't want my eggs to be brown and fresh and taste like the smell of a chicken-the further from that the better in my opinion. I don't like my milk raw and gamey. If fact I don't like milk at all really-but water just doesn't cut it on cereal :) I normally love my food to be fresh but not THAT fresh. I don't want it to moo or baa or oink when it is served to me and I don't want it RAW! OK with the exception of some sushi. I love that when we order fish and seafood here it tastes so fresh but to see it in the market and to take it home and cook it that way ??? I just don't see me doing that. The eggs here are all brown and yucky looking on the outside and I cooked some up this morning and you would have thought I was pregnant. I couldn't stand the smell of them. Then I found out later that the white pepper I put front the hotel shaker smells like a BARNYARD-SERIOUSLY! I couldn't eat this morning at all. I felt like throwing up. So now I don't know how much of it was the eggs and how much of it was the pepper-

2. The water is SO beautiful here.

3. It is really hard for Ethne to sleep in such a tiny place.

4. there aren't really any salads in the restaurants here-weird.

5. There is no fast food here which is good but there aren't really any healthy options that are in the take aways either. I am going to either have to be very good at planning or find some healthy alternatives to the high fat high sodium foods on the go here. OR I could always starve I guess :) Speaking of eating healthy we will have to get back on course as soon as we find a place to live and can cook again.

6. You can't steam rice in a tiny pot on a stove burner that boils everything over even on the lowest setting-burned undercooked rice is really yucky.

7. This place is really behind the times when it comes to a lot of things. But it seems they are ahead in a few.
examples: their cell phone plans are really lame. They are like ours were in America about 10 years ago. Most people actually have prepaid minutes. Also their Internet is based on usage. You pay a monthly fee and you can only use so many MB and then you either have to get cut off, pay for more or be dropped into a slower bracket-like satellite Internet in the USA. One thing they have here that I haven't seen yet in the USA is...chips in the credit and debit cards so that they can not be duplicated by swindlers. Every time you buy something with your card you swipe it and then stick it inside the machine so it can read the chip and authenticate. Kinda cool-

8. Garrett says they put meat in bread and it is really good :)

9. Not only does everyone smoke here but all the used cars smell like smoke-shoot!

10. This is a city of 300,000 plus people but it doesn't feel at all crowded. Fun!
More later-