The Air We Breathe

We got to see Juliana for a few seconds yesterday - we had to run by the orphanage to get paperwork.  She lit up like a Christmas tree when she saw Kelly. Kelly got to hold her for a few seconds.  I only got to see her through the glass (she was already back in her crib at that point).  We will be doing paperwork the next couple days, we will keep our constituents updated by blog as much as possible.  Right now there is a good chance that we will get the children Friday or Saturday.

-----

The people over here do not have "Do not litter" as part of their social understanding.  Yes, there are trash cans in the downtown area.  Yes, people use them.  However - people think nothing of just throwing trash out of their cars.  They think nothing about just dropping litter on the ground.  Even in the nicer parts of this city there is an impressive amount of garbage on the ground.  While traveling by train, there are large piles of garbage occasionally and almost a continual string of small litter (cans, cigarette butts, paper, etc).  The trains actually have a sign on some of the windows that is a bottle going out the window.  There is no slash mark on the picture - you are actually encouraged to throw the bottles out the window because it saves space in the (singular) waste can on the train carriage.  The toilets on the train also dump human waste straight onto the track.  The air pollution is impressive also.  Factories pour heavy smoke into the air.  There are no emissions controls on the automobiles either.  The air quality is lousy and our nasal mucous is very dark.

All the restaurants allow smoking.  In the restaurants there are "no smoking sections".  These are often populated by smokers.  In any case, a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a pool.  Every time we go to a restaurant we spend the next day congested due to the large amounts of smoke.

While we sometimes fuss about government regulations and controls - living in a county that doesn't have some of these environmental controls has been eye-opening.