What Did Cruella Do Today?

Today, for International Business Transactions, we went on a favela tour.

What do International Business Transactions have to do with a favela? I have no clue either. I would have rather gone and seen a law firm, or a steel mill, or a container ship, or - you know, something to do with International Business Transactions. I can see smelly poor people at home. I do not need to travel thousands of miles to do so. I certainly didn't learn anything about International Business Transactions. I did engage in an International Business Transaction, I suppose, when I bought Robin a shell necklace and a magnet shaped like an ass.

Really.

However, like the little girl in Thurber who found that some book taught her more about penguins than she ever wanted to know, the favela tour taught me more about the political system of the favela and Brazil than I really wanted to know.

Actually, y'all know how I was complaining that this apartment is not cheap nor cheerful? The favela was cheap and cheerful. And it did not smell bad; in fact, quite the opposite, as people seemed to be cooking many delicious things.

There was a long diatribe- actually- many long diatribes about how if you don't mess with the drug dealers, they won't mess with you, and all the violence is inter-drug dealer related, and I thought, that is just like home.

Actually, the highlight of the trip was that we saw a tiny, squirrel-like monkey on an overhead wire.

"If that thing jumps on me, I'm going to scream like a girl," Braxton commented.

O really. "Now I have something to anxiously anticipate," I said, but I was sadly disappointed. No monkey jumped on him, or anyone else, and no one screamed like a girl.

Also various acts of violence were committed against cones by motorists.