List of Weird Things Continues

I keep forgetting to add to this and we keep seeing weird things, so I'll just throw them up here periodically. Keep in mind that the degree of weirdness various considerably and these are in no particular order.

1. The other day, as I was crossing the road, I saw what appeared to be two pairs of legs sticking straight up in the air from a passing motorbike. When I looked again, I saw a couple on a motor scooter carrying two female mannequins, split at the waist, torsos roped to the back, legs, upside down, feet facing the sky on the seat between them, as if someone was doing a handstand as they rode down the street.

2. From the bus the other day, I saw a man selling an electronic buffalo toy that walks, and he had it tied to a brick in the middle of the sidewalk, walking around and around and around.

3. The q-tips here have one round end and one really sharp pointed end. We haven't quite figured out what the sharp pointed end is for yet.

4. On Friday evening we were sitting on our balcony watching the action in the street and Steven noticed a man sitting on the street near to the sidewalk with his legs stretched out in front of him, a baby laying along his thighs, its head down by his knees. The man had shoes on his hands and was obviously paralyzed from the waist down. He was scooting himself backwards by lifting himself up with his arms, reaching backwards and then dragging his lower half along to come to rest next to his hands. He stopped to rest often, between each five or so "steps." As he scooted along the road, the baby is his lap shook with the movement, but did not otherwise move. The baby looked plump and healthy, but I am still not convinced that it was alive. Steven thinks it was just asleep. He had a hat sitting on his ankles, anchored by his feet and people came up and put money in the hat as he made his way down the street. It was one of the strangest and saddest things we have seen here so far. Surprisingly we haven't seen that many people begging in the street here. There are a few guys with no legs, walking around on their hands in the tourist districts asking for money and once I saw a child sleeping on the sidewalk in the middle of the day, but I see more people begging on the streets of Atlanta, Austin and Lake Worth, than I have here. But we haven't been here that long...

5. Last night, I was sitting on the couch typing up Steven's lessons as he created them from the book from his seat at the dining table. From my seat on the couch, I can look up directly at our front door. As I was typing, I noticed movement in the corner of my eye and saw what appeared to be the curved end of a black hanger being pushed under our door. I froze as, in my mind, I pictured one of our neighbors kneeling on the ground outside peering under our door, trying to hook our doormat with the end of their hanger. In the few seconds that I conjured this image, I remained staring at the hanger and then noticed that it wasn't a hanger at all but the black tail of a big rat. I immediately said to Steven, "Steven, there is a rat eating our garbage and its tail is poking under our door. Steven, a rat. There is a RAT!" Steven jumped into action, saying, "I see it!" and running up to bang on the door to scare it away. He waited a second and then opened the door, broom in hand, petrified wife watching from the hallway and snatched up the bag of trash we had left outside the door before shutting the door. "We won't be doing that again," he said, as he moved the trash to a corner of our living room.