Lola

My life just got a little more exciting. In addition to the turtle, fish and snails, I now have a baby squirrel to take care of. Her name is Lola, or Lolita, and she was given to me as a birthday present by one of my friends. She an her two sisters had fallen out of their nest. Fortunately, squirrels are not uncommon pets in Nicaragua unlike in the U.S. where it's dangerous and illegal. She is about three weeks old and hasn't even opened her eyes yet. I'm feeding her baby formula out of a syringe which she grabs with her two little hands. Once she's bigger she will eat fruit and nuts and hopefully not my clothes.

My efforts to catch up my lower level community class with the other group are going slowly. We spent two weeks reviewing the material we had learned before I went home in December and they finally took, and did rather poorly on, the test we didn't have time to do before the break. Now we just have two new topics to cover but it's been thwared so far by no one showing up to class and now by the patron saint fesivities in town. I'll get the two groups combined and the new one started eventually...

Arturo, my deaf former bodybuilding champion friend from the gym, has been bringing me a loaf of fresh bread every night ever since I saw him with one and asked where he got it because it looked good. He showed me where and proceeded to bring it to me for the past three nights. The bread drop off is obviously not just a drop off. He sits down and we talk for a while...well, more like he talks for a while. He is deaf and mute and it's somehow really hard to get a word in during a conversation. He's really nice so I usually just let him blab but last night he didn't leave until 11pm! When he was leaving I told him he was going to make me fat with all the bread. He agreed and said he'd just come on Thursdays.

Back to Nicaragua

I got back safely and fairly easily to Nicaragua. I was dreading the 4 buses I had to take from the airport to my house with two big duffel bags but everyone was really helpful. Two of the four bus drivers drove me further than the last stop once everyone had gotten off to take me closer to where I needed to be, the last of which was in my town- the bus driver dropped me off at the gate to my house!

When I got home I unloaded all of my bags for the very eager neighborhood kids. The mother of two of the kids who my neighbor takes care of sent me a big package of toys to bring back for them. I felt a little bit like Santa unloading everything. After that I spent a solid two hours cleaning my place. It was covered in dirt and dust (December, January and February are really windy months here) since the houses here are not airtight and sealed up like they are in the US. The next day I spent 6 hours making the rounds and visiting all my friends and my host family...it's impossible to stop by for a quick hello. I had to sit down, and eat or drink something and catch up on all the local news with everyone.

On Tuesday I left again to go to a Peace Corps workshop at a resort on a beach, where I am currently. It's really nice here and I've been enjoying the beach in the mornings when I go for runs but the day is filled with lots of talks and activities. Our Nicaraguan counterparts were here for part of it (only Ana came, though Scarlett said she was going to) and seemed to really enjoy it. I'll get back to my site tomorrow.

Monday I am going to start up with my lower level community class. I'm going to teach them the few topics that they need in order to catch up with the more advanced class so we can combine them into one conversation group. With the two nights/week I'll now have free during the year, I'm going to start up another group from the beginning again because I've been receiving a lot of requests for a new course.

School doesn't officially start until February 15th. This year is an electoral year (elections in November) so we have been told to expect more affectations to our classes than last year...should be interesting based on how much school was missed last year.