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.