meow

what a week.

vanderbilt had all of thanksgiving week off, so 9 good-hearted college students decided to miss out on turkey day and football in the good ol' US of A and came to visit us here in managua. it was a whirlwind of trips to the grocery store, good conversations with new faces, tours of managua and our programs at el farito. the group kindly brought us a suitcase of requested canned and packaged thanksgiving ingredients, and we cooked for two days and had a killer turkey day party (erin's parents and kathy august handled the two turkeys for us). 40 gringos and nicas arrived and sat out in our pool house and ate themselves silly- my mom's stuffing recipe, hand-mashed potaoes, green bean casserole, candied yams, home-made mac and cheese, and tessa's four perfect pumpkin pies. all of our hammocks and couches were occupied for all hours of the afternoon with victims of the food coma. it was beautiful.

meanwhile, my life has been commandeered by four furry little noise-makers that we found outside of our room in the laundry area two saturdays ago. a momma cat birthed her babies on top of a suitcase and got scared away by all of our noise. enter julie. my mother can never let an abandoned animal go lonely and hungry, no matter how many times she's told us we can't have another cat or get a dog. it must be in my blood to go out of my way to be inconvenienced by saving the lives of sick, helpless animals. so in the past week, i've been to the vet three times, with questions and sick kitties (once with "solo gas"). we've all been trading off getting up in the middle of the night and dropping what we're doing during the day to give a syringe-full of infant formula to the kittens. it is extremely annoying and incredibly cute. today the vet told us we need to be feeding them a lot more often, which worries me because even every two hours is too often for us with our classes to teach and meetings to hold and groceries to buy.

needed: cat nanny. no qualifications necessary. just clean hands and talent with a syringe. also tolerance of incessant mewing. will pay in pineapples.

we're almost done with el farito classes. next week, rehearsals for our creative arts holiday performance.

i'm at an internet cafe, looking at a heart-breaking central american sunset. life is beautiful and full of cute kitties and sweet children and good friends.