Clavito and Telica

So since we have written last, Hannukah, Christmas and New Years have all passed. We would like to wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year. Our Christmas was much different than any Christmas we have had before. Here they celebrate Christmas Eve more than Christmas day. We ate a meal of Gallina Rellena, or stuffed chicken for dinner with the entire family. Many family members were gone visiting family in Managua and Costa Rica, but many others came from elsewhere to be here as well. There were piñatas all around the town on Christmas Eve. Each neighborhood set up a piñata on a street corner and the kids got to play and make a mess. It was fun for them because the candy from the piñata was probably the only Christmas present they would get. Christmas day was just like any other day here. We called all of our family back home and felt pretty homesick after because everyone was together and happy!

The days following Christmas we began moving into our new house. We painted for a few days, which really did the house a lot of good. We live in a little place with the bedroom and sala (living room) indoors, and the kitchen and bathroom outside. It’s perfect for us. We share a giant yard with our neighbors and their two dogs. One of the dogs stays tied up all day, because he is bravo (mean). One morning when we were still moving in we came by really early, and the dog wasn’t tied up. Well, he saw me standing in his yard and took a mean dash toward me so fast that I only had time to scream before he bit me! He got me right on the calf. I was lucky because I happened to be wearing jeans that day (which is really rare for me to do in this weather, but we were planning on traveling to a colder place later in the day). He didn’t break the skin, but gave me a good enough scare that I started to cry in front of the entire family who came out to watch! So now that dog stays tied up ALL the time but I still sneak a cautious look his way quite often!

In a period of just a week and a half we found and lost a cute little kitten, and acquired a dog! The kitten found us one night at our host family’s house. Its owners had left for a Christmas trip and forgot about it. They never fed it anyway, so we adopted it. We bought it food, cuddled with her and named her Telica (after the volcano we can see from our town). We left on vacation for New Years for 4 days and when we came back we were told that the three ugly short dogs that live there ate her. We were pretty sad about that news. She was such a sweet little cat! So now we have a box of Super Gato and no one to eat it. The grandmother of the host family has a cat that just had two kittens that are so young their eyes are still closed. She told us yesterday that we can have one when they are ready. So today we went over there and she told us that the dogs ate one of them this morning. Now we are banking on this one remaining kitten to survive the dogs. It will be a miracle if we can ever get a cat! Mason has never wanted to kill an animal as bad as he wants to kill those three dogs. They really have no endearing qualities at all.

Clavito is finally with us here in Malpaisillo. Now that we live on our own, we are able to have a dog. He has adjusted really well to his new life, and we’re really enjoying making a spectacle of ourselves walking him around town on a leash! All the little kids yell out his name when they see him coming. They love him because he’s manso (friendly) which is really rare for dogs around here! We took him on three different buses to get him here. That was an adventure in itself! People here are generally afraid of dogs (rightly so, if you ask me) so you can imagine how happy they were to have him near them on an overcrowded bus!

We’re loving having our own place, and we’re quickly realizing how much work it is to keep it clean. Fighting with the dust of Nicaragua is not a good idea! Yesterday when I was sweeping I found a dead tarantula on the floor! It was really cool. Mas and I spent the entire day washing clothes and cleaning the house. We think we’ll have to devote an entire day a week strictly to house work! A lot of the work is splashing buckets of water on the street to keep down the dust. Little things like that really add up!

We had a nice New Years trip in Granada. We met up with our good friends from our group who we hadn’t seen since swearing in. It was a good time, but we were really happy to get back to our new house and friends in Malpaisillo. Thanks for reading this long entry, and take care!!!