where the wild things are

my little girl, she fell asleep on my shoulder the first night
Originally uploaded by faithful nomad.

this morning laura and i actually ordered room service and watched animal planet in spanish over breakfast. i learned a lot about keeping monkeys as house pets, which is a topic of great interest around these parts :) and i'm noticing that i can understand a lot more spanish than i can speak. which is even more frustrating when i can get what someone's asking me but that doesn't mean i can respond to them.

we spent a lot of the morning waiting. we found our travel buddies, then went to return our rental cars. we met up with some friends of Global Connections who accompanied us to the orphanage. they were very interesting to speak to, they're from the states but have been in Nicaragua for years and through the revolution. we headed over to the orphanage from the rental joint and were dropped off rather abruptly, but that was probably for the best so we could concentrate on the kids.

we totally jumped right in. after a tour of the grounds, we horsed around for a while and then went over to unpack. we were housed in a cabin about a quarter mile from the main campus where the kids played, ate, and slept. after unpacking, we had a little dinner and wandered back over to the kids, which became kind of the routine: to yo-yo ourselves between the cabin and the campus. we ate and slept in our cabin, and the four of us (brad, jonothan, laura, and i) just hung out in the mornings and evenings. it was fantastic to be around these people.

so let's remind ourselves that at this point, monday night, it was probably 85 degrees in the shade. so what do we do? we build a bonfire with the orphans. that's right. let's create a source of heat to dance around - we're already dripping with sweat, what's another fifteen degrees? it's all good. so brad pulls out his guitar and the kids got a nice concert. brad sounded great, the kids were excited, and about two songs into the show a little peanut that had to be about four years old just climbed into my lap and fell asleep on my shoulder as though i'd always been there just for her.

we slipped out the back while the kids were dancing and threaded our way through the mango trees to our cabin. we slept in bunk beds, the boys in one room and the girls in the other.