fostering and touristing

We finally found Flora Segunda Panqueques a home that doesn't involve waking us up four times a night to bark at phantoms outside!!! She's gone to the home of a cousin of our pseudo landlord down in San Luis. He had already met her at soccer that happens on the soccer field in our yard every weekend, so he knew he liked her. We don't know him, but we're pretty sure he's going to be good to her, based on the opinion of the daughter of the pseudo landlord. The relief is sort of overwhelming, although it's accompanied by a realization that Toast will be expecting a lot more from us for a while until she is reaclimated to being an only dog again. And then we're going on vacation on Sunday.

My mom is here and we're planning a trip to Nicaragua. It should pretty much be awesome. Over the past couple of days we've gone to the Orchid Garden, the Renario (frog pond) and learned how to make tamales at a massive tamale making extravaganza today. My mom's favorite frog red eyed tree frog. She liked how colorful it was - it has seven colors - blue, white, red, yellow, green, orange, and black. Here is a picture of one that we did not take. We went as dusk was coming on and got to hear them begin to call to each other. It was not quite cacaphonous. Oh, and there was a fancy dinner and the requisite trip to the farmer's market on Saturday. It's been a little weird to finally be a tourist here when we've been living here for four months. My mom says one of her highlights was that I got to play at the open house that was happening at the yoga studio. It was fun to play with Michael and I got to meet the local Italian who plays lots of different flutes and goes by his sanskrit name. It was a good time and there are potentially options to have a music night at Rio Shanti which would appeal, methinks, to the more laid back musician that is me. Sitting on the floor in a yoga studio is certainly laid back.

The orchid garden was amazing too. We wandered about a little bit before getting a tour and walked past most of the flowers that were pointed out to us on the tour. It always makes me happy to learn new stuff and I know my bio background is weak, but it was fun to expand a little. Here's a picture of my mom with some of the orchids that were growing in the greenhouse part of the orchid garden . Oh, and I forgot to mention that my student's family runs it so my mom got to meet one of my kids. We've been running into students all over the place. Makes me happy.

Sometime in the future I'll put up some pictures and commentary about our coffee tour. My friend Carol saved the day with some batteries when my mom's ran out in her camera.