Friends

Last week was nothing short of fantastic. I got the chance for two completely separate areas of my life to cross -home and here. Home came in the form of a 5 foot and a few centimeters tall friend that decided to take a vacation down to Nicaragua. Her name is Caroline. She is one of those individuals who got bit by the Wanderlust bug a few years back and has been sick with the travel fever ever since. What a wonderful ailment!

Caroline is one of those people that I would consider an amazing friend - and I am one of those people that I would also consider an amazing friend to Caroline. Let me give you two examples of events that happened during the week that fully illustrate those bold statements.

1. Why I am an amazing friend:

So I couldn't sware by this, but I would venture to say that almost all of us human beings have things that scare us, sometimes even to the point where we develop a phobia of those things. For the past several years Caroline has developed an almost phobia of winged creatures, namely birds. She has been the victim of several angry birds on various occasions which has lead to this almost phobia of them. Last Monday I took her to the Zoo -it's one of the projects we are partnering with. I started out the day being kind enough to wake her up at 5:30 in the morning so that we could be out the door by 6 a.m. Before we got there the decision fell on me to choose where we were going to work. At that point we had only been rotating between three different stations 1. the bodega -it's where the food for the animals is prepared, 2. the Mariposario - it's a butterfly garden and i think this place might be the definition of tranquility 3. The Centro de Rescate - it's the part of the zoo that works with abused animals. They are in the process of rehabilitation so that at some point they can be released back into the wild. In the Rescue Center there are about 20 monkeys, 1 sloth, 6 squirrels, 2 jaguarundi, 5 animals whose names I cannot pronounce, and about 200 birds of various shapes, colors, and sizes.

Any guess which one I chose for Caroline to work at? A nominal friend would have probably have chosen the butterfly garden or the food prep area. I am not a nominal friend. I am a friend that was concerned about her overcoming her almost phobia and as such I chose the place where that was most likely to happen. She fed the birds, cleaned their cages, swept their rooms, and even made friends with one or two of them to the point where the birds would follow her around in their cages. I am patting my back right now for having helped her take that first and often times difficult step in over coming our fears.

2. Why Caroline is an amazing friend:

A couple of weeks ago I saw a picture on facebook of a dewberry cobbler prepared by one of my uncles. If I could have fit the computer screen in my mouth I probably would have. It looked tasty. -Did you know that Cobbler doesn't exist as an option on the dessert menu almost anywhere in latin america?-

So I made a cobbler. There aren't berries, peaches, or apricots to be found anywhere in Nicaragua, so I settled on the next best thing - mangos. I made the filling first and I think I did more than a half way decent job on it if I do say so. Then came the pastry. I made it, and it looked pretty and it even smelled quite nice. Then came the taste test. It was...good...ok...not bad...mediocre. Well the filling was dang good but the pastry would have been hard to give away. I ate it anyway, but it was far from what I remember eating back home in Texas.

A nominal friend would have tried it and said "wow josh, that is really good"

Caroline tried it and said something to the effect of "you should have added more sugar and butter, it doesn't taste right." HA! that my dear friends is a nugget of truth not clothed in even a thread of flattery! Nope, you couldn't mistake that for a compliment in a million years! and she was right, it didn't taste right. Cheers to good friends!

Hasta prontito hermanita!