angry snake in the outhouse!

I unfortunately forgot my camera when I walked up here today, which is too bad because this is the first day of internet access after a long hiatus of non-responsive servers. However, we are finally going to Managua to see our friend Molly tomorrow, who is coming to live in this area for the next year ... so we will have fast internet and we can upload lots of píctures.

So as the title of this entry implies, I saw my first snake so far in Nicaragua, in the most unfortunate of situations. I had gone to the outhouse at night, which is absolutely not my favorite things to do but sometimes, you know, its necessary. So after shining the flashlight all over the place (I thought) I felt comfortable enough to sit down, and a few seconds later I happened to point the flashlight into the corner nearest to me and there is a snake coiled around a post, with its head sticking up and darting out back and forth in my direction!!! Most people reading this probably know that I am quite terrified of snakes - I was so startled that I jumped up, obviously, and after deliberating for a few seconds about grabbing the toilet paper the snake started moving towards me and lashing its head out back and forth SO unfortunately for my dignity, I ran out of the outhouse with my pants still around my knees ... luckily only Elvin was around, but as you can imagine the whole event was pretty hilarious. Hopefully that will be the only snake I encounter.

Otherwise things have been good here, I have been realizing that I am a fairly pathetic manual-labor worker, which I have been (hopefully) making up for with less arduous/domestic tasks like sweeping and cleaning and cooking. I am constantly humbled by the amount of work the employees here do, especially those who work with the reforestation project and walk up and down this uphill trail 15 to 20 times a day in the hot sun. Elvin was helping one of the workers for a while today, and came back absolutely drenched with sweat - he was amazed that he was carrying one avocado sapling and just barely making it up the hill each time, and the guy he was working with was carrying six! Neither one of us is used to this kind of work, thats for sure.