My dearest friends and family,

I hope this finds you all well!! It has been a while since my last email, but no worries I have accumulated a couple of awkward stories for your reading pleasure!

Firstly, my family came to visit me!! We spent a week traveling around Nicaragua visiting all my favorite spots. It was a lot of fun! The Barr clan took on Nicaragua like a champ! Also, any of them can be reached if you are considering a trip down to Nicaragua and need to hear the AMAZING reviews of their trip. Remember all visitors receive a free tour guide! And I happen to think I am a fabulous tour guide! Just throwing it out there!

I recently got a kitten! His name is Levi and he is the love of my life! He looks exactly like a miniature tiger and based on his love of the sneak attack/biting game, I believe he is under the impression that he is, in fact, a tiger. I originally was anit-kitten. Yeah they are cute and cuddly, but I am a hard core dog person and I wasnt sure how the switch up would go. But I went to one of my schools and the students there had this really cute kitten. So naturally I played with him and fell in love. Still I was not convinced that I wanted to take him home. But it turns out 3rd graders can be pretty convincing. After like 20 minutes of me telling them no, they were like, "Caroling (the way they say/spell my name here) if you dont take him home he is going to die! You dont want him to die do you?" I was like yall, I think that may be a bit over-dramatic, but they continued to recount the many kittens that had come before and how they had all met a tragic end due to some unknown kitten killer animal. So naturally, I now have a kitten. He is a ball of energy. Wakes up at 5:30 every morning and loves to play. His favorite game other than the sneak attack is shoving his entire nose in my left nostril. It is neither a game I understand, nor particularly enjoy. And its always the left nostril, never the right. Its very odd. I am still not sure how I feel about. Maybe he will grow out of it?

The bad thing was that I decided to take home this brand new, confused, and scared kitten the same day that the Ambassador of the US here in Nicaragua was going to visit me. So I come home carrying this crying kitten to find 2 security personnel outside of my house needing to have a quick walk around my town to make sure there weren´t any security risks. So around my town I went with a screaming kitten with two very large men wearing guns. I got some weird looks from the townies. The ambassadors visit went well. He did accidentally step on my poor Levi, which sent him into a frenzy again, but other than that it went very smoothly! He gave out baseballs (which I was not pleased about. I hate when people come in and just give stuff away for free. It totally goes against everything I am doing here!), checked out the library and school, my school vegetable garden, and tree nursery. He talked to some of the people and declared himself a big fan of my town. Yay for my town! There is even an official picture of me, the ambassador, and Levi that both the embassy and Peace Corps have. We are famous! Kinda.

So here comes the awkward! I am currently trying to raise money to buy plastic tubes to hang a volleyball net we have. We were donated a net, balls, and knee pads, but have no place for the kids to hang it up, nor play. So a couple of girls and I are hosting random events to raise money to buy said postes. So the other day, we had a game night that included popping balloon races. You know, when you have to pop a balloon with your butt and its relay style. However, here in Nicaragua, they pop the balloons with their butts while sitting on the lap of someone else. Lord knows how, but somehow I was peer pressured by a group of 15 year olds to participate in this game. I still have no idea why I agreed. None the less, they were like Caroling! We have someone for you to play with! So I was like whatever, lets do it. Turns out it is the guy the whole town wants me to marry, take to the states, and reproduce multiple times with. Like thats not at all awkward. And to make matters worse, I had to pop multiple balloons on this guys lap while a group of 11 year olds were watching. Including his sister. Insert awkward dance here. I was mortified. Awful, absolutely awful. So after this dreadful display has ended I am relieved and go sit down. But no! The dance competition portion has started. I would now like you all to flash back to any junior high dance you ever went to. This was my next 30 minutes. I had 2 high school students trying to con me into dancing with the same guy in the most obvious, embarrassing ways ever. And this, I told myself, is why you cant be friends with 15 year olds. I have no idea if I was actually able to portray the awkwardness of this moment in the email, but let me remind you once again, it was a stage 50 awkward.

So that is all for now! I miss you all and cant wait to see you!!!!