My New Best Friend

I would like to take a moment to introduce everyone to my new best friend in Nicaragua.

This is Cristian. He is 3 years old and I spend the majority of my free time with him nowadays. Mostly he wanders around my room, asks me what every single item is used for, looks at my pictures, plays with my ipod and computer, and is all around adorable. He now knows the names of my brothers, my dog, and my friends who are featured frequently in pictures (although he does get confused sometimes and as a default refers to all of my friends as Jenny, even my site mate, who is called Lilia).

Whenever I find myself out of town for a day or two, I look forward to coming home because I know, as soon as I open the squeaky gate to my patio, Cristian will come running forward, calling my name and asking me where I was. He may be one of the main reasons I have lost some of my initial desire to find a house to rent. I am pretty comfortable with my host family and know I would miss his constant companionship.

Whenever we have nothing to do, I quiz him on colors or numbers. Counting still frustrates him a lot, but he sure knows his colors. I want to teach him the alphabet, but think I have to wait a little longer. His attention wanders as soon as I get to obviously teachy. I wish that I had good children's books to read him and coloring books with big thick crayons to create works of art. Unfortunately, these things are hard to come by in small town Nicaragua. And when you do find them, they are rather expensive.

So here is my request from you all back at home. Send me things for Cristian! Anything a little boy would like in the states, he would like here. If you can find some cute children's books in Spanish, send those my way! Simple coloring books with numbers and colors. Little cars. In the picture above he has a Dora the Explorer bubble whistle that Sandy and Liz sent me and I don't think I've ever seen a child more exciting than when I showed it to him. Theresa sent me an awesome Harry Potter musical Halloween card, and he walked around with it all day, opening it for every new person to show them how it plays music. He killed the card by the end of the day and I didn't even care because it was adorable seeing how fascinated he was.

The other night we had a bit of a scare. Cristian and Sergio, his 7 year old brother, were playing in the street and somehow the top of a glass Coke bottle hit Cristian in the head. The next door neighbor carried a screaming Critian in to our patio and I thought I might throw up from all the blood covering this little boys face. He cried and cried and we cleaned the cut and walked him to the health center and he very bravely got 3 stitches, only crying once more when they gave him the shot of pain killer. He now thinkgs he looks cool with his giant bandaid on his forehead and if you ask him about what happened, he only talks about getting a shot.



Whenever I have a bad day, I know I can come home and sit down with Cristian and automatically feel a little bit better.