Starting to wind down: Highlights of La Mariposa Week 5

As we drew nearer to the end of our 6 weeks at La Mariposa, which had seemed like such a long time in the beginning, it felt like it was going by too fast, and I think we all wished we could slow those last weeks down to keep the end from coming! But those last two weeks still had many little joys and learning experiences to pack into our remaining time!

In addition to the kittens above that the kids befriended one morning on the reserve, we had two special friends at La Mariposa adopt our family in those last couple weeks. One was Pelusa the dog, who began inviting herself into our room each evening just to chill on the floor near to us for a couple hours until we went to bed. The other was the rescued gray kitten Estrella who liked to come into our room to play wildly or curl up on a bed to sleep.

I wrote in a previous post about the many community projects with children supported by La Mariposa. The children of some of those projects presented a special performance at the school one afternoon for a group of representatives from an organization that has gifted financial support. They put together an adorably choreographed rendition of the “Baby Shark” song complete with handmade costumes, and another group of girls danced a beautiful example of traditional Nicaraguan folkloric dance.

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Another afternoon Ismael drove our family to an unlikely tourist location—the local trash dump area outside the town of La Concha. We especially wanted our children to think about the global problem of trash, and to see it in a real way right in front of them. Seeing an entire valley turned into a solid mountain-sized wall of trash, and hearing how trash being pushed further over the side of the valley would get washed down river when the rainy season came, really seemed to make an impact on our children as they wrote in their journals later about the importance of trying to reduce the amount of trash we throw away every day.

We enjoyed the many different opportunities La Mariposa has provided to see local artisans at work in their trades, and to support their art by taking a peice home from each one. This week we visited a local maraca maker, who intricately handcarves the instruments from a special type of gourd that grows on a tree. The children were amazed by his demonstration of how quickly he could take a plain gourd and perfectly carve the word Nicaragua into it in less than 30 seconds! We placed a custom order to commemorate our trip, and our own beautiful set was delivered in a few days!

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Only one week left to describe of our La Mariposa stay, but still so much packed in that I have about 4 blog posts in my head to try to wrap up everything we experienced in that last week, so stay tuned!

-Tara