Last week

I turned 31 while writing for my blog and drinking a mojito. Right after that, I posted my story and went to bed; I closed my eyes, felt into a deep sleep asleep and in what I perceived as a couple of seconds, a strange sound woke me up. It lasted a second or two to realise that the weird sound filling my room was “happy birthday” sung by children.

I ran to the door and opened it to see the village director, two SOS mothers and fifteen children singing. I took a look to my watch (a new 6 dollar Casio F 91-W) and realised it was 7:50 a.m. (and it was Saturday). That was the moment the strangest birthday ever began.

Some ten minutes later, Felicia, the village director, smashed a raw egg on my head; she told me it was the Nicaraguan-way of celebrating birthdays; I had no choice but to believe her. I took a shower and went back to the children and stayed with them until noon. I ate something at house 12 (the SOS house where I know the most people) and came back to my house and sat in front of the TV for a while. I actually wanted to celebrate my birthday eating Japanese food, but Erika (this time she did come with me) suggested going for Mexican food. I agreed.

The food was tasty and fresh, the Margaritas were lovely. Actually, the days before my birthday, I experienced a kind of “Mexican food festival”. When I was in Estelí, I ate at a Mexican place two days in a row; actually the new picture in this blog (the one on the left), was taken in that Mexican place.

By the way, I changed my profile picture after a working colleague told me I should not publish a blog saying I worked for a child and family organisation together with a picture of myself only wearing underwear; this was a shock for me! It was so sad to hear that the most beautiful swimming trunks I’ve ever had looked like underwear that I decided to immediately remove the picture from my blog. Now you can see a photo of me with Mario (the Restaurant owner) and the taquero. By the way, Mario is a narcissist, you can tell it by the picture of him hanging from the wall (there were the same number of pictures of him than images of the Virgin Mary on the restaurant walls).

I can summarised my blog’s profile change like this: Last week one could read in my blog that I work for SOS and next to it there was a picture of me taken last September in Lazise, Italia at the Garda lake. Now, you can still read I work for SOS and besides it you see a picture of me embracing a narcissist who wears golden chains and holds a butcher’s knife. I really don’t think I achieved any improvement on my image.

Greetings from Managua,

Oscar