We all made it here safely. I just finished setting up the six computers we brought down here, including interent connections.

There has been some mild sickness, most likely related to the heat.

This country is beautiful, and the people are very friendly. Our group got to see a lot of the country – we had a seven-hour bus trip across the country to get to Hato Mayor.

The heat has been tough to deal with, but we are doing okay and the students’ attitudes are fantatsic.

We started VBS (Vacation Bible School) today in two Haitian sugar cane villages and at the school here in Hato Mayor. Our small group (teamed with another) had over 200 kids attend! It seems as if everyone had a great time.

More updates later (perhaps much later – I do not know how much interent access I’ll have).

Sorry for delays in Folio updates. Folio is doing very well. His teeth and claws are getting sharper all the time (as evidenced by the scars on my hands). He is drinking milk and kitten formula from saucers, and eats canned cat food one or two times a day. He has refused dry food, even when it has been soaked in milk, but I think that will come when he gets all of his teeth in. He continues to be very playful and is very loud when he wants attention and/or food. He is very very cute!

Here is another Folio original film:

Here are a few clips from a day in the life of Folio (if you have sound on, you’ll hear him too!):

Folio is learning all the time. Meredith called me at work to tell me that Folio finally had a bowel movement. Yay! Sadly, it was on the floor and not in the litter pan. While Mer was on the phone with me and cleaning up the mess, Folio peed on his own. Huzzah! That also was on the floor. Still, progress was made. I asked Meredith to make a bigger litter box out of an old cardboard box, which she managed to do nicely. By the time I got home, Folio had peed in the box. Good kitty! Smart kitty!

We also went to a dual-grad party tonight – a grad party hosted by two different students. These are pretty popular guys, and there were a ton of people there. Mer and I stayed and chatted for two hours, and I ate so much I felt slightly ill for a time. Other than the self-inflicted gluttony, it was a nice time.

We then headed straight to downtown Cuyahoga Falls, to go to the ***free*** Riverfront Irish Festival. We had to park quite a ways away from the festival, and as we were walking there, black clouds rolled in, but we pressed onwards. We wandered the length of the festival (three blocks with two stages), and by the time we turned around, the black clouds had moved on. Whew.

We popped into a popcorn store to see one of my ceili dance students, and we got a festival special – try samples of two kinds of popcorn for free and get a small bag of regular popcorn for free. That was happy. We tried white cheddar for one sample and mint girl scout cookie for another sample. Both were good – I think I liked the cheddar better (it was salty, which hit the spot).

We then went into a tent to hear the group Barleycorn. The consisted of a banjo player, a guitar player, and a keyboard player, and they seemed to be having a good time on stage. They had a good traditional sound, and we heard about five songs when the skies let loose with a huge downpour and lightning for good measure. Barleycorn was wrapping up their set, but most people seemed quite happy to stay in the tent. I looked over the shoulder of a guy who used his web-enabled phone to call up radar, and most of the state of Ohio was covered in rain. As such, Mer and I decided to make the long trek back to the car when the rain slackened. For most of the walk. Happily, when the rain got a little harder, it still stayed shy of a downpour, so we did not get too wet.

The festival looks like much fun. I hope to get there again this weekend (either Saturday or Sunday).

When we got back home, we found that Folio had pooped in his new litter box as well. What a good kitty!

It’s official: Folio is a boy. We took him to the vet’s today, and he appears to be healthy. The vet said Foley should be going to the bathroom by himself and to keep an eye on him, and then proceeded to express Foley’s bladder for us. So we’ll see how that goes.

Foley took a fair amount of food today from the eye dropper, and then, on various people’s advice, I tried giving him some kitten formula in a saucer, which he lapped up after sticking his nose in it (Mer’s earlier attempt with a saucer around noon saw Folio sneezing a lot). Encouraged by this, I tried giving Folio a little canned cat food for his second evening meal, and he ate quite a lot of it, as well as drank some more formula on his own. They grow up so fast!

Folio will attack just about anything he can reach. He weighed in today at 14.5 ounces, and seems to have no problem attacking me, a mere 160+ times his size. Brave kitten!

I went out with Mer and got a small eye dropper and a bottle of whole milk. That seems to have done the trick. The kitty ate 1 tablespoon of milk (bringing his total today to about 3 tablespoons, enough for a six-ounce kitten).

Then, Foley was attacking my hand while I was on my back, and so I took advantage of the situation to rub his tummy, with the (mostly) happy result that he peed all over my stomach. A happy day one so far!

Foley is presenting a mixed bag. On the one hand, he has only had about two ounces of food in the day (the guide suggests that he should have at least four times that), and he won’t go to the bathroom, even with me trying to help him. On the other hand, his eyes are bright and clear, and he explores the room we have him in, so that is good. He likes to play. He is washing himself, but cries a lot. We have a vet appointment for Foley tomorrow afternoon. I’m going to try an eyedropper this evening to see if he will eat more (the vet gave us a small bottle, and I think that might be freaking him out because of the size).
 

Meredith woke me up from a brief nap this evening about 6:00. She apologized and said she could hear a critter in the basement. So, I put on my critter clothes of my jean jacket and a pair of tough gloves, and headed to the basement. There was a cry coming from one corner of the basement, and I isolated it to an old basement window. Years ago, previous owners added a large sun room onto the house, so this window used to go to the outside, but was now under the foundation of the sun room. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to open the window (it could not just open out anymore), and when I gingerly cracked it open, I saw a fuzzy tail and knew I was in for it.

It was a tiny tiger kitten. He was hissing at me to let me know who I was messing with. There was a very very very tiny crack in the area around the window (which had been framed in), and the kitten must have fallen through and could not get back out. I could see daylight through the crack – it turns out there is about a two-inch opening in one corner of the sun room foundation, and a cat must have decided it was a great place to have kittens. I could not see any more kittens, but I could not see everywhere around the foundation.

I fished the kitten out and showed him to Meredith. She immediatly declared him to be a “kitten from heaven” and said we had to keep him. He is probably about four weeks old – his eyes are still blue and he is small, but he can move around on his own and knew enough to hiss at me. He is very cute.

We have decided to let the kitten’s gender (I have not checked yet) decide the name for us. If it is a male, we will name him Meredith’s name, Folio (Foley for short). If it is a girl, we’ll name it my name, Finestra (Finny for short), which is Italian for window. My gut feeling is that Folio is a boy.

My only difficulty now is I feel bad for the mother cat. I checked a few minutes ago, and I heard her calling for her kitten (I grew up with many cats and kittens, so I know the call). I heard at least one kitten reply. I could put Folio back, but his life expectancy would be 5 years instead of 15, and he would be wild. I also have no idea what to do about the other kitten(s). There is no way to get under the sun room, so there is no way to catch them. I don’t really want a colony of feral cats living under my sun room, but I don’t know what to do about it. I feel terrible about separating a kitten from its mother so soon, and I feel terrible that I can’t help the other kittens. I hate no-win situations. I will at least seal up the window crack to keep the other kitten(s) safe, and I’ll leave the foundation crack open until fall or winter and check for tracks before sealing it up.

Here are two pictures of Folio tucked away in a kitty nook where he feels safe.

Mer is out at a spa night with a friend tonight, so I am bachin’ in at home. What better time to break out one of the new Wii games that Meredith let me get a few weeks ago? Tonight’s selection was DDR, or Dance Dance Revolution, for the less-video-game savvy. I’m not really sure what led a 37-year-old awkward white guy to get DDR, but there you have it. I thought it might be fun for CVCA students that we have over, and I wanted to try to get decent at it so I could play it with students. I also think it might be fun to play with Meredith if we ever get slightly competent at it.

I started at beginner, and I sucked, big time. The Wii adds hand motions to DRR (the original games were feet-only), as well as obstacles in the dance pattern, and special effects, and so on. I quickly turned all of those extras off. Now that I have the game on feet-only, I have scored a resounding “D” in the game. Dance that funky music, white boy.

I will say that DDR is quite a workout – I was sweating up a storm!

Here, for your edification, is a small clip of me doing DDR. You have been warned (I thought an alternate title to this blog would be “Please never show us that again.”).

Ohio has an interesting custom for graduates: the graduation party. We did not have these in Maine, so Meredith had to explain the hard concept to me: a “graduation party” is a party you throw when you graduate. Go figure.

Many many many high school graduates throw grad parties. These events are usually drop-in/drop-by style, where you can show up and see fun people and eat way too much food. Since students we know normally will invite other students that Meredith and I know, as well as inviting CVCA faculty and staff, these events are a lot of fun to go to. It gives you a chance to be mellow with colleagues and students, and usually involves sitting outside in very pleasant weather. Almost all grad parties have a picture wall or table, so you can smile at pictures of your handsome/pretty student when he/she was a toddler or even those awkward middle school years.

And the food – ahhhh. While usually based around finger foods, these parties are always extravagant in quantity. It is not unusual to have two or three main dishes, three to five side dishes, and anywhere from three to ten different kinds of dessert. We eat very well this time of year.

Since Meredith teaches AP seniors, they tend to be students that like English, and so end up liking Mer. So, we get invited to many grad parties. Memorial Day weekend: three parties in two days. This weekend: three parties in two days. Last weekend: a stunning gut-stretching social extravaganza of four parties in one afternoon! These parties go on for much of the summer. While we are gone to the Dominican Republic, we are missing five parties in nine days. We have parties in July and even a few in August.

I just hope my graduation is not up to the next size of pants.