User Error with the Animal Cam!

Short post tonight, mostly to explain why I’m not posting interesting animal cam pictures. Apparently, I badly positioned the camera yesterday so it did not take pictures of whatever animals ate the cat food I put out yesterday. I repositioned the camera three times this morning and I think I have the problem fixed. I put out more cat food so hopefully I’ll have pictures tomorrow. They might just be pictures of stray cats, I’m not sure. It’s raining right now so I don’t know how that will affect things. I may have deeper water to wade through in the morning. The rain is definitely not good for my clothes drying on the clothesline on my balcony!

I had a really busy day, but I didn’t do anything too exciting. I found out that my Spanish teacher, Maria, who is about my age, started doing Aerial Silks classes six months ago. Aerial Silks is a form of acrobatics that you do hanging from silk ribbons. Here’s a picture from her blog.

Maria’s young daughter started doing Aerial Silks a few months earlier. On the beach here in Samara, there’s usually a woman teaching Aerial Silks to girls. It’s really neat and looks like a lot of fun. It’s easy for kids because they are like little flexible monkeys. They twist and spin with no trouble. As all of you will understand, this kind of activity gets harder the older you get. Maria decided to try anyway and she loves it. She has ribbons set up at her house now so she and her daughter can practice. I think it would be fun to try. People who are good make it look beautiful and really easy, but it takes a lot of strength and flexibility. Maria says it’s great exercise.

I went to the beach this afternoon to swim and soak up sunshine. It was a beautiful afternoon but not many people were on the beach. There was a tiny little boy out on the beach with his dad. The little boy was stark naked and trying to be brave enough to run into the waves. I don’t think he had a lot of beach experience. There was a French family with two little girls behind me unsuccessfully trying to make sand castles. They were having fun though and the whole family was very elegant. There are some truly beautiful people here. It can be hard on self-esteem. Almost everybody has tattoos and most of them are unique, interesting and well-designed. The woman who made my fruit drink for lunch yesterday has a moon and stars on her shoulder and a very delicate dragon on their thigh. She is very pretty, and the tattoos are eye-catching.

Okay, I guess that’s all I have. I’m posting a few pictures. My breakfast this morning was a chocolate/banana croissant with cheese and strawberries on the side. I also managed to get a picture of a squirrel. The squirrels here are really interesting and multi-colored. This one was committed to eating a gourd in the tree beside my balcony.