I hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend (I know, it's a little late). I had a great time relaxing with my family, but now let's get back to Nicaragua, Day 4 (in case I forget). This day, were going to visit a prenatal group. As part of the prenatal group's baby shower, two of my classmates were going to give a presentation on general nutrition for pregnant women. They both worked really hard on their poster boards and Tammy even learned some Spanish to communicate with the locals. She also did a great job demonstrating a few exercises the women can do to ease their pregnancy. After the prenatal talk, we gave a short nutrition talk with preschoolers whose teacher was at the prenatal meeting. The preschoolers were very interactive with our presentation (although they didn't quite understand all of the components of MyPlate). The also sang us their national anthem and Grethel, one of my classmates who is also from Nicaragua, joined in.
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Demonstrating exercises |
After our talks we went to lunch at a host family's house then headed over to the clinic to observe with the pediatrician. Again, we took measurements of children's weight, height, head circumference and temperature and documented the data on their charts. I also observed developmental assessments performed by Amanda, the volunteer ambassador for FIMRC.
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Measuring head circumference |
That day, there were a lot of sick children with high temperatures. Towards the end of the day, half of my classmates visited schools and gave nutrition talks, while the other half of us stayed at the clinic. During this time, lightning began to flash. We weren't really worried it was going to rain, since the previous days we've seen lightning but never any rain.
This time, however, we saw lightning and then heard thunder and in a matter of minutes, it began to pour. It felt really good to feel the cold drops of water on my skin since it was still hot. Towards the end of our shift, our volunteer director received a call informing us that our driver's wife was in labor. On our way back to our hotel, we told our driver to drop us off at a nearby intersection so that he can meet his wife at the hospital (the nearby hospital was about 2 hours away). We thought our hotel was only a short walk away, so walking shouldn't be an issue....boy were we wrong. It took us about another half an hour to get to our hotel. We did not realize how muddy the dirt was (since it just rained). It literally felt like quick sand with every step we took. At one point me and two other girls had to get locals to help us cross a small puddle (especially since I didn't want to slip and fall into the mud, that would've been a great blog post).
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Our taxi (or riksha) |
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Love the pebbles on the ground, and the log benches |
When we finally reached our hotel, we thought it was best to take a taxi to a nearby restaurant instead of walking. When I saw our taxi pull up, I realized it looked very similar to taxis in India, which are called rikshas. When I got out of the riksha (after taking a pic with it of course) I saw a label that had Indian writing on it. They must have imported it straight from India (when I showed my parents
the photo they were very surprised and excited, go figure). We heard
so many good things about this restaurant,
La Scala. It is owned by a couple, an Italian man and an Argentinian woman, who decided to open up a pizza place in this rural area of Nicaragua. I thought we hit the jackpot, because pizza sounded amazing at the time (I know, we're in Nicaragua so we should be eating Nicaraguan food, but you can't pass up pizza, especially one made by an Italian). The decor of the restaurant was beautiful (I kept mental notes for my future backyard). All the furniture was made of wood and the ground was made up of stones; it was very calming.
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Love the color of the furniture |
The menu was filled with typical Italian dishes, like caprese salads, focacia bread, and let's not forget the pizzas.
Most of my classmates ordered the vegetarian pizza, while I ordered the salami pizza (I'm such a carnivore).
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Vegetarian pizza |
When the pizza came out, it smelled delicious with Italian spices and basil aromas, and the crust was just perfect, not too chewy and not too crunchy. The salami was the best part about my pizza; I've never tasted salami this good (I'm getting cravings as I type this).
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Salami pizza |
After devouring the entire pizza, I still wanted to order dessert because they had banana flambe on the menu and I've never had it before. After some persuasion, we ordered one to split between all of us. The dessert didn't look too appealing, but it was tasty. You could really taste the rum in the flambe, which is a good thing if you like rum. I would definitely go back for the pizza....or just the salami.
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