Back to work at the Clinic

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dancing with the kids

Today was a work day, but of course it was filled with a ton more than just working. The mayor of Ciudad Sandino came to speak to us. Then we took the trailer over to the clinic (since the bus wasn't working). For the morning we painted the inside of the clinic again with the latex paint. Then we went back for lunch and in the afternoon, I worked in the clinic at the pharmacy. It was nice to experience what the daily routine of the clinic is and see some of the patients face to face. It was also interesting to see what type of medicines they were needing-- mainly vitamins, stuff for parasites and pills to help with hydration. Some were simply given a toothbrush, toothpaste and soap. I helped write out prescriptions and dose instructions on little pieces of paper and I counted out pills and helped count out chewable children's vitamins. At one point they asked for some cream and I recognized it as one of the things that I got donated which made me feel good about the work I had put into getting these donations. While I worked, everyone else finished painting the inside of the clinic and the finished walls sure did look a lot better and brighter than before. After working we played with the little kids outside the clinic and they were so cute. From far away they looked so dirty and sad but when you look at their faces you see how beautiful they are and how happy they were to have us there. They also loved getting their pictures taken and seeing their faces on the LCD screen. For some of them they had probably never even seen what they look like. After that, we had a tour of Nueva Vida. I couldn't really see a whole lot from the bus and I wished we could have walked around and gone inside one of the houses to see what their living situation is really like. However, it was too dangerous to walk around because in the past they had had trouble with gangs and some of the gang members had just been released from jail in the past couple of days.
That night we had a break from the same routine and we all got dressed up and went out to dinner at this really cute place. Our table was set up underneath a little tiki hut and they cooked us shish kabobs and had a little buffet set up for us. The restaurant was beautiful at night, with white lights everywhere and had a nice view overlooking the city. We ate these really weird traditional Nicaraguan desserts~ fruit (grapefruit, mango and two other types of fruit I had never heard of) covered in a honey and sugar mix. I didn't like them but I did get a really good drink that was made of hickory milk with rum- it tasted like chocolate milk. After dinner we came back and I fell asleep before anyone else and didn't wake up the entire night.

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Photos

the chefs
They made us a yummy dinner with shish kabobs