Heading Home from Nicaragua

So this is day eight and we are finally headed home… it’s been a truly amazing trip and I am definitely ready to be headed home. 

We had to be ready for our chartered bus to pick us up at 5 AM at our hotel. We took that bus from our hotel to the border of Nicaragua where we crossed the border on foot and then got in another chartered bus and road to the Airport in Liberia, Costa Rica.

Here’s the picture of all of us in front of the hotel…

From left to right- Shawne, Dennis, me, Sr. Gupta (hotel owner), Mom and then Jeremy behind her.

Then this picture of Senor Gupta in the door of the hotel as we drove away…

Here are the pictures of the windmills that we get to see on the drive from Nicaragua to Costa Rica…

When we checked in for our flight to fly from Costa Rica to Miami we saw this drug sniffing dog. This is at the gate before you board the plane. They take the drug dog through all the people and all of the carry-on luggage.

The dog came closer and closer and we just kept commenting on how cute he was. But when he got to my mom his bag he stuck his nose in her bag and was rooting around with his nose. She was worried he was trying to eat her boarding pass so she kept trying to grab the boarding pass. The officer with the dog kept telling her no no no. And asking her not to grab her boarding pass. After he had the dog sit he explained the dog notifies him of drugs or cash. My mom had her envelope of cash in her purse and that’s what the dog can smelled and triggered on. It was definitely an amusing moment watching my mom try to fight with a drug dog. Ha ha ha

I knew I was home when I was able to just order a cuppa coffee. The hotel owner made us coffee every morning in his coffee pot. It was delicious but it was a mix of herbs and coffee… That’s how many people drink it there. I have to say I really missed plain black coffee. This was my favorite treat in the airport!

We had a flight from Miami to Pittsburgh that was scheduled for 7:30 PM. Keeping in line with all the delays recently in the airline travel… First it was delayed till 8 PM, then it was delayed until 8:30 PM, then it was delayed until 9 PM, then it was delayed till 9:30 PM. After the 9:30 PM delay they explained the reason it kept getting delayed was a crew shortage. Finally we took off around 9:30 and got home around 12:30 AM. Mom spent the night and then drove home around 7 AM the next morning.

It is so great to be home and just beginning to get unpacked. I cannot wait to do some laundry and put everything in its place. I love a good vacation but it also feels so amazing to come home!

They won’t admit it but I think the cats really missed me too! They’re going to be getting lots and lots of snuggles over the next couple days!

Hugs to you all I hope you enjoyed the trip as much as I did! If nothing else please know how very very blessed we are to have everything we need… Maybe not everything we want but definitely everything we need!

Day 7 Afternoon Nicaragua - Vera Cruz

In the afternoon of our final day in Nicaragua we were having a clinic in Veracruz. It had been raining from the day before and had not slowed down at all. Many streets were flooded so when we went to go to Vera Cruz the main roads were all flooded out. We had to drive the back roads that the locals use. Thank goodness we had Carlos, a very experienced driver, because it was a very sketchy ride.  Later in the week I will post the video of him driving. 

This is what the road look like on our way there around noon on our last day. We took this back road because the main road and bridge had been flooded out. As you can see the back roads are fairly flooded also… Lol!

This poor family was walking apparently had called for a ride… We were following the pastor to his church… He is the one in the Toyota in front of us. We needed him to show us the back roads that were still available to drive on.

This poor family had to walk through this river of a road!! Ugh! Those cookies you can see on the dashboard below I called brown sugar cookies. They are delicious! We all shared them in the van! They were made at a local bakery!

Our final clinic in the afternoon was held at a nursing students house. He went to his house to his church to hold the clinic inside. It was super nice of him because we were unable to access the church due to the road flooding. Here we are all set up…

Another photo… all the kids were absolutely adorable!

Another shot of the clinic and the pharmacy…

and this time a stray cat ran through the middle of the clinic… Lol

A local family was unable to get back home due to the rain so they hopped in the back of the van with us and we dropped them off when we were finished with the clinic and headed home to the mission.

This is a picture of the flooding when we returned home… The water was so much higher it was to the bottom of our doors in our Land Cruiser. You will see you when I post a video how absolutely crazy the drive home was. I was honestly worried that we would be stranded and not make it back to the mission. The person you can see in the front seat in this photo is the pastor‘s wife. We gave her a ride home as well.

Crazy high waters! It’s like we were driving down a river!

Here is a video of the high water travel.

Once we made it safely back to the mission we wanted to get a few pictures of the mission staff. Here are the wonderful people that we worked with all week! (Left to right… Laura - mission pastors wife, Blanca one of our translators, my Mom, me, Shawn fellow nursing student, Dennis nursing professor, Jeremy fellow nursing student, Carlos one of our drivers - down in front is Angel one of our translators)

so this picture is the same people as above except Angel is taking the picture and add it on the left is Drew. Drew is the pastor that runs Straight Street Nicaragua which is the mission that we volunteered with. This entire crew of people is so amazing. They are the most selfless people I’ve ever met in my life.

There was an uprising in 2018 in Nicaragua. The people tried to overthrow the government… There were protests in the street and in order to stop the protests; the government was just shooting people, including children, in the street. Over 400 people lost their lives before the people finally gave up because too many of their children were being shot for no reason. The people who run Straight Streeet Nicaragua stayed through this turmoil. They could’ve went home to Tennessee and instead they stayed to help the people of Nicaragua. This is the same for our translators and everyone that works there. We asked them why they didn’t leave and go to another country and they said they have a calling to help their families and the people of Nicaragua. I have so much respect for every single person we met here and I hope and pray daily that these people can someday have a democracy and be able to live the lives they deserve to live.

Our final night we went to a nice dinner at the Garden Café in Granada. This is a view of the restaurant inside… It was absolutely beautiful! They also have a cute little store you can shop in while you wait for your meal.

This was mom‘s dinner she got the salmon and green beans and zucchini. There’s also a side of couscous that was absolutely delicious!

Jeremy got a hamburger they served it with a side of chicken salad.

Here’s a little selfie of the whole crew… At this point I think we were already to be home. It’s a lot of together time and it’s a lot of personalities. By the end I think we all needed a little time apart… Lol

I hope you all had a fantastic week! Feel blessed for what you have and where you live! Sending so many hugs to you all!

Day 7 Morning Nicaragua - El Varillal

Today is our last clinic day. Tomorrow we will be boarding a bus at 5am to begin our travels back to the USA.

This area we are in today is called El Varillal. It rained the entire drive to this church. It was pouring down rain all morning during a clinic so thank goodness this church had a sturdy roof! Here is a few people in our crew getting the clinic set up. 

Here is a little tour of the location…

I have a couple great videos that I will upload next week that I actually show us driving in the rain and you can hear the rain pouring. The last two days it just poured nonstop in Nicaragua.

Even though it was raining really really hard we still had a lot of people that showed up for a clinic. Here’s a whole group of construction workers that all came for consultations.

This is just a shot of the yard outside of where we held our clinic.

Behind the logs below is the location of the bathroom.

Yet another stray dog visiting the clinic.

Here is some people attending the clinic…

One of the translators the mission uses is Blanca. She knew of a woman who had two sick children and no medicine. We made sure to give her medicine and toys to take back with them so the next day she came back and gave us this picture. She said the woman was very grateful for the medicine and the children enjoyed the toys!  Soooo cute!!!!

OK! This horribly frightening creature is called a whip scorpion. Horrifying right???? Apparently they are common in Nicaragua!!! The boys actually found one of these in the restroom by the pool at our hotel. Obviously they screamed pretty hard when they saw it hiding behind the trashcan. The owner of the hotel came and told them it was just a grasshopper. They were terrified but dying laughing when they told me - I’m sorry but it looks nothing like a grasshopper. I completely 100% agree it is not a grasshopper! The kicker is I asked them if they killed it and they said no. So this thing was still roaming around the hotel grounds… ICK and UGG! I am super happy it’s our last day! 

That thing is the thing of nightmares!

Well, sending lots of hugs and I hope everyone is doing fantastic!

Part 2 coming soon!!!!

Day 6 Tuesday Nicaragua PM

Hi everyone!!! After a morning clinic in the Tisma area we drove to this church in Pilas Orientales.  This is the front altar of the church and it is also where we set up our Pharmacy. That is Mom in the picture in front of the pharmacy. The mission actually brought our lunch here and we had chicken fingers, homemade pico de gallo and beans and rice prior to the clinic starting.

You can see our lunch in the Tupperware containers on that table. And the woman with her hair in a bun is the pastor‘s wife. I was trying to feed the cats and they would not eat the cracker I gave them. The pastors wife took some of her plain rice and put it on the ledge of the wall and all the cats jumped up to eat it. These are just stray cats but apparently they hang around a lot. The cats here are not big fat cats like mine… Lol! Just about every animal here looks hungry to me.  I really wish I could’ve packed them all up and brought them home with me! 

These two adorable little kids came to the clinic with their mother. They were so appreciative of the beanie babies and socks. We also gave them a bunch of candy and bubbles.

Here’s a picture of another adorable little kid that came to the clinic with his mother. We gave out a lot of cars and things like that for the little boys too. You can see his mother holding his socks full of candy and him holding his truck. Look at that head of hair! So adorable!

Here’s a picture of the clinic in action…

Many of the churches where we had our clinics were rural areas where nobody else would go. They were very unkept, back roads. We were on one of these roads when a farmer came by with eight of his cows. We stopped our truck for them to go past us… Look at this tight squeeze - the cows are literally right up against our vehicle. Lol!

A lot of people ride on mopeds here. They said that they can drive for two weeks on one tank of gas on a moped. They ride with two people three people on mopeds and probably the same amount of people on pedal bikes. But they all ride on the road with the cars. There were so many times we were in tight quarters with mopeds and bikes. It is hard to believe that more people are not killed on these roads every day. I had never been happier to not be driving a car!

Well that’s today’s recap! I hope you all had a fantastic day and I’m sending so many hugs to you all!

Day 6 Tuesday Nicaragua morning

Today is Tuesday and we are off to two different regions of Granada again today.

This picture was taken on the walk from our hotel to the mission where we have breakfast and load up our van for the day.

The picture shows all the kids walking to school or what just happened to be across from the mission.

We encountered these beautiful flowers along the way…

This is a photo of the kids going into school in the morning. The man at the door makes each of them Use hand sanitizer and put a mask on prior to entering the school. The amazing thing to us is these people do not have washing machines and most live in homes with tin or concrete walls and dirt floors but they all have sparkling clean, white uniforms on. They take extreme pride in their appearance. One of the mission translators said they believe no matter how you live or how poor you are you should always present yourself in the best way possible.

These are pictures of us loading the van to go to our first location in the morning.  Today we will be going to the Tisma area of Nicaragua in the morning from 9 to 12 noon.

The woman in the jeans and blue backpack is Blanca.  She was one of our translators and she is just such an amazing person!

Here’s a local dog that came to visit us at our church location… He was definitely a stray as he was so thin and had fleas everywhere! It was just heartbreaking…

Here is what the set up look like in this church. All the people in the back of the picture are people waiting to attend our clinic. The table at the front left is Dennis my professor and Angel our male translator. The table on the front right is where Jeremy and Shawn got patient vitals prior to sending people to consult with Dennis.

Another shot…

Here’s the name of the church for today…Iglesia Sinai. As you can see our pharmacy was set up on the stage of the church. This was my Mom and my station.

A photo of the front area of the church… Two more stray dogs

One of the dogs stopped in to visit Dennis at the clinic… Lol

The lady in the pink Steelers shirt below came to the clinic. She was a patient. She walked in and we saw her Steelers shirt which represents the town we are from… Pittsburgh PA. We here in Pittsburgh PA love our Football team called the Steelers. We were blown away! We asked her where she got her shirt and she did not even know what the Steelers were. But what a coincidence that she had a shirt on that was from our hometown. All of us that went on this trip together are from Pittsburgh. Crazy coincidence and small world! We had to get a picture with her before we left! (Left to right - I’m in the pink, patient, Shawn, Jeremy, and Dennis my professor) My mom did not want to be in the picture… Lol!

I will follow this post up with a part two that will include the location and pictures from the afternoon session.

I hope everyone is doing well and I’m sending so many hugs to you all!