Misión Completa

Before and After pics that you WON´T BELIEVE!

Well, it has been an absolutley CRAZY couple of weeks trying to get the project done and ready for a party, but the Casa Materna project that you all donated to is officially finished. So officially that we had the ribbon cutting ceremony that was hilariously Nicaraguan... will explain. First though, I want to say how beautiful it is there in the Casa Materna. Looking at these before and after pics, I realized that I have already forgotten how absolutley ugly it was there before. Its hard for us North American´s to believe that they would have lived with it that way for so long, but for them it was perfectly normal. I would say they just didn´t know what they were missing.Wednesday we baked in our oven for the first time and baked ALL day! I was frustrated at first because all the midwives had to come from their communities and they NEVER arrive on time.. and of course they were quite late, but they DID eventually come and when they did we had a riotously good time baking up a storm. We baked for 7 hours in our little oven which worked like a charm! I am in love with it and wish I had had one when I first got to site. We baked breads that had fruits and vegetables to help teach them methods for improving nutrition. Don´t laugh at me because when I tell you what breads we baked.. you will question their nutritional value, but trust me, anything you can do to help increase variety in the diet here especialy with fruits and veg, is an improvement. We made double batches of banana bread, carrot cake, pumpkin bread and just for fun, cinnomon rolls. They LOVED THEM!!!! I had purchased cakes as refreshement for the party and we ended up not even touching them because had baked so much.

So on to the ¨inaguración¨as they call it here, as I said it was VERY nicaraguan and I cannot go into all the details here on the blog or it would take forever. I wrote a short story in a book Im writing called ¨The Birth of Eva¨ and it was like 4 pages long. Lets just suffice it to say that we started 2 hours late, and after we had started the guy from mayors office decided we should sing the national anthem and should do a ribbon cutting, oohh, also that our speakers were not big enough. He said we had to send someone up to the radio station to get the disc with the song. We waited around another 2o minutes or so in which time, a kid brought bigger speakers (we already had big ones) and then later the guy from the radio station came and had the song only on his memory, so we ended up singing it without music after waiting for 20 mins. Ahh these are the things I will not miss. But if you can stay calm, they are decidedly amusing.This is a cute little girl that came to dance for us. It looks pretty exciting in this picture but the dance was just her stepping back and forth back and forth for the whole song. It was cute anyway and I will say that she and her family were the only ones that arrived on time. Here´s the last minute ribbon cutting ceremony, I was honored to do the honors.Kory and Doña Alicia serving up the gaseosa.

Well, here is the donor list I painted on the wall there. All those who donated are on it and will be there forever. Thanks again for your help in making this dream come true for them and for me. I could not have done it without you guys.