Meal Time

Usually the hardest thing to get used to when living in a new place is the food, and Nicaragua is no exception. So far, I have liked most of the food. However, it is completely different from what I eat in the States. Typical meals include rice and tortillas with everything. There are a lot of eggs, some meat (fried chicken, sauteed beef), and cheese. I have eaten some typical foods like nacatamal (a special dish with barbecued pork and corn mash cooked in a banana leaf) and fish soup. Their soup has huge chunks of stuff in it, though - like meat, casava, platanos, etc. You need a fork to eat it! Yesterday my mama and I cooked flan together (with instant mix, not from scratch), and it turned out well!

Although I like the food pretty well, my family usually gives me way more than I can eat comfortably. Meal time is a struggle: me against the food, who will win? Can I eat it all? Ironically, in the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere, my friends and I have been trying to come up with ways to avoid eating so much. I mean no disrespect, but the amount of food we are expected to eat here is one of my biggest struggles. That said, the past few days have been better. I think it's a combination of me getting more of an appetite as I get accustomed to the place and the heat as well as the influence of my comments to my Nicaraguan sisters that I don't understand how they can eat so much all the time!

With these improvements in mind, my Hannah friends and I have been joking about ways we can creatively avoid eating. I thought it might be humorous to share a few:

The classic: let the pets have a few bites

The effective: tell them you don't feel good and they let you skip a meal or eat way less

The sneaky: take some of your food with you when you need to leave for class or something, and give it to one of the Dordt boys with a ravenous appetite

The honest: admit you can't eat it all and save it for a mysterious, undetermined "later"

The homemaker: eat when no one else is around and put half of your plate back in the pot

The busy: schedule meetings close to meal times so that you can say you’ve already eaten (preferably the meeting should have something edible there)

The family-oriented: give food to your siblings or little kids running around the house

Thankfully, I no longer have to implement these strategies, but some day they might come in handy for your travels! J

And yes, the plate in the picture is something I ate last weekend at the beach, but I had to have someone else turn it over for me because I couldn't touch the fish head!