Friday was Dee's birthday. Three of her teeth has been giving her some pain, so she decided to go see a dentist, not that it's a preferred birthday activity. She also wanted an "adventure" (her word), so she took the bus there in the morning, as it was rush hour and the traffic would be bad for driving and parking. The dentist, Dr. Scrascia, came recommended by Sorella Knies, who had just been to see him. He has all kinds of degrees from places around the world, including one from USD (University of San Diego). They found some stuff that needs fixing and set up a followup appointment. As she came home, I went out to meet her at the bus stop a few blocks away, filling up the car on the way. My wife is many wonderful things, but she admittedly is not very good with directions, so having her try to describe her location to me on the phone so that I could pick her up was a frustrating experience for both of us! It all worked out, and we got down to the Institute early so that she could start cooking for the dinner. Dee says: I told him I was by McDonalds and gave him the address! Why is that insufficient??
I spent most of the afternoon finalizing plans for both my lessons. My Seminary kids now come early, right from school, and hang out at the Institute waiting for our 4pm lesson. It's fun getting to know them better. Donatella, still on crutches, loved helping my wife make a chocolate lava cake for the class treat, and she was actually quite good in the kitchen!
One really funny thing happened during our lesson. As background, you need to understand that many Italian words have English cognates, usually through Latin roots, so very often you can take an English word and "convert" it directly into Italian (e.g. intelligent=intelligente). Often the meaning is spot on, but at least they usually will at least understand what you mean. But not always! The girls at one point in the lesson brought up dressing modestly. I said that I really dislike it when women dress quite immodestly, because it makes me want to divert my eyes. Since this wasn't a planned part of the lesson, off the top of my head I just translated what I was trying to say as "divertire gli occhi", using a possible cognate for divert, and they all burst into heavy laughter. At first I said, "what??", but then realized that divertire means to amuse or entertain, so I was saying that I wanted to "entertain my eyes". The verb I should have used was deviare, which seems like it might be something deviant, but actually means to divert or deflect; the correct phrase would have been "deviare lo sguardo" (avert my gaze). So, in this case, using a cognate was quite memorable! 😏
We had a pretty good turnout for my Book of Mormon Institute lesson in the evening, although many of the kids were a bit late. Between the Italian and the Mormon culture, it's rare to have things start on time here! There were also two kids from the Milano area online via Zoom.
At one point during the lesson, Dee came into the classroom to get some stuff from our cabinet in there. I stopped the class and had them all sing happy birthday ("Tanti Auguri") to her, which they did very heartily -- they love my wife (and her food :-). Despite not having wanted to let anyone make a big deal of her birthday, she seemed to really enjoy it. She made Crack Chicken for dinner, so-called because it's rather addictive, a recipe inherited from her predecessor, Sister Thacker. It has shredded chicken with bacon or pepperoni, cream cheese and ranch dressing powder, all mixed together and served on small hamburger buns. They again ate over 50 buns of the stuff.
