Singing in Burundi

It was another busy Taco Tuesday.  We had pretty good turnout, even though some of the regulars weren't there. We did some of the setup the night before, which makes things less rushed for us. Margie, the non-member student from Honduras, is our best recruiter: she brought three other friends from school, all very nice kids: Mauricio and Veronica from Colombia, and Alkmini from Athens.  During the meal, I gave everyone a taste of rootbeer. Several liked it, but Maria Jose (just behind Anziano Waddell in the photo below) said that it tasted like cough syrup!

After lunch, a number of the kids stayed around to play Cover Your Assets. There were kids in and out all afternoon, with lots of English as well as Italian floating about.

I did a bit of lesson prep for Friday (Alma 30 - 35), as well as some upgrade work on the (very old) Dell desktop there running Windows 7. It has been having network problems, so I backed it up and then started installing Windows 10. We'll see if that helps.

Each year the mission compiles a history, and I completed the first draft of my contribution: a history of the Institute for 2017.  I used our blog to remind myself of what had gone on -- we have been busy! Sister Balzotti liked my draft, but she wants some photos added, which I will do on Wednesday. Fortunately we'll have much of the day off, so I'll have some time. 

In the evening, we had choir with Lorenzo. At first there were only about three of us, but then several more showed up. Arsene, the Catholic priest from Burundi, is back in town and joined us. He has a very beautiful bass voice, and we enjoy singing together. We had a very interesting conversation with him a bit about singing in the Catholic church. In the old days, he said that singing was an important part of training to become a priest, but not so much any more. In Italy, according to him, almost nobody really sings in church, but in Burundi they all sing a lot. The masses he celebrates there are usually an hour and a half long, with lots of worship through singing; here in Italy if it goes over half an hour people start griping. Lorenzo had a good time kidding us all a bit (e.g., he said that my wife knew all about dissonance after sticking with me for 40 years). We enjoyed learning more of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" in Italian -- such a beautiful song.

I was not needed for English class tonight, but we hung around to give the Sorelle a ride home. They were tired and need to get up early in the morning for their Zone Conference, so it was good to get them home earlier. They had come to get a handoff of a GANS-age girl whom the Ganziani had been teaching; it's better to have the Sorelle teach her. There are four extra Sorelle staying below us for ZC in the morning, so I offered to give some of them a ride at 7:30am. Apparently it's allowed for me to be alone in the car with four Sorelle, just not with two! Dee doesn't know the way to the chapel nearby, so it's easier for me to drive.

We learned that Sherry & Greg, some friends from Del Mar, will be visiting Rome next month; their hotel is right around the corner from the Institute. Sherry kindly offered to bring us some stuff. There are always something we'd like (we keep a list!), but it's getting to the point where those things feel less urgent than at first. We really are getting accustomed to life here.