Pancake dance
Friday was a wonderful day, very busy. In the morning Dee drove to Lidl to get some food for us and the Institute, while I stayed home to work on my lessons. For the first time, our main circuit breaker popped; it happened while I was showering with two heaters on in the house, as well as the washer. We've done that before, but this time everything went out. The Balzottis' theory is that when the fridge kicks on, it pushes the circuit breaker just over the edge. It was good in that we learned how to go down to the basement, two stories below ground level (eight stories below our apartment), to find and flip our circuit breaker. There's also a storage room for our apartment down there, but we don't have the key nor any particular reason to put anything down there.
I also got some ankle-high boots from amazon.it, which seem to fit nicely. I wore them all day and they were very comfortable and, most importantly, warm. My feet are always cold, so this is great. It was quite a bit warmer than recent days, but still chilly outside. I had ordered some Rockport boots a week or two ago, but they were too large (in my usual size 46) and not terribly comfortable above the ankle, so I returned them. These are Pikolinos brand, the same as my other new shoes.
I forgot to mention that Ugo bought us (at our request/spec) a new large (6.5 liter) crock pot on amazon.it for use at the Institute. We had two 3.5 liter models before, but this will be nice for the bigger dinners that we seem to be having .We brought one of the smaller ones home so Dee can do some of her food prep at the apartment before going into town. Here is the new one on the right, compared to the older/smaller version. Ugo has some budget money for such things, separate from our (tiny) food budget.
When we got the the Institute, there was stuff all over, particularly in the kitchen. Some workmen had come to install new HVAC units in each room. Apparently it was from some year-end budget funds that Ugo had left over for maintenance; the old ones were rather shabby looking, with some missing remotes and the rest falling apart. These wall units look much nicer and we now have all the remotes we need, as well as a new compressor outside. There was a brief moment when we thought it would be difficult to cook with all the stuff in the kitchen, but they finished pretty quickly. My wife adjusted her food plans a bit, so all was well.
I was grateful to have a couple of hours of final lesson prep time in the afternoon for my Seminary and Institute classes. We had our largest Seminary class yet, bringing in some teens who don't usually come and a couple of GANS age kids (Matteo and Adrian, who are getting ready to leave on their missions) to play our Doctrinal Mastery scripture games. Everyone had a lot of fun with the different games, which Dee could tell from kitchen by all the yelling, though I'll need to find some new games for next week to keep it fresh. There was lots of laughter and excitement, but more importantly several of the kids seem to know most of their scriptures now!
Dee was going to do some baking for the Seminary group, but with the workers taking a couple of hours of her prep time, she instead just put out some cookies, (fancy) sliced oranges, cheese, bread, and (of course) Nutella, all of which were very popular.
For dinner after my Institute lesson, she made sausage and pancakes, which they ate with Nutella and maple syrup, thanks to a bunch of Mapleine brought by McKay in October and baking powder from the Snows in September. The kids were very excited when they heard what would be having for dinner. Dario and Grace got huge smiles and started doing what they called the ballo del pancake (pancake dance), which you can watch here.
The turnout was a bit bigger than recent weeks -- no schedule conflicts that we know about this time. More importantly, the kids were mostly on time and stayed with me for the whole lesson, which isn't always the case! We covered Helaman, chapters 1 - 9, and talked a lot about how to seek the spirit and be guided by it. And it never hurts to have a good murder mystery story in the scriptures! 😀 Dee writes: Murder mystery is romanzo giallo in Italian. I told some good personal stories as well as a few quotes translated into Italian, and the students had lots of stuff to share. The lesson turned out quite well. We even had an investigator, Andrea (that's a male name here), who has been attending English classes. He was attentive during the whole lesson and spoke with a number of the GANS before and after, hanging around later for dinner and karaoke. Very nice!
After the lesson, dinner was extremely popular. This was one of the best hits so far! Margie, our non-member from Honduras, volunteered to cook the pancakes to help out, and she did a great job which was much needed. My wife was in charge of portion control, very important with such a delicious menu!
After the food was gone, Claudio insisted on finishing up the dishes, pushing me away from the sink. Dee writes: My husband said it was part of his missionary calling, but Claudio one-upped him, saying he was called before the foundation of the world! The kids went into the library for some games and into the big classroom for some karaoke and dancing.
You can see some brief videos of the karaoke room here (with Andrea behind Matteo) and here. There was a lot of energy everywhere, and we left late (about 9:45pm) with the party still going. By the time we got home, we were both exhausted, but smiling!
