Low-grit or high-grit towels?

Thursday we woke up to good news: our dryer got fixed at home for less than $250 for the entire service call. The belt just needed to be replaced. Rich handled it very well, making the decision while we slept, since it was the middle of the night for us. Our washer and dryer are 10 years old, so we should get at least a few more years out of them. Dee could have picked out a new set online, but it would have been far more difficult. Thank you, Rich and B&B Appliance!

When Dee puts out fresh towels, my question is always "are these towels low or high grit?" That is, because we don't have a dryer to fluff them, the towels dry stiff and coarse here; even the softer ones are rough.  Dee writes: I love the scratchy towels! Doug yearns for fluffy.

In the morning I walked over to Todis to buy some hamburger buns and pita bread for upcoming Friday night dinners. They also had a great sale on generic cream cheese (one-third the price of the Philadelphia name brand), so I bought four of those, as well as some packages of sliced lunch meat for sandwiches for the kids. I took our little rolling cart, which ended up very full. All this food is for the Institute, as is often the case.

It was threatening to rain, but I drove anyway to wash the car, because it was absolutely filthy. The trees here, and often the rain itself, seem to ooze dirt and almost mud. So the car looks much better on the outside, and I vacuumed the side as well. I think the car now weighs ten pounds less. The fact that Friday is Zone Conference gave me some extra incentive to have it clean.

I also sent a long email to my sister and her husband with recommendations on preparing for their trip here this fall. It was mostly a repeat of my usual suggestions for international travel, cut and pasted from prior emails with a few edits specific to them. There are so many little things you can do with a bit of planning that make travel more secure and enjoyable; we have accumulated quite a list over the years.

The afternoon was spent on lesson prep for Dee's FH class in the evening and for my Book of Mormon class Friday. We will be at Zone Conference until mid-afternoon Friday, so the Institute will be closed. No Seminary, but we will have our usual Friday evening class and dinner. I posted Anziano Wijesundera's photo on our Institute "wall of fame" in the hall, alongside all the other missionaries who have served here.

 

I also got to take a photo of the sugar cube temple with daylight instead of our rather anemic fluorescent ceiling lights. Hopefully this gives a slightly better view:

With no scheduled activities, we had only a couple of kids show up all day, though there was a missionary lesson taught. That was ok, because we needed the time for lesson prep. Ugo came by for a while to do a Zoom conference for his job, and he also spent some time training the Ganziani. We agreed that we should write up a document explaining how the Ganziani and the Institute campus are supposed to work together, as the institutional knowledge doesn't always seem to be preserved well when transfers occur. Our campus is an unusual setup here, so the young missionaries don't have any way to know how it is supposed to work.

Dee writes: I overheard Anziano Wijesundera ask his companion if he wanted some ice cream. Sadly for the anziani, that ice cream is off limits, to reserve it for the Wednesday afternoon gatherings. We need to do this to conserve our budget and because it takes time to go get more; it's also an effort to lug it up the stairs.

The English class had only a couple of students tonight, including Arsene, but they seemed to have a very fun lesson with everyone contributing. Dee gave her final FH lesson for this semester, so she will get a bit of a break before starting up again, probably next month. It's been a great learning experience to teach the class, but I'm also doing the happy dance for having a little down time.