Power outage threatens Taco Tuesday

Tuesday morning we left home early to go to Auchan, buying ingredients for upcoming dinners, plus some things for us and a few of the apartments that we inspect, such as a kitchen trash can for the Ganziani apartment. I had woken up in the middle of the night and not been able to get back to sleep, so I was pretty tired. We drove straight from the mall to Institute, arriving plenty early to prepare for Taco Tuesday. Veronica, newly returned from serving a mission in England, showed up early as well and offered to help, so we put her to work grating cheddar cheese. 

Things were looking good until the power went out to the whole building. It wasn't clear how widespread the outage is (the Italian word for blackout apparently is blackout), but it went off and on three times over the next half hour. We realized that, without our electric cooktop (where I was cooking the taco meat and Dee was making Spanish rice), Taco Tuesday was not going to happen, not to mention the fact that it would get hot inside very fast without AC. Finally the power came back on for good, and we were able to finish preparations just about on time. The group was slightly smaller than average with August approaching, but we had fun and good food. 

 

After the meal, I helped Almendra fix her LDS login so that she could sign up for  the Pathway online college program. Somehow her account had been locked, and the recovery phone number was for her phone in Peru that got stolen before she moved here. We just called the toll-free US support number, and the support agent spoke decent English, but Spanish was his native tongue, so he and Almendra were off and running in Spanish. Sammy was there translating between me and her, since her Italian and English are still pretty weak. Fortunately, within just a few minutes and several different languages, the agent was able to unlock her account and she logged on successfully.

I tried online again to put money onto Dee's phone SIM card, but no luck. I guess I will to go into the store.

Even though the group wasn't all that large, most of the kids hung around all afternoon, so it was full of energy around here. 

Clockwise from left front: Sheyla, Sammy, Veronica, Chris

Chris came a bit late to Taco Tuesday. We always enjoy visiting with him. He is a non-member, born in Mexico but raised in San Francisco, living in Rome teaching English and playing guitar in a Mariachi band on nights and weekends (for fun and some money). He has become good friends with several of the kids here and seems to feel very comfortable with the group. We asked him a couple of weeks ago if he would be willing to put on a Mexican food night here, and he was very happy to do it. The event will be this Thursday evening, and the ethnic food nights have been among our most popular events.  He and Dee spent a good while going over the menu for Thursday, making a list of ingredients for Dee to buy in preparation. We announced it via WhatsApp and quickly got three of the kids to volunteer to come early and help chop and prepare the food.

Chris finally told us the funny details of a story we had heard vaguely about from over the weekend. He, along with four other kids from here, went down to Napoli and the Amalfi coast for the weekend. Noelle wanted to climb Mt. Vesuvius, so she put the whole thing together. They did it on a shoestring, renting a car for under 40€ and sleeping at a hostel. Anyway, they got there too late to climb Vesuvius but really enjoyed the beautiful scenery in Napoli, Sorrento, Positano, and Amalfi. The story is that, when they went to rent the car, the agency asked if they had insurance, and the answer was no. Their first inclination was to take the risk and not pay for it. However, when the agent heard that they were going to Napoli, he insisted that they take the insurance! Wise move, but not for what you expect. The car was a manual transmission, and Chris was the only one with a license who knew how to drive a stick shift. That was all good, as he likes to drive. As he was finishing the paperwork, Noelle and Ashley got into the car. Because it was so hot, they wanted to turn the engine on and get the AC going, so they just turned the key, not realizing that, with a manual transmission, you have to put it into neutral first. The car jumped ahead a couple of feet and the door got messed up, right as Chris was coming out of the rental office. So they hadn't gone ten feet before needing the insurance package!

After cleaning up the lunch, Dee went out again for some shoe shopping at nearby stores, with no real success. She has been wearing running shoes for the last few weeks, which are not exactly missionary standard, but it has been wonderful as her foot heals and strengthens. Now she hopes to get something that can accommodate her orthotics and look more dressy. No luck yet.

While she was out, I contacted Ugo's parents, Alberto and Raffaela, who are here staying with the five grandkids while Ugo and Jenna are in Paris for an annual Institute director conference. We had hoped to go see them Wednesday before opening the Institute. The time we had in mind didn't work, because they have no AC at their place and so planned to take the kids to the neighborhood pool to cool off. While we really wanted to see them, this opened up a morning at home for us, so we were happy. They will be at church on Sunday, and we will get to see them then.

In the late afternoon, Samuel came by. He is a Nigerian immigrant who joined the church a few years ago here and comes to church every so often. He wanted to sign up for Pathway online classes, so Ugo told him to come see us. Anziano Lewis, who worked with lots of Nigerians in Sicily and learned a lot of their English dialect/accent, had a good time trying to convince Samuel that he (Anz. Lewis) was actually Nigerian. It was hilarious hearing their conversation, even if I couldn't understand much of it.  From the photo below, you can see why Samuel was dubious. Everyone got a good chuckle out of it.

I was able to contact Bishop Magnanti to get Samuel's membership number and help him set up an LDS account. Then I had him create a Pathway account and try to make progress in seeking admission, but I had never done it before so I was bit confused. Ugo later sent me a bunch of screen shots showing what to do, after I had asked Samuel to come back Wednesday when I would have learned how to do it. Samuel also said he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast (I assume he lives in one of the refugee camps), so I made him a sandwich with cheese and salami, which he gratefully ate. We have a bunch of sandwich fixings which don't get used much, so I told him that they would go bad over our August break and sent him home with a backpack full of meat and cheese. He tried to say no, but we insisted.

We left a bit early, after English class ended. On the way home we stopped at Todis to look for more tortillas for Thursday's culinary event, but they were out of stock. I took photos of our car mileage log and odometer, and the gas meters outside our apartment, all of which I emailed to Anziano Knies for our monthly report. The Knieses also gave us several Amazon packages which we had delivered to the office while our doorman Paolo is on vacation. We were both exhausted and got to bed earlier than usual.