Saturday we spent entirely at home, except for one quick trip I made to Conad and the Chinese store. I ran into Anziano Thacker on the street going over, and the Sorelle beneath us at the Chinese store. Among the things I bought there were six shoe inserts for Dee of different colors. They cost less than 2€ per pair, and they have done wonders for her feet! I also tried to buy a front windshield wiper replacement blade there, but couldn't find one that had our car model listed. Anziano Benincosa got one there that worked, so I will have ask him what he bought.
It rained a bunch during the day, pretty hard for a while. Dee is all better from her cold. It is amazing how quickly she recovers from being so sick. In the morning she did some really good editing on the mission cell phone bill report, and we worked together to tighten up the contents nicely, then sent it all off to the President and some of the office folks.
Now that we don't
need AC any more, we moved
our offices from the guest bedroom back to the living room. It is much more spacious for us in the living room, so
we are happy, and it just takes an hour or less. Dee has a new computer
table, smaller than her old one (which was too big) after we swapped with the Sorelle. The
back bedroom is still messy but will get cleaned up for my sister
Karen's visit starting next weekend. It's fruitless to clean ahead of time, because the dust accumulates prodigiously. Dee spent a bunch of time cleaning the various rooms as we moved things
around, and I snaked out her shower drain which wasn't draining well.(my hero!) It
was definitely different from how it works in the US, and as with most
plumbing it was kinda gross, but the drain seems to be emptying much better now.
Overall the apartment looks a lot better.
This week we bought a five-DVD set of the Indiana Jones series in Italian from Amazon for an upcoming movie night activity at the Institute. That came about when I cited a scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in my FHE lesson, and none of the kids had ever seen it! Since it is such a fun show, we agreed to watch it in a few weeks. I ripped all five of the DVDs using my external USB drive, so now I have a copy on my computer ready to go.
At 6pm we watched the Saturday morning session of General Conference, which we really enjoyed. It is always a good opportunity to feel the spirit, learn things, and take stock of how we are doing in our personal lives. The big announcement was changing to "only" two hours of church starting in January, instead of the three hours we have been doing for almost 40 years. It seems like a good plan, particularly here where it takes most people a long time to get to church. We also watched the first half hour of the afternoon session (10pm here) but then went to bed, since we will see it Sunday with our ward.
Dee from Friday:
I was too tired on Saturday night after all the cleaning and organizing and editing to write up Friday. In fact, I never even left the house. So, here goes on my Friday gems:
Dario came in to help make enchiladas for the Friday night dinner. He is very handy in the kitchen. He rolled 16 enchiladas filling a double size baking pan, and then was justifiably ready to quit. His fiancee showed up and they played cards with Jomar. I made the second pan of enchiladas and three batches of Mexican rice. Elder Smith has a smile that lights up the whole place. When he heard we were having enchiladas, we got the smile! He is loving the Institute, that's for sure. So, several of the kids asked me what they were eating. They were native South Americans, Spanish speakers. Enchiladas are not part of their culture. Who knew?
I felt better and better as the day went on. I took Dayquil, brought to us by April Parker several months ago. That's good stuff!
I talked with my Dad about some needed roof work, but it was pretty difficult because he can't hear me and doesn't remember the prior conversation. It will be good to be back home near them.