Two classes and black-eyed peas

Friday morning my alarm went off at 6am, awaking me from a sound sleep. It is an odd alarm that separates shutting off the alarm from disabling it for future mornings, so I had forgotten to turn it off from the day before. Bummer. Karen slept 11 hours, which hopefully will help her get over her cold. At 8:30am I drove the two of them to the Jonio subway stop so they could go down to the train station and catch their 9:45am train to Florence. They will be gone until Tuesday night, visiting Florence, Venice, and Ravenna, then leaving for London on Wednesday morning. By evening we heard from them that all went well: they loved Florence and Michelangelo's David in particular (my favorite thing to see in all of Italy). 

The plumber, Antonio, who had fixed our ever-running toilet last week, was a no show at our 9:30am appointment. Toilets here have two different push plates, one for lots of water and one for just a little. The latter stopped working a few days ago, well after his first visit. I took the box apart, and it appears that a piece is now completely missing -- there is nothing for the little green rod to connect to at all! Very strange. Antonio had written down the time wrong, so we agreed that he will come Saturday morning instead.

The part that should attach to the green knob is missing!

One thing that puzzles us very much here is that manila folders do not exist. We can't find them anywhere, including Amazon. They have really flimsy folders and very stiff folders, but nothing thin and light with some body to it like a manila folder. I keep my lesson materials in my shoulder bag in a manila folder from the US, which is in tatters at this point. Sitting at my desk in our apartment, I turned to the bookshelf and happened to notice two brand-new manila folders sitting between some books. Manna from heaven! The old one is now safely in the trash, and this new one should last for the duration.

In the afternoon I did lesson prep for my Seminary and Institute classes. The former consisted of just reviewing some doctrinal mastery scriptures and learning a few new ones, using games. One activity that my Seminary coordinator/friend Kelly taught me years ago was to show a fun photo after assigning them one of the scriptures, then ask them to figure out a way to apply their scripture to the photo, with bending, folding, and mutilating allowed 😀. The point is that there is more than one way to apply any scripture, and the kids have a lot of fun with it. There were only five kids present, as two of them missed because of their sister's wedding and the two Perego boys missed for a camp-out, both very good excuses! It was a fun hour.

Here are two of the photos we used for applying the scriptures, followed by Doctrinal Mastery Bingo of course:

 

Meanwhile, Dee was hard at work in the kitchen. She prepared Sloppy Joes in the crock pot for the evening's dinner, as well as some chocolate chip cookie bars hot from the oven for Seminary, so hot in fact that several kids burned their tongues (but couldn't stop eating them anyway! :). 

Sloppy Joes ready to go

The kitchen queen at work

Luis tastes his cookie...

and burns his tongue!

I let mine cool down first

Dee also worked with Rhenald, our Roma 3 GANS from Nigeria, who is putting on an African food night here on Saturday. We had bought some stuff per his request, and he also brought black-eyed peas, which need to be skinned for his dishes. Dee and Rhenald spent hours doing that, assisted by a number of GANS after the evening class. Rhenald later told her that it was possible to buy the bean paste already made but that it was somewhat more expensive-- I think it would have been a bargain!

 

Sheyla and Jomar came by in the afternoon to start putting up the Halloween decorations. We will have a big Halloween party here on October 31; last year that activity had one of our biggest attendances ever. The Institute was hopping all afternoon.

 

 

 

The young Sorelle who live beneath us came by in the late afternoon to do their daily study and wait for Flavia to show up for a missionary lesson. They volunteered to help Dee and Rhenald with the beans for a while too.

My Institute class covered D&C 20-25. At my request, Ugo had bought some replica copies of the original 1833 and 1835 versions of the D&C, as well as the first LDS hymnal from 1835, which fit in very well with the lesson. The kids enjoyed seeing and paging through them. As with many teaching aids, I have copies at home in the US from my Seminary teacher days. Had I known I would do this much teaching on these topics, I might have brought more stuff here, but our suitcases were full anyway. It is nice that Ugo has some budget for such things.

The class was smaller than in recent weeks, but we still had a good group. I fear that the strike last week kinda killed our momentum, and there may be a strike next Friday too 😟. It probably wasn't my best lesson ever, but teaching is always enjoyable for me.

After class, Dee's Sloppy Joes were very popular, with everyone having two. Most of the kids hung around for a long while. Dee ended up recruiting some of them to help with the beans, and they had a great time standing around the table working on the beans and talking.

 

 

Working on the beans

 

The second bean shift

By then I was exhausted, but Dee was on a roll. Not sure how she had the energy, but we stayed until 11pm so she could work with the kids on the beans, while I collapsed on the couch in the front room. I had a good visit with Noemi, recently returned from her mission, which she served here in her "home" mission of Rome but never in Rome itself. She is really sharp and her English is extremely good. We got home at 11:30pm, far later than usual, and we were both fried by then. Even though it will be a busy day, no alarms for Saturday morning!!

I made the Sloppy Joe meat ahead of time so I would be available whe Rhenald came by. He was such a hard worker, and able to be calm and organized, too. 'm very impressed. I mistakenly soaked the beans in cold water, so they weren't soft enough to peel easily. Then I convinced him to put them on the stove on low (I love this induction cooktop), which helped a lot. He thought it would be easier to chop up the beans in the blender before peeling them, but I thought removing hundreds of tiny pieces of peel was much harder. Peeling them while wearing the latex gloves helped a lot, but we never would have made it without all the young people joining in--about a dozen of them. I had tried very hard to have Rhenald only do two dishes, but he insisted on three. It's hard for anyone to realize how much work goes into making servings for twenty people. I call it the peanut butter sandwich principle--quick to make one, but a big deal to make 75. Next time we have a food night, I will lay down the law to have only two dishes.