Eggnog and Dr. Pepper

Tuesday morning was spent at home, though as usual we came to the Institute early to prepare for Taco Tuesday. The weather is now down to freezing at night, so we are definitely into wearing our heavy coats. Fortunately this year we already know about the heater overhead in our bedrooms, which keeps the place much warmer than last year before we figured that out. In the morning when I was climbing stairs for exercise, our doorman Paolo told me that there was a big fire not far away at a local trash  facility and that we should not open our windows due to the poor air quality. After thanking him, my response -- which made him laugh -- was that we were not Italian and so didn't open the windows when it was really cold outside anyway. When we did go out, the air quality really was bad, smoky and smelly.

Taco Tuesday was slightly smaller than usual, except for eight missionaries, all of whom had investigators there. Dee had bought some avocados a week ahead, which were now ripe and she was able to make a nice bowl of guacamole.

 

 

Ugo was out of town; he has been there a lot recently on Tuesdays. After the lunch, cleanup went pretty quick with help from the kids. At 3pm we had our student council meeting, with Joyce (still in Sicily) and Francesco joining in online, and Sheyla, Maria Jose, and Marilene with us in person. After reviewing missionary work with the Ganziani (who then left), we went over the activities for the rest of this month and then planned the following month. It was a very lively meeting, with everyone very involved and lots of laughter. For our service activity next month, Dee came up with the bright idea of volunteering as a group to work at the temple open house. After the meeting, we served leftover apple pie from the night before to the group. Maria Jose somehow managed to drop the whipped cream and get it all over her clothes, laughing hard at herself.

 

Andrea, a young journalist from Milan who lived here for a while and was a frequent visitor and friend of the kids, wrote a nice, long online article about our Institute. He is not a member of our Church. He talked about what it was like to meet the missionaries on the subway for the first time and be invited to English class. He talked about our food and our lessons, with Dee and me and other missionaries mentioned by name. Even though he got a few details wrong (e.g., how often missionaries get transferred), overall it was a positive view on the church and what we do. Here is a link to the article, but it is all in Italian, so most of you won't get much out of it.

Chris dropped by, wanting some help with baking a dessert for a work Christmas party. He was hoping for a recipe, but Dee offered to make Reeses Peanut Butter bars with him right then and there, so they went to work in the kitchen. He was a good pupil and they both enjoyed it.

We don't know where our guitar disappeared to. It was broken, and several knowledgeable folks looked at it and offered to help, but nobody knows where it went. Strange. It will show up somewhere.

Jayno wanted his favorite scripture and picture to be included on the wall, so I was able to add it to the document and print out his page. We had only one open slot left on the bulletin board and only one piece of card stock, so it worked out perfectly.

A bunch of the kids went over for gospel choir at the Friendship Center, then came back afterwards. English class was slow getting started in the evening, with several kids showing up almost an hour late for an hour-long class. Thus they decided to go long with the class, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. Josh Perego was around for the evening, and Ugo showed up just in time for his Institute class online, having gone to Naples for the day with the his son David and the Hubers. Thus both older Perego boys were there all evening. They bought us some stuff that we had requested from the military base in Naples, including Diet Dr. Pepper for me. Ugo bought a carton of Eggnog as a gift for Dee. He couldn't drive in to drop it off because the ZTL (Limited Traffic Zone) downtown was still in effect for some reason -- usually it ends at 6pm. So after class we went out and waited for him to drive up with all our loot, which we transferred to our car. He had parked at a 24-hour garage nearby, but the attendant had left, so we ended up waiting outside in the cold for quite a while. It was worth it for all the nice stuff we got. We arrived home a bit late. It is really nice these days to walk into our warm apartment, with the radiators having been on all evening (they come on around noon).