Thursday, February 23, 2006

I’d like to specially thank the manager of Pattin Pizza for their considerable charity; after this evening’s CASP course I bought a pizza from the Young Men’s campout-fundraiser. The only problem is – we don’t have an oven. It was about 11 pm as we strolled into our hotel lobby and I asked one of our friends (worker) at the front desk if it were possible for them to cook our pizza. His reply was kind of disturbing, “well you have a microwave don’t you?” A microwave to cook a large pizza? I don’t think so.

My next idea was to ask the nice people at the pizzeria across the street, Pattin Pizza. As Dave waited with the pizza on the other side of the street, I walked in and waited patiently to speak with the manager, who at the time was working the cash register. I think he recognized me from eating there the night before, and as we talked I explained how we were living in the hotel across the street without an oven, and that we had bought a pizza to support a youth group from church; I then asked if they could bake our pizza and he agreed without hesitation. I then stepped outside and called Dave. Oddly, our pizza was bigger than their oven, so they cut it in half and after 5 minutes, it was baked, sliced, and ready to eat. To show my appreciation, I bought an overpriced can of Guaraná.

Of the five CASP courses I’ve taught in Brazil, this week’s was the best for the following reasons: they were all eager to learn, we started and ended the week with the same number of participants – 10 (though a man named Rodrigo had to quit, but another man named Rodrigo joined), they did their homework assignments, they make contacts after the first day, most showed up to class tonight dressed as if they were really going to an interview (we didn’t even ask them to, they just knew today was the mock-interview day), and they preformed the best during the mock-interview. Congrats Kobrasol participants!!

Here are some pictures of the group:
From left to right: Lurdes, Paulo, Vanessa, Iasmin, Helamã, Sônia, Luana, David, Luciana , Rodrigo, Geoffrey, Aldo



Oh, and contrary to popular belief, most of the time Dave and I are not dressed in a shirt and tie, that is only while teaching the course (which is about 12 hours a week). I will try to post some pictures of us in normal clothes at the beach or just site seeing.

CASEI 2006 , here we come! (CASEI - Conferência dos Adultos Solteiros das Estacas Integradas.) Dave and I decided to participate in the Five-Stake Conference for the Single Adults this weekend; Carnaval starts this weekend and goes until Wednesday (Ash Wednesday – the start of Lent), and if we weren’t going on the getaway conference, I’m not sure what we’d do. But it should be pretty fun… here is a site to learn more about it – it has links to pictures and stuff like that - http://www.casei2006.cjb.net/