Piano Recitals & Birthday Parties‏

 Hi kids,  I accidently erased about 5 weeks of my journal notes and that's what I use to remember what 

the heck we did.  I was so bummed!!!! Oh well, what do you do? So, there won't be a lot of details for the

 next few weeks - just a bunch of pictures with a little description. (maybe that's a plus...;)   Here are some 

pictures that we saw on our morning walk-about the neighborhood: This is a pretty nice house - it actually

 has a real window. But still just a piece of cloth for the front door. But I took the picture because I love

 the 'table'!

By the door is the broom (twigs) and the yellow container holds their water for drinking and washing. 

 Typical bathroom/hole in the ground 

         And our morning walk on the beach:Here's a group getting ready to launch - 

all young kids except for the guy in red.

      The strangest jellyfish we've ever seen!   Pretty blue with super long tails.

 This is the only time we've never seen them and we haven't seen them since.

 A very funky-looking jellyfish - the tentacles were huge!

 Saw these guys - they were showing us how they can do cartwheels and flips...;)

We went to lunch with the Dilles. It was a little (lot!) windy....

       One day, we went to 'town'  with the Dilles 
because they needed a few things for their apt and are just learning their 
way about. I forgot to take pics in the markets but did get this great 
picture of your dad. He got tired of waiting and proceeded to reach into
 the dumpster (remember this is an African dumpster where EVERYTHING is 
dumped...) and pulled out a piece of cardboard to sit down on on the 
curb and then reached in the bag of rolls that we'd bought and had 
himself a little snack. He's one happy (though unsanitary) camper!
 

  While we were walking back to the car, I spotted a building that 
looked familiar and realized it was the prison, so I pulled out my phone
 and snapped a quick picture. We could hear the inmates singing - it 
reminded me of the ballads that the slaves used to sing while they were 
working on the plantations. It was plaintive...  It's a pretty building 
though, isn't it? There is some beautiful architecture that was built by
 the Portuguese while they were here. It's not maintained now though, 
and is decrepit and crumbling, but the 'bones' are nice.

     Saturday, was the usual busy. In the morning, we went to a craft 
fair that one of the members was in and met this guy, Agrippa, from 
Zimbabwe. He's a member of the church and in fact, he has a daughter on a
 mission right now in South Africa. He carves stone. We bought this 
giraffe sculpture from him.   

 The member at the fair needed a ride home, so we loaded up her stuff and 
took her home. When we helped her inside with her things, we visited for
 a bit and dad started to play with their kids, tickling and wrestling 
with them on the couch.  I was talking to the couple, and noticed the 
kids chanting something to dad while they playing. I stopped and asked 
the wife what they were saying. She hadn't noticed, so she asked her 
little girl. The girl answered, "Jésus."  I told dad that's the best 
compliment he's ever gotten!! We all laughed and laughed! 
 

   Then Dad and Larry took off to a big district priesthood training 
meeting, so Sandi and I went to a piano recital that Kelly Bueno had for
 her piano students.  She's been teaching piano to kids from the 
branches.  This was their year-end recital. The Buenos leave soon to go 
back to Utah and Sandi is going to take over the piano teaching.  The 
bald guy standing on the second row/left side is the wife of Luisa, my 
little Primary president, who was just baptized in July.  He's such a 
nice, quiet guy. (That's his little girl eating on the front row. She's a
 pistol, just like her mom!)   And another student is one of the branch 
presidents.  He doesn't have much time to practice and during the 
recital he had such a hard time getting through his piece, Kelly had to 
go over to the piano and point out each note for him to play.  I so 
admired him for even getting up there!

 Right after the recital, we zoomed home and dad and I went to Amalia's 
birthday party. We had no idea what to expect - food or no, lots of 
people or no, presents or no. It turned out that we were meeting at a 
restaurant for dinner. There were about 25 of us. Dad got pizza and I 
got stuffed crab. Neither was too good. :(  But people were sharing 
their meals so I tried squid (really thick part of the tentacle - kinda 
like chewing on rubber (blech!)  and cow tongue, which was surprisingly 
not bad! It was quite soft and kinda reminded me of fois gras, which 
I've only had once in my life and was insanely expensive, so maybe this 
is the cheap African version of fois gras.  It was just fun to be part 
of the gang!
 

  Here's Amalia, the 
birthday girl and her youngest, which she still nurses and carries on 
her back in a capalana.  She just got her Doctorate degree last weekend!
  (Amalia, not the baby...)

Here's their whole family - 3 girls.  The little boy is a cousin - he wants that cake really bad!! 

  I had no idea what to give Amalia for her birthday and wasn't 
sure if people even gave presents. Most didn't, but a couple did. I 
bought her some hoop earrings with rhinestones when we went to town. I 
told her that it was something people in the United States would like, 
but I didn't know if she would. She later thanked me for them and told 
me that when she wore them to work, people told her that she looked 
'classy'. Touch-down!

 On Sunday, the Beira branch was showing
 General Conference and we didn't want to watch it again, in Portuguese,
 so we went to the new branch that we were just assigned to by the 
District President this week.  I'm sad to leave our branch.... I was 
just getting the Primary up and running and feeling like a part of the 
branch. I actually knew people's names and little background.  :( :( oh 
well. You go where you're called.

 We've been assigned to the one group in the district. They're too small to be a 
branch, so they're a 'group'. There are around 80 members, about 35 of 
them are children. Here's my new Primary! I guess the girl in the purple
 is trying to show us how to do a back-bend.   Here we go again - we're 
starting from scratch!!

 Love you guys tons and TONS!!