February 9, 2010

On Saturday Nina and some of her girl friends from school (GLCA) boarded the metro and went into downtown Lisbon on their own! I never would have imagined such a sceniario when we left Charleston last August. First of all let me say Portugal has a rep for being a low crime rate country. Secondly I made sure she had my cell phone. Thirdly I know the other girls she was with. Still, I felt it was a big step for me, as well as for her. The girls headed downtown to the home of one of the Napalese girls from school. Her parents own and operate a Napalese resturant in Lisbon. Nina is getting quite a cosmopolitan education along with the 3 Rs.



I celebrated my birthday on Saturday by eating lunch while sitting under the lemon tree in our yard...not bad for a February 6! Sorry to all of you back in the states who are digging out of the snow. Spring isn't quite here yet, but we have had some really nice preview days.



We have our first Portugal visitor with us now. Larry Vanderstal who is a former co-worker of Mike's is here visiting us for almost two weeks. We are trying to get him to as many of our favorite Portugese places as possible. It is sort of hard since Mike and I are both working 8-4 each day, but since it is now light longer in the evenings we can do some short trips after the school day is over...and pack the rest in during the weekends. Mike may decide to take a day off this week to get everything in.



We finished our first semester of school and are into the second...time flies when you are having fun. Nina's grades were good but to take the stress off her we suggested she drop her computer aps class. This gives her a study hall everyday instead of just one day a week. She is way ahead in what she knows about computers anyway...it seems the program at CMS has served her well in that area.



Kati has a new student in her class. Sara and her family arrived here from Brazil last week. She and Kati are already fast friends. There are now 4 girls and 1 boy in her 5/6 grade class. Kati loves making new friends and is surprisingly good at it. It is nice to see her going out of her way to make a new student feel welcome and a part of things.



We now have heat and can use our clothes dryer...our latest frustration is that our internet service was accidentaly shut off...so we have been without internet service for over two weeks. Luckily we can use it at school but it isn't as conveniet as having it at home, especially for the calls that need to be made later in the evening (due to the time change). I guess we wouldn't feel like real missionaries if everything was too easy for us.

Later...actually February 11...we finally have internet again...no excuses now! We had two days of solid rain but today the sun is out again...yeah! We put our guest to work. He taught one of Mike's government classes ( that was what he taught when he and Mike were co-workers) and he even subbed for another teacher who had to be gone for most of yesterday. Maybe that is why no one else has come to visit us...they are afraid we might put them to work!

Today or tomorrow we plan to take a sight-seeing trip to Fatima. For those of you who might not have read about it...that is where 3 little girls supposedly saw the Virgin Mary back in the, I think late 1800s or early 1900s. Ever since then it has been a Catholic Shrine. People (Catholics) go there for healing. We haven't been there but our guest, Larry, wanted to go see it.

That is all for now. We will try to keep the blog more up to date...after all we don't want our followers to stop checking in to "what's up in Portugal!"
N