1. We didn't go to the formal do on Saturday night. When Jimmy got home from work on Thursday (after my Carolina Herrera experience of okaying a classic black suit, immediately followed by the office assistant telling me that the classic black suit was a no-go), he asked how my day was and I told him "VERY stressful". When I told him why, he suggested we just not go to the event. Is it that easy to get out of it? So on Friday morning, I decided that I wasn't going dress shopping after the school reading program meeting and that we'd just skip the event. So the assistant changed our rsvp and that was all settled.
2. Because we'd hired a babysitter for Saturday night, we went for drinks and dinner with another new couple here in Bogota. We all love the babysitter and intend to use her services as often as possible before her family departs post next year.
3. Mac came home from school on Friday and told me that the headmaster at the school told him he wasn't wearing the right kind of black shoes with the dress uniform. Oops. I knew they weren't dressy enough but I'd hoped to fall through the cracks. Let it be said there's no falling through the cracks at the British School. So we bought a beautiful pair of little boy's dress shoes on Saturday. They have very nice shoes here for all ages.
4. The school communicates totally electronically so late Friday afternoon I was checking the website and saw that Mac had to choose what he wanted to do for his performing art in music class. The choices for his year are violin, cello, percussion, recorder, drama, stomp, choir and maybe something else that I can't remember. Guitar doesn't come as an option until next year. So he has chosen violin as his first choice, but if that's already filled, then stomp is his second choice. The school has a limited number of violins that we can rent, so hopefully we answered early enough to be among the first come first served. Rental for the year is just $40 so it's a steal of a deal to learn violin. And in true British School fashion, if Mac doesn't shown sufficient improvement in some number of months, he has to choose something else.
5. We went to church yesterday at the English-speaking church here in Bogota. They have a huge sanctuary that could probably seat 350 people. By Jimmy's count, there were some 50 people in the service with probably another 15 or so in the children's church. Now I know that lots of people don't ever go to church, but all I could think was that we're posted at one of the largest US embassies in the world - there are some 400 Americans posted here - and there were only a couple of other embassy folks there. If even 1/10 of the Americans at post came to church and if 1/2 of those 1/10 had families, we could have filled the church up.
6. We told Mac they had a children's church and asked if he wanted to go, and he said no. Before the service started, this nice preteenaged girl came over and asked if he'd like to go. He said no and then she very wisely told him they were going to be drilling stuff and making a tent. He was out of there in a flash and afterwards, said it was the best children's church he'd ever been to. There was another CGB child in the program - a little older than Mac, but he was thrilled to make the connection with somebody from his school. He even prayed for that boy and his family last night.
7. Ruth started on Friday and she's wonderful. She was supposed to arrive at 7:30am but got here at 6:45. By the time I got home from my school meeting around midday, she'd cleaned, grocery shopped for dinner stuff and fresh flowers, had dinner on the stove and was ironing. She comes back today for more fun. Last night, I decided I wanted her to make ropa vieja today but that's a lot of recipe to translate. So I found this fabulous Google Translate program online and BAM! in two seconds the whole recipe was translated. I can't wait to eat dinner tonight!
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