Learning By The Way

Last night, we had Mr. P, a co-worker and sweet wife and family over for dinner. They are from Angola, one of the African countries that was settled by Portugal. They taught us how to say “Good morning” “Good afternoon” and “Good evening” in Portuguese. Dinner was a little later than I had planned, but Mr. P said this was fine, as noone eats before 8 in Angola. We had a lovely time. The children were EXTREMELY excited to play with their friend, Ishmael, who is 5 years old. They have worked with him on newsletter stuffing day at Samaritan Ministries, and love him dearly.

We’ve been doing stuff since I last posted. Toby has learned division, and is quite fond of his newfound skill. He has been doing a page a day for the last 3 days in the wipe-off division table book we have. Moriah has enjoyed the past 2 days doing a page in a “Summer Skills” book for children entering 4th grade. Most of the pages have some math and some grammar. So she has covered homonyms, incomplete sentences, and division. Samuel has been choosing addition and multiplication pages.

On Wednesday, we made tortillas from scratch the old fashioned way. I did some research on making them after my first attempt was a flop. I discovered that soaking the corn in lime (the mineral) is imperative for the success of the project. Important changes are made in the texture of the corn during the soaking process. It also catalizes nutritional changes, making the B vitamins more available and adding calcium. The dry corn was boiled briefly, then soaked in the lime solution overnight before we ground it into ‘masa’ flour. Moriah helped me with this, which was much appreciated. It is much harder to grind a wet substance than a dry one, as it has to be pushed through the mill. Elsie helped me smoosh the tortilla dough in the press, and Moriah ran the the grill to cook them. The tortillas were a big success, and once again I have a greater appreciation for the old way of doing things.