Feliz Páscoa, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, why are we at work?

The weeks are running together and so it's appropriate this is a mishmash of 2+ weeks.

What kind of tree? Inquiring minds would like to know.
And that's just one of the reasons you have to walk with one eye on the ground, here are a few others, though the pictures do not do justice to the roughness.

copies copies All the missionary's forms for information on who they're teaching, what they teach them and so forth. And I handled 22 cases worth of Book of Mormons over two days preparing things for zone conference, when everyone in the mission gathers in three groups over three days. The pre-mission training totally neglected to tell me to strengthen back muscles. I had 70 requests for books and materials, plus I put in their mail and any packages. I was tired enough to miss several letters and packages despite all sorts of checking. So after all was done I started brainstorming ways to make sure to get everything sent to the right place even when life gets crazy. In six weeks we will find out if anything improves.
Zone conference includes treats for birthdays, and apparently that means loud cheering for each person. LOUD. Then a last rendition of the mission song for those who will head home soon - more LOUD, what enthusiastic singing! about blew the roof off.

Wahoo, our first mail from home! we got some nice photos of Glen's family (I somehow got here with an odd selection of photos not including them) and we used them along with others for our English class on "Telling About Your Family". Now they will go back on the bulletin board in the dining room.

Speaking of English class, we had a big one with more first-time invited friends, non-members, but then the next week was small. And yesterday was small because it was a holiday and Durk had left his phone battery dead at the office and didn't see a big Whatsapp discussion about whether we would have class on a holiday. We did. It is hard to get the class to gel since we have people way ahead who should only be coming to level two (or three, if it only existed yet) and some true beginners and some between, some come often and some now and then. And we're pretty sure none do the ten hours of study they are supposed to do. We'd happily take suggestions on how to make it work! But its fun, they are great people.

Gets dark a little earlier now and the sun comes up after 5 by a bit  https://www.gaisma.com/en/location/recife.html Over the year, the length of the day varies by a huge 24 minutes....

We had a chance to walk to a restaurant that is a long drive only because of all the one-way streets, but it had been a very rainy day with plenty of huge puddles for the cars to splash people with. So we taxied here -- and then ended up walking back, the short drive. It was nice weather but maybe not the safest option. Actually the walk wasn't long but crossing the major intersection took as long as the rest - the street is split into several parts and the crosswalks are only where cars don't right turn for that lane. Hard to explain, but we made it. Between restaurant and walk we finally visited Casa dos Frias store, and indeed found actual cheddar cheese. We could have bought a whole chunk for a mere R$264. 

deconstruction - The university next door bought the strip across the street. Change started with a little round hole being made in wall via seldgehammer, (no wonder the pizza place we heard of across the street was never open). Now the hole is bigger, and meanwhile more major signs of change....

this was a the pizza place, back in the corner is the round oven....We saw one worker using an L-brace from the wreckage as his tool to take down the building. 

Sort of started Curso de Regencia (Conducting Course) - ragged start, and at the end the choir director got involved in showing complicated math for dotted notes...
Now we've had a second class - with an entirely different batch of students. I thought we'd be negotiating with choir for time but no choir director showed.

two young men trying to figure out how to make a measure total four counts or three counts with different notes. Its easier in English, Portuguese don't use the fraction words like whole, half, quarter note. I tried using the Lego method for fractions, by making papers whole, half, quarter, and eighth widths, one of each had explanation, counts, name.

Our neighbors invited us to dinner after church. We had rice, puree of potatoes, semolina (looks orange and flaky/crumbly like what they call couscous, but is not corn.) fish with cheesy sauce, vegetables (we would have called it some sort of relish, chopped peppers tomatoes cilantro were what I could identify) and juice Cicera made from acerola, a small red fruit that looks a lot like cherries. She said she washes and washes and washes it, then puts it into the freezer. Then she blends it.  
She bought the acerola when we went to the Mercado de São José together on Saturday morning. We also bought pinha and caqui, 
which looks very much like really good tomato. Mostly you don't see a lot of red tomato here except cherry tomatoes.

One pinha and two caqui fruits and bananas maca, which are OK but not as sweet as bananas nanika, and I bought the basket at the market as well has a pretty hand-made wooden spoon. Obviously a dangerous place to go for the budget. All the side streets are full of shops, lots of electronics and cheap stuff from China.

The caqui are persimmons. They are somewhat like a plum texture inside. I had chopped caqui in my oatmeal this morning and it tasted a bit like having peaches, though the flavor is pretty mild.

"Our neighbors have been going to this market for years and are friends with a spice blend dealer. He has a large grinder and we bought some of his blend -

the blue board lifts up and he let us stash our purchases while continuing our shopping.

it comes with or without pepper, we got with. He dispenses from the grinder into little plastic tubes and wraps that in brown paper to protect it.

Also Durk got R$5 worth of jaca (jackfruit), they tear it apart at the cart. Jose says the seeds are edible, you boil them.

the jaca stand, they use plastic gloves,
they oil their hands for the gloves to slide on and then again for the fruit to not stick.

We stopped for juice drinks at the mercado, the menu was largely "clones" - two syllables, which (surprise) means two of the same drink. They had at least 21 fruits and I enjoyed looking at the sign that included photos of each, as we try to learn what everything is.

not pears or cherries