Happy Labor Day!

Yesterday in El Salvador was Labor Day. What does that mean for us? No work and no class!!!! whooohoo!!! The great thing about it being a holiday on Thursday is that they went ahead and gave us Friday off, too. Four day weekend! A couple of weeks ago, we started a women's prayer group here at the house. It's been great...last week we had 14 girls and 2 babies! (This is awesome since there are only 15 girls in the whole church...we are so outnumbered by the guys!) So this week we decided to have a breakfast since no one had to work. We had a feast- beans (yes, we eat beans for breakfast here), plantains, avocado, cheese, cream, bread, fruit salad, etc etc! We took leftover panes con frijoles to the boys, who were a block away, playing soccer all morning. Have you ever seen a documentary on shark feeding frenzies on the Discovery channel? Well yeah, it was pretty much like that.

Another great thing about yesterday is that our friends Laura and Kory, and 2 of their kids, Ben and Josh, came in yesterday afternoon! They are missionaries in Guatemala, and I have stayed at their house so much in the past that it is really fun to finally have them here in our house! They are here for a conference and will be with us all weekend (I'll hopefully get a picture up of them soon!). We have a lot of fun because even though they are Americans, they definitely are not southerners. So we joke around a lot about funny things that I say, and this weekend I'm going to introduce them to homemade" 'minner cheese"... for those of you that are not fluent in redneck, that's "pimiento cheese." This is my absolute favorite food I think, I mean it just tastes like home. The recipe is a secret family recipe, but I'm going to share it because it's just not right to keep something this delicious a secret:

- One small box of Velveeta cheese

-1 jar of pimientos, drained

-2 tbls. of vinegar

-2 tbls. of sugar

-2 tbls. of mayonnaise

Grate the cheese and mash in all the other stuff with your hands.

In other news, last night I had my first rehearsal in a jazz quintet! Well they used to be a quartet, and they play in hotels, restaurants, etc, but now that they invited me, we are a quintet- flute (that's me!), trombone, piano, bass, drums. It was so much fun! I was so impressed with their skills. We practiced in a sound proof room that was about 4 ft x 4 ft so that was interesting. We are playing some classic jazz songs from Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, etc and some bossa nova (which I love!) like Girl From Ipanema. I think it will be a lot of fun, and a challenge, and hopefully can make a little extra money too.