Cookies with the youth group girls

As we have spent more time at church, we have thought of ways to try to connect to various people.  In early December we had an end of the year celebration for the English classes that John and I (and some others) teach where the students (adults and kids) all decorated Christmas cookies.  It was so much fun that I thought it would be nice to have the teen girls over to our house to do some decorating too.

So, after we got settled back in the country in January, I decided it would be fun to decorate cookies for Valentine's Day.  John asked what we'd do with all the cookies, and someone (I think him) came up with the idea of passing them out to the people at church.  So, we picked the Saturday before Valentine's Day and invited the girls over.  There is a missionary at church who has worked a lot with the teens, so I asked her to come help.

The girls had fun decorating the cookies, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and watermelon and swimming in the pool.  Unfortunately, only a couple of them were able to be at church the next day to hand them out, but I think the people at church enjoyed receiving them.  And of course, we had fun sampling them the afternoon that we made them.

 Pouring the icing into bags

Decorating the cookies

 Teresa made some particularly fine cookies!

 Eating fruit!

Finished products!

Pool time!

 

Handing out cookies at church.

 

Mangoes!

Well, not too much has changed since I last posted - it's still hot!! and I'm still working on my Spanish class.  But I worked enough today that I thought I'd at least try to do a post (maybe two!).  This one on mangoes.  I love mangoes, so it has been a real thrill to see them growing here.  Unfortunately, the national mangoes are not really suitable for eating - they are small and the flesh is stringy.  But the "good" mangoes grow here just fine, too.  And once in a while, I'm lucky enough to get a bunch of them given to me.  This year, I even happened to be there when they were picked (with a mango picker - they are too high to reach by hand).  Look at this harvest:

Up at the Caballeria (what is that in English???), where Arianna takes horse back riding lessons, there are tons of trees.  Here are some photos I took several months ago - back in October, when they were not ripe yet:

 The trees themselves are beautiful.

 But look at that fruit!

 Leftover pits from last year's mangoes

 I thought that it was pretty impressive to see all that fruit!

And I love this grove of the mango trees.  This place is in Asuncion!

Ok, one more mango tale before I close.  We've been spending some time with a teen in our church and one Sunday afternoon when the season was still going on she was at our house.  I proudly told her how much I paid for some mangoes on the counter - they were about 50-70 cents a pound.  She looked at me incredulously and said (in Spanish, of course) - "You bought mangoes??" and started laughing hysterically (which she is prone to do anyway).  It was so outside of her world to pay for something that just grows so freely here.  

Unfortunately, the mango season is over and they are back up to $3-4 a pound (imports from Brazil).  Happily, I froze a large quantity to put in our smoothies that we eat on a regular basis.