20/04/10

This week, I suppose since we are working through our break, all the faculty have been fed snacks and lunch courtesy of the mission. After lunch in the orphanage dining hall we headed back down to the secondary school, but rather than returning to the classrooms where we had been working, everyone loitered outside. I asked what we were waiting for. My colleague seemed surprised, “well we just ate, we need to digest! You can’t do anything right after you eat!” I laughed, “but it’s not like we are doing anything physically strenuous, we are just using our brains, I don’t think that will upset our digestion process.” They just shook their heads at me.
On Sunday Irmã Albertina and I were helping one of the girls going to the REDES conference get ready. As she was getting dressed she began to step into her skirt but Irmã Albertina rebuked her, “that’s a skirt, not pants!” The girl looked a little shamed, as if she should have known better and put the skirt on over her head. I asked, “you can’t step into a skirt like this?” “Oh no, you only put pants on like that. Skirts and dresses go on over your head. You mean you step into your skirts in America?” She was appalled. I told her I had no idea how most Americans got dressed, but I had always stepped into my skirts.