Saturday, November 14, 2009

This morning, I went to a Relief Society Homemaking meeting. There were 20 sisters in attendance which I thought was a really good turnout since the whole branch only has about 75 members. We were in a tiny room so we were all sitting quite close together in a circle. The sisters first shared their Christmas celebration tradition; then one sister, Lynn, asked if we could all introduce ourselves as she didn't know many of the sisters (she is in Primary so she doesn't get to mingle with the sisters on Sunday) and so we all did that. Two of the sisters in the circle realized that they had gone to Primary together many years ago when they had been in the same ward, so they got to chatting afterwards. Next, some of the sisters shared some Christmas crafts that they had brought with them. I am not into crafts, but there were some cute ideas that I could use for my classes when I get back to teaching. I am going to talk to the sister that shared them tomorrow to see if I can borrow them and write down how I would make them. We ended the meeting by singing some Christmas carols. The Relief Society President, Leanne Rostedt, told us that she was supposed to show us how to make a gingerbread house, but that she had had a horrible week and so hadn't had a chance to get all the stuff together to do that. I got a chance to know some more names of the sisters in the branch, so that was nice.

Later in the afternoon, Chris and Chris (our 'landlords') asked us if we would like to go swimming at the beach - they often go of an afternoon - so we jumped at the chance as we have been here over a week and have not been once to swim in the beautiful ocean water. The time was about 3pm and so by the time we got there, it would have been about 3:15pm. There were a lot of waves this time - the past two times we have been here, we hadn't experienced that, so it was nice to be in the water and be able to 'body surf' - the waves weren't that big, but it was still nicer than still water. The amazing thing that we noticed was that the water was so warm - Mike even commented that it was warmer than most people keep their swimming pools. The weird thing, though, was that there were pockets of cold water which really took me by surprise when I came upon them. Mike and Chris started chatting about airplanes and his wife, Chris, and I started talking about her family. We stayed in the water for about 45 minutes just chatting from one subject to the next. The only down side for me was that I kept getting salt water in my mouth (it's hard to talk and keep your mouth closed at the same time) and I kept gagging. One time I even brought up a noodle or two from lunch (yeah, I know, yuck!) and that's just how I felt as I was gagging. I hope to get in the water a few more times before we head back to Canada.

When we got home, and after we changed, we walked down to McDonald's - we thought we would support the charity of McHappy Day today - for every Big Mac that was bought, McDonald's would give $1 to Ronald McDonald House. We love Big Macs, but don't like to eat them that often since they are so unhealthy, so this way we felt we could eat them and feel good abour our choice since we were supporting a good cause. :-) The good thing, too, was that we had to walk 45 minutes there and 45 minutes back and so we got in some good exercise to counteract the fatty calories we consumed when eating the Big Mac. ;-)

When we got home, Mike watched a show he likes here called 'Mythbusters' - the hosts of the show try and replicate old wives tales and myths to see if they can be 'confirmed', are 'plausible' or are 'busted' (not possible). One such experiment they did in tonight's show was using this red dust that they use to make fires for special effects in movies/tv and burning it in a bucket that is sitting on ice. The myth was that when the burning powder contacts the ice, that it would cause an explosion. The hosts had worked in special effects for many years and didn't think this was plausible. Much to their amazement, when the fire in the bucket got hot enough, it melted the bottom of the bucket and when the fire hit the ice, there was a HUGE explosion. So, this was 'myth confirmed'. While Mike was watching that, I wrote some emails to try and catch up on my correspondence.

After that show, Mike and I changed positions, and I watched a favourite British show of mine that is on tv here called 'The Bill' and Mike did some work on the computer. I had first seen 'The Bill' on a visit to Australia many years ago and I really like it. It's your typical 'cop show' which is my favourite type of tv show. I have always loved cop/detective shows even as a teenager. I used to watch 'Mannix', 'Ironside', 'Hawaii Five-O, 'Streets of San Francisco', 'Adam-12' - shows like that when I was younger and this has carried on over the years. My favourite shows today are ones like 'Law and Order', 'CSI', and 'Criminal Minds'.