Afterthoughts

    It is now 6:45 Central Time. I am sitting in the impressive Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport waiting at gate D-36 for my flight to S?o Paulo. The frequency of Portuguese words that I hear has increased significantly. On the way to Dallas I sat next to a lady who lives in Santo Amaro, one of the areas I served in while on a mission.

    Looking back on this week of training in Salt Lake City I feel I have learned a lot and overcome some challenges. Nathan and I were able to spend some time with a Career Workshop trainer who also speaks Portuguese, albeit somewhat rusty. The trainers have all been very supportive and love to tell us how great they think we are. I feel that I have a lot to improve upon and hope to have some time to prepare for the first workshop that we will teach. I am more and more excited to get to Brazil and begin teaching.

    The one regret I have after this week is having eaten too much. Mimi, the lady in charge of the whole training process, has been overly generous with providing food for us each day at lunch and dinner. I shamelessly took advantage of it, of course. Last night was a great finale to a week of great eating as we all went to Chilli's and had one last Mexican/American meal. We ordered bottomless chips and salsa and boneless buffalo wings for appetizers. I had the Monterrey Chicken with Cheese Taquitos. Then... I noticed the dessert menu. I couldn't resist (and didn't even try to) the paradisiacal chocolate chip cookie with walnuts under a large scoop of vanilla ice cream with chocolate and caramel topping. It was incredible! Unfortunately, I was so delirious with gastric pleasure that I forgot to take a picture of it, but I'm sure the pictures I have posted so far will illustrate the spectacular suppers supplied.

    At the end of our last training session we received a visit from Jan Van Norman who is in charge of international programs at BYU. Nathan and I were excited to see him because he brought our Passports with our Visas. We had been very worried that we would not receive them in time.