My pecan rolls! pretty yummy.

Maggie and I made walnut-roasted pork loin for 10 on Saturday night. A group of 8 of us went to see Avenue Q. (Tessa, my roommate, and her fiance Ryan ate with us but didn't join us for the play.) Notice the sutures sticking out of the pork - we didn't have any wooden skewers to hold it together, so we used... paper clips? You might want to zoom in for that. And then, we (I) forgot to count how many were put in, so we really hoped that they all made it back out. And they did. And we received lots of compliments on the finished product.
Some of the group - Monica is in the red, looking at our kitchen; Josh is wearing my apron and making pudding; April and Flo are working on the salad; and Michael is... working on his beer.

On a more serious note,I ate with a new-to-City Spanish teacher. She’s Hispanic and grew up in either the DR or Haiti; I can’t remember. She taught at Central in GRPS the past four years after graduating from Grand Valley. I really enjoyed our conversation. She’s a Christian, and told me how she never said anything to her students about her faith, but kept a Bible on her desk at Central. She said that many students would notice that and come up to her, asking her to pray for them, for tests, for situations they were in, etc. She sees herself as a role model to the Hispanic students especially, because the majority of Hispanics at Central were in gangs, and she was an adult who was Hispanic, still spoke with an accent, but was not involved with drugs or crimes. I told her a little bit about my desire to help students, but I feel disadvantaged because I come from a white, upper-class family/upbringing. That’s where the conversation about the Bible came in – she told me that I can be as effective as I want by showing the students that I care about them; for me, that is how I can break the stereotype as she is doing. God put me on the earth in this color; thus, it’s obviously the color I will best bring His kingdom to earth. That’s true, but I’d never thought of it in those words.