why i love aluminum foil

On weekends, Audrey and I usually play it by ear as far as plans go, but for the most part, we like to lay low and stay at home and relax. This is mostly because of our schedules during the week, which don't really allow us to spend a lot of time together to just hang out and relax. This past Saturday we stayed at home, except for about two hours to go to wrship practice at chrch for Sunday's service, and to go buy some groceries. We had talked about it, and decided that I'd be cooking Puerto Rican food, as Audrey loves it (and I was kinda craving it, too).




This is what the end result looks like
Anyway, as I was cooking the PR-style beef steak this time, I got burned really bad. The reason for this was because we don't really have a lid for our frying pan, so we use the only metal bowl that can actually cover the pan.

 

 The culprit
If you've never gotten burned before, it hurts. It really hurts. The problem isn't so much the initial burn (although that's pretty bad on its own), but the burning pain you get just a couple of seconds after taking your fingers away from the cool running water, ice, or whatever you're using to soothe the pain. In my case, I let my fingers rest on the cold water jar, but once we finished dinner, I kept them in water, which seemed to help. After some minutes of pain (during dinner) I decided I'd google to see if there were any home remedies to help with my problem. It turns out, aluminum foil helps with burns. I don't know exactly, but it has something to do with making your skin sweat, which helps the burn (the sodium in your sweat is what helps, supposedly). I read many stories, and people would say that wrapping the burn in foil would still make it hurt badly for 5-10 minutes, but then the pain would go away. So, I decided to give it a try:

 

 Best home remedy ever.
Sure enough, it worked. After about 20 minutes, the pain was gone. I was able to take the foil off, and enjoy the rest of my evening. Now, my fingers still look ugly (huge blisters showed up), but I'm pain-free and on the way to recovery.

 

Aluminum foil. Who would've thought.

Life so far

So, it's been about two months since we returned to Vietnam, and one month since we started working. Audrey has been working at Orphan Voice, and I have been working at UCSI Vietnam. I'll start off by saying that our time so far has been very good. The Lrd has been good in keeping us rooted to Him: so far, we've been able to establish good habits as far as pr.ying and reading the Word goes, and we are extremely thankful for the great community we're a part of here in Da Nang. We have been able to spend time with old and new friends, and with my old and new students (some of which are friends now). Here are some pictures:


With my old students/friends (you may recognize them from my old blog)


With some of my new students eating some delicious pastries!

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Work has been good. It was a little stressful at first - adjusting to a different school with different culture/people, and also adjusting to my responsibilities. The way it works right now is that I teach on Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays, and do IT (computer) work on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I enjoy my work. I enjoy doing the IT stuff, and I enjoy talking and hanging out with my students. The only thing I'd say I don't enjoy as much is my schedule (I work until late on my teaching days), but I suppose it's part of the job. We try to make the most out of weekends. On Saturdays, we usually clean the house, take care of errands, try to spend time with friends and/or attend practice for service on Sundays (if we're serving). On Sundays, we take it slow. We go to chrch in the morning, and then we try to stay at home, relaxing and in general enjoying the day.

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Before closing this post, I just want to let you know that we'll be sending out a newsletter very soon. So, if you'd like to receive it, please let us know by sending an email to theborgeses [at] gmail.com.

Take care!
Pedro

Peanut Butter & Jelly

Growing up, Pedro did not experience something most American children do... eating a peanut butter & jelly sandwich.

This summer when Pedro came to Washington, he tried his very first PB & J.

He said he was curious "what all the hype was about." When he was taking those first few bites, his face wasn't expressing exuberant joy or life-changing bliss, so I wasn't sure if he was too impressed. But the next day, he wanted another one for lunch...and the next day for breakfast-toasted....and the next day for breakfast AND lunch....!

Now here we are in Vietnam, getting used to how to shop and cook with the foods we have available to us here (we're really trying not to eat out, but cook at home to make the most of the money we have). There are more fresh foods, and less options of what we can keep in the cupboard or fridge for more than a few days before it spoils.

Peanut butter is available to buy here. At the supermarket,

there's creamy, chunky, with sugar or without. We'd been

buying the "creamy without sugar" kind, but then I found it

for sale at the market in a plastic bag: creamy with no sugar.

We've also found some cute, small (210 gram) jars of strawberry jam, which we cracked open after finishing the container of strawberry preserves from Vietnam.

I'm really not a fan of PB & J's, but I couldn't be a happier new wife than to make my husband something he LOVES and that is incredibly easy for me to prepare (and I can't do anything, that I can think of, to make it taste bad, hehe).

It's Peanut Butter-Jelly Time! Video