New Experiences Abound

This morning we went to church in Lisbon. The church is in a store front but is rather large. The sanctuary is on the main floor and children's church is in the basement. Kyle told us that it is the largest church in the country. In fact, all of the churches in Portugal (~14 in all) are coming together in October in Lisbon to celebrate 100 years of the Church of the Nazarene. The church was a mixture of people both young and old and somewhere in between. From what we've gathered most of the members of the Church of the Nazarene in Europe are not native Europeans; they are immigrants from South America or Africa. It was good to be in church even if we couldn't understand the sermon or the words to the songs. The passion and love for Christ that our brothers and sisters in Portugal share is infectious.

Both Emilia and Audra reacted to the Portuguese greeting of a cheek to cheek touch to each cheek with a kissing sound. Emilia was quite surprised and a little shy. I guess she's already developed her own concept of personal space. During Sunday School, Audra and I did a little wandering in the front of the church and a little boy wearing a Portuguese national team football jersey (Portugal beat Turkey 2-0 in their opening match of Euro 2008 on Saturday) came up to her and said, "Dai" (short for "Bom Dia" or good day) and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She was surprised, but then her eyes tried to find him in the crowd. Audra's father noticed and worried that this was only the beginning of a fascination with boys.

This afternoon we went to the beach again though we didn't go to Santa Cruz. I drove the Seat (pronounced "say-ott") 7 passenger, standard transmission, turbo diesel mini-van though it's probably smaller than the Intrepid at home. Kyle led us in his car and then left us to enjoy the beach and hopefully find our way home. The roads (trails) leading down to the beach were pretty steep and winding. The beach was pretty secluded (save the girls, Haydee, the overweight topless woman, her husband, and I). We stayed until the tide started to come in and covered most of the sand. We loaded up the van and headed back to Kyle and Jayme's. Let's just say it took two tries to get back up the washed out, pretty heavily rutted road. If we go back to that beach, (and I think it's a pretty big if) I'll take a picture.

We've also had the chance to talk with both of our parents through Skype, which is a great internet conferencing program. You can do voice, video, and IM-style chatting. It's also free to use between folks who have the program.

Tomorrow, we start our regular schedule of teaching, and two more students are arriving this week.