Class is in Session.

It's challenging to bake when you live at 12,000ft.

It's also challenging to bake when you grew up in a culture that largely does not eat bread.

But I've found, if you've ever traveled outside of this country or even just outside of this province, you'll love pizza and want to learn how to make it.

So that is why I am currently teaching some local businessmen how to bake.  They said they want to learn how to bake, but after our first meeting together, it sounds like they only want to learn to make pizza - which is just as easy here as it is at sea level.

Getting our game faces on

Teaching him how to roll out the dough

And how to hand toss

Look at that beautiful hand tossed crust.  My oven is only big enough to make personal pan pizzas, so we made a lot of those.

Another pizza going into the oven, this time accompanied by a calzone

One of the guys was so excited he invited his kids and wife to come try the pizza he made.

All done.  Leaving the clean up for someone else....

Dear Jimmy....

I recently started teaching English at an elementary school here in our city to kids after their regular school hours on Monday and Tuesday afternoons.

My Monday class is a class of 20 kids with mixed levels of English, and an age range of 8 to 12 years old.  My Tuesday class (best class in the world) is a class of 7 year olds, who have only had a year of English.  For the first forty minutes of class each week, I take over and teach the kids something - which is actually really challenging for my Monday class because some of them know how to cuss in English, and some of them can't even spell their English name.  So what do you teach kids on different levels that'll keep them all focused?  I still don't know.

After my forty minutes of teaching, we switch to computer time, where all the kids get a netbook, log onto a website, and do 40 minutes of watching videos and responding to questions about the videos (all in English).  On Mondays, I just sit at a desk waiting for the time to pass.  On Tuesdays, I'm up the whole time helping the kids understand what's being said during the program, and helping them learn how to use computers.

A couple of weeks ago, Aaron and I got an email from Virginia (soon to be Virginia O'Hare), who is a second grade teacher in Memphis, with letters from her second grade class to Aaron and I asking us about ourselves and living in Asia......and the fertile crescent - like half the letters asked about the fertile crescent...they must think we live in Mesopotamia.

Ms. Skelton and Mr. O'Hare

So I had my classes write them letters back.  Here are two favorite letters we received from Ms. Skelton.

Here is a letter from one of my students, who insisted on having a boy to write back.  I gave her a letter from Demarcus, and told her to write him back.  She wrote him, gave it to me and told me not to read it.  So I did, when I got home.  

Who is this Jimmy???  She got a letter from Demarcus!