Our Speak Class hosted a Secret Santa night.

We skipped the swimming practice and went directly to the Braga Parque. William was still recovering from his cold and I had a pop-up meeting after the Portuguese class so everything worked in alignment.

While William worked on his spaghetti in the food court upstairs, I searched the shopping mall for gift ideas. The restriction is that the gift must be under five euros.

I also checked the Sport Zone, a sports speciality store, for running gears. None of them were on-sale. I didn’t see any promotion for the race on December 22, which I had trouble to register because of technical issues with the website.

As people put their gifts on the table we felt cheated. They all looked more than five euros. I hope they would cut me some slack for a single father joggling work and taking care of a school child, but William was very embarrassed.

William had a Harry Potter play cards for Angelia from Italy. I got a Micky Mouse key chain and a gingerbread spice bottle for Juliana, our instructor. We also got a bottle opener for Rodrigo, the other volunteer instructor. William received a Battleship game and I received a box of mint chocolate from Juliana. She said it was meant for William.

William carefully opened up his gift, then carefully wrapped it up.

After we got back to our apartment, William asked to to video record it when he opened the gift for a second time. He then sent the video to Zhaojing.

We shared some food and beverages. Claudia from Venezuela made some cookies but she used wrong flora. She still brought them to the class but refused to let anyone taste it.

We brought bananas and Moscatel de Setubal. I bought the Moscatel from the official bananareiro store at thirteen euros, then found them in Pingo Doce on sale at four euros with the original price of five euros.

Students also provided feedback to the program. They said liked this class was better than the one they had last spring. They suggested there should be more oral conversations in the class. It appears William and I were the minority of first time learners. Among nine students, three were from Italy and another one spoke Spanish. The curriculum is actually too challenging to us.

William kept work on his school project until late into the night. Both of us have a tsunami of work due early next week.