Eight busy wonderful days in Tsaile

I stayed the whole time in Tsaile at Bertie's home. She was the secretary in our college TRIO program from 1990 to 1994. She's already been mentioned on my blog from when I was in Tsaile last spring, staying with Louise. It is so wonderful to have friends from so long ago who are closer now than ever.
Bertie had to work during the week while I was there. I met co-workers and her supervisor where she is so appreciated for her great work as a coordinator of activities and a teacher of special needs students throughout the Chinle School District. Since we worked together almost 15 years ago, Bertie went back to college and got more training and certification for her current work. She has really found her nitch, and I am so proud of her and blessed to have her as a friend. This time with her, she taught me more about pinons, about the trees, and how to find the nuts on the ground, how to tell if they'll be really good or not. Pearl has always loved pinons. (I think they are about the same, if not just the same, as the Pine nuts from Pineto, Italy, where two grandsons live, in the town named for those nuts....the pine nuts, not my grandsons!) I still have one in a film can in the kitchen that Alan (grandson) picked up for me when we were together in Pineto to visit his grandmother when he and his family lived in Brazil about 1995. One of the new recipes I've made calls for pine nuts. In the grocery store in Kingwood, Texas, the pine nuts are from China. Navajos almost all love pinons. They fall from the trees only every other fall or less. For a few weeks, when it's pinon time, it's obvious every where. Students bring them to school and eat them during class. In offices, it's very common to witness secretaries at their desks enjoying pinons. The shell should be taken off before eating them, but the first time I was given a few (early 1990's) I ate the first one shell and all. Well, that was another time added to others, when I was so culturally dumb on the reservation and provided laughs for my Navajo students.