Victor Goes to Kaysville!

 Yesterday was the day we have all been waiting for, on both sides of the Atlantic!  In Spain, the Altieri family has been preparing their son Victor to spend three weeks with us here in Utah.  The Dopp family has been getting his room ready, planning things to do, and counting down the days.  Victor's dad and I have been emailing back and forth with the title, "Victor Goes to Kaysville!" Our language skills were laughable.  Juan's English is good, but my Spanish is so sloppy that Juan finally resorted to French.  Unfortunately, my French is just as negligible as my Spanish.  We ended up dubbing our communication "Frenchspanglish" or "Espfranglais."

Either way, it got us to the point where we saw Victor's smiling face appear out of customs.  Look at the picture.  You can see that the Air France chaperone wasn't going to let us near Victor until we had produced proper documentation.  Those are the three unaccompanied minors he had in his care, following him.

 Ruby was undeniably elated to see her old friend.  When they met in Spain/Portugal last summer, the girls had a great time with the Altieris, and Sonia's sister Cristina's family as well.  They treated Golda and Ruby like family, showing them around Lisbon, Sintra, Badajoz, Merida and the Mediterranean coast of Spain.  We plan to reciprocate their hospitality this summer, and have a great time doing it!

But first, we took this fatigued and disoriented boy straight from the airport to church.  Scott teaches Ruby's Sunday School class and we wanted him and the other kids to meet Victor.  The first thing Scott did was to tell a "story" to the class.  Long story short, I was dating Scott when I went to college.  Then he went on a mission.  Then he got a Dear John letter in which I told him I was dating a guy from Spain named Victor, who happens to be this Victor's uncle.  It's a pretty funny story, and the kid laughed.  (Background:  I dated Victor Correa, then he went back to Spain and I became best friends and roommates with his sister Gema.  Their other sister Sonia is Victor Altieri's mom.  I stayed with the Correa family a couple of times in Spain, so we really are like family already.  They are very open and loving.)  Anyway, Scott is a great teacher.  He has a huge class, and he loves all of them.  I think they love him back.  Victor asked if Scott was a priest.  I told him no, the Mormons just put everybody to work!  ;)

 At last, Victor was able to take a little rest in his room and skype with his parents.  Later, we watched the World Cup, in which Victor was cheering for Germany.  So that worked out!  The rest of the day, we ate dinner, visited Coco and Bill, and chatted with Lexie before calling it a day.  And now it's another day, and we're ready for another adventure!