Day 15: The English Word for Lice is Sadness

Well. It happened. It's no censure of your prayers, but we got lice. 

So,  t e c h n i c a l l y, it was never confirmed that I had lice, because I shaved my head before it could be thoroughly re-checked, but I totally did too. I'm like 87% confident that I found egggggs in my hair. Ew. 

Rewind. 

Today started off well, just a normal, nice, relaxing Saturday. I went for a run (3 miles, what) and then took a shower and we had a brief planning session with the team. We decided, just to be cautious, we would take all our clothes to the laundromat and use a dryer instead of air-drying them in the apartment. Dryers kill lice. Then, we realized that our dear hosts, Lagos and Ana Raquel, have a dryer at their casa. So, our new plan was to send Katie to do laundry with them and the rest of us would go get groceries. This felt a little weird  The plan for the evening was to get dinner with Matthew's old Spanish tutor, Ingrid. You may remember her, we got dinner last year as well. 

Ok, so we began the execution of the plan. We loaded Katie and a lot of bags (clothes and bedding) into an Uber (also with some bribery dessert from Café Momo). We walked to the store in the rain and got all of our groceries and trekked back home, sin problema. Except we couldn't find zucchinis or bell peppers. 

We got home and started unloading groceries and saw the message and missed calls from Katie. Esther and Ana Raquel found some lice, so we all went over to get checked. I borrowed Lagos' clippers and just got rid of my hair; seemed easier than the shampoo/tea-tree oil routine prescribed for people with hair. I figured I'll have plenty of time to grow it out before July (don't worry @Ethan, @Darianne). 

Matthew and Izzy also had some critters, so Ana Raquel and Esther started the shampoo/oil process with them. All while our clothes tumbled around in their washer/dryer and the Real Madrid/Liverpool match played on the TV (Real Madrid won).

This took a long time. Ana Raquel had to take a break to make a business call, and then she, Esther, and Lagos all went to an appointment they had scheduled at a hair salon. We sat and soaked in anti-lice stuff and watched "Anne with an E" until the power flashed off for a second and we couldn't log back in. Then we just chilled. 

Lagos came back, we ordered dinner (it was the least we could do for commandeering their Saturday), chilled and talked a bit more. Ana Raquel and Esther came back. All the while, we're flipping the occasional load of laundry. We ate dinner while watching Tannia's partido de futbol via Facebook Live. She's a baller. Her team did amazing, they held their own until the very, very end, then the other team pulled ahead last-minute. We got to have some good conversations about spiritual gifts and the Holy Spirit today. GCLA churches and FC don't line up completely on our understanding of such things. I love getting to push a little bit in having this conversation with my GCLA friends, especially leaders. But I was too done already today to dig any. 

My phone ran out of minutes today, so I need to figure out how to add more. 

My glasses broke today, but that's not abnormal for them. I'm glad I brought my harder-to-lose, easier-to-repair glasses, lol. Just need some pliers and superglue to finish the fix.

I killed the wordle today, so that felt good. The last couple of days were a bit of a struggle. We'll see in about 45 minutes how I do on tomorrow's.

It was really good to get to spend time with Lagos, Ana Raquel, and Esther as a team, but by the end, I was ready to be home and switch off for a little while.

Now I'm blogging, listening to music, feeling like July is a long way away. That's both exciting and rough. But also, day 28 is when I'm supposed to teach, so that's still terrifying. 

Tomorrow, we're gonna start very early. Some people are very kindly coming over to help more with lice stuff. Then, we're going hiking with H@ngout students! Jose Carlos and 2 students we haven't seen in a little while are coming!

PRAYER
-for us to walk in the Spirit

-for great connection and conversations with the students tomorrow!

-for no more lice

-for good team dynamics
-for ministry opportunities

-for endurance and good pacing by our team

-for me to seek out good time with God

such. good. friends.

Katie braided Matthew's hair. M A G I C A L

Me 80% of the way through shaving my head.
Shoulda let my beard grow out, it's a lot of white when there's no hair.