June 14, 2008 (Saturday)

Annie and I woke up at 6:20 a.m. on a Saturday morning. We were planning on attending a Greek Orthodox church service at 7:30 a.m. for one of our cultural proof assignments. We made some French toast, got ready, ran to the church and there was no service. I was a little agitated. After all that is our only day to sleep in. Apparently we read the schedule wrong again…I guess the church was open for people to come worship, but there was no service going on. Annie and I just smiled at each other and walked home. I’ve noticed we do that a lot. Just smile at crappy situations without saying a word. I attempted to look at the bright side of the situation. At least I was ready early on so I could get a lot accomplished? No, honestly I would have rather slept in….I need to get rid of this sickness.

Soon after we came home and worked on a little homework. It did feel good to get that done with. Then we ran to the church for our Relief Society activity. The sisters were showing us how to make traditional sarmale. We ended up having a lot of fun, and luckily it didn’t taste too bad. Sarmale has beef, rice, tomato paste, sarmale flavoring, etc. Then you wrap it in cabbage and grape leaves or put it in peppers and eat it. Poor Annie got sick after eating sarmales one day and tried to hide when they were done so she didn’t have to eat them. Oh the sisters still found her. Poor thing. Later she was like “I don’t think I’m going to be able to survive for another two months of eating them.” The workers like to serve her and Melissa them when they go to the apartments. I told her to tell them she was feeling sick. She was like “I don’t think that’s going to work everyday.” Then we laughed…that’s all you can do in situations like those.

The most amusing part of the cooking experience was while everything was cooking. We decided to have fun with our cameras. We would all decided on a theme and each make that face. Our first theme was to make your face as small as possible…we had lots of laughs. Mindy won that one. Her picture looked like she only had one tooth in her mouth. I don’t know how she managed that. We were dying. Then Mindy told MacKenzie and I to start doing a ton of silly faces so she could randomly take silly photos. Right after I was done I found out she did a video! Mindy thought she was soooo funny….so there is now a video in existence that has MacKenzie and I stupidly making faces for a couple of minutes. It’s lovely.

The cooking lasted most of the day. After that our apartment did a little homework and internet fun. I emailed my dad for Father’s Day. I hope he gets it. Then I bought another phone card in an attempt to call him tomorrow, but that one doesn’t work either. I was so frustrated. I kept trying it over and over. I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to call someone. AHHH! I want to call and talk to a few family members and close friends! Then the girls kept bugging me about dying my hair. We’ve decided to do it tomorrow. I’m freaking out…I keep praying that it won’t look horrible. Maybe that’s a dumb thing to pray about, but a girl’s hair is important to her. If it looks bad I’ll just have to fix it later.

To end the day right a couple of us girls decided that we needed to find a pastry shop. We started roaming around…to our immense sadness all the pastry shops were closed. Everything closes early around here. So we were forced to get some candy at the G-Market. Once again we just smiled and laughed…then we all sat outside and ate our goodies.

The second we walked in from our failed pastry adventure we got a call from the other apartment saying that we needed to come pick up MacKenzie from their apartment. MacKenzie had gone to an activity earlier, and she couldn’t walk home by herself. It had been a really, really long day and the last thing the three of us wanted to do was to go walk and get her …However, Annie found a way to make it fun – even humorous. We were about to walk out the door and Annie suddenly stopped and said “Guys we NEED to find something really cool to put on our heads when we pick up MacKenzie” and ran inside without a pause. Mary and I looked at each other really confused and laughed. Within seconds Annie came pouncing out with a package of glow sticks. She was like “if we have to do something we don’t want to do we mine as well make it fun!” We were cracking up. We wore the glow sticks proud on our way to pick up Kenz. Annie wore hers on her head, and Mary and I wore ours around our neck. People looked at us like we were crazy….oh well…maybe we are, but at least we are having fun doing it! It made for a nice story and great pictures. Best of all it made a dreaded activity fun.