June 15, 2008 (Sunday)

The Lord’s Hand In My Life: I dyed my hair from a box and it doesn’t look bad enough that I have to wear a bag over my head when I go outside….

This morning Annie and I attempted to go to a Greek Orthodox service for the third time. Once again we got there bright and early – there was no service. I wanted to cry. So we walked down the street to another church – no service. Then we walked to another church – there was finally a service going on…I was about to give up on this assignment. The church service was interesting. The men stood on the right and the women on the left. All the women had their heads covered with some type of scarf or handkerchief to show their respect. Then a man read out of a book and random spurts of singing would occur. I didn’t understand one thing that was said, but it was still amusing. During the service people in attendance would go up and cross themselves and kiss the paintings of the saint or get blessed by the priest. That was about all that happened.

Church was a little long at first. In the first hour we listened to talks in Romanian, but for some reason the elders didn’t translate for us like they usually do. We were all struggling to stay awake. That’s when President Popovici publicly asked the elders to translate for us. They looked a little embarrassed and quickly jumped up and started translating. We were cracking up. He just stopped in the middle of his talk…good times.

After church Annie and I ended up cooking dinner for everyone. It was our apartments turn but MacKenzie got sick and Mary decided to go to the hospital last minute. So we were the only two left to do the dirty work. We were a bit frustrated because we didn’t know we would be cooking all afternoon, but we made it work. We made homemake lasagna and homemade bread (without a breadmaker) and had veggies to go with it. It ended up turning out okay luckily. We ran into a few problems with the bread…like not having a pan to cook it in. We only had one pan and it was the pan with the lasagna. We do a lot of improvising over here.

After dinner the attention was turned to me…the girls started chanting my name. I was confused for a second, and then I remembered – I was going to dye my hair. I was really, really nervous, and I kept praying that it wouldn’t turn out bad enough that I would never go outside. My worst nightmare is coloring my hair out of a box – I’ve never done it before…so my nightmare was becoming a reality. The color I picked was a carmel blonde. I went over and they did it. It’s not my favorite, but it didn’t turn out bad enough that I’ll have to hide my face. Plus it’s still pretty light, so when I go back home I can just have my hair dresser fix it back to the normal blonde color I’m used to…at least my roots are gone and the cover went over evenly…it will do until I come back home.

The rest of the evening we all relaxed and swapped pictures. Mindy was hysterically laughing at the video of Kenz and I making faces. Mindy was supposed to be taking pictures of us making faces, and instead she did a video….nice…then I emailed my dad.

Today I decided that at the top of every journal entry I’m going to write something that happened in the day that showed the Lord’s hand in my life…whether it’s small or big things.