What a Day!

Yesterday was an hilarious crazy day in my life here, and I'd like to take a moment to share.
My morning started around 9am when I rose from my luxurious slumber. Had a cup of coffee and an egg, then got ready for church. So far so good.
The church service is supposed to start around 10 and so that's about when I leave the house. While walking up the road I get a call from my friend Parusi, who has seen me from behind. I am very thankful she is going to the same church that day...it means I won't have to sit alone. So we arrive late, but you can't exactly "slip in" because the door is in the front. But nonetheless, we walk in and take a seat. The church is held in a local school, so rather than pews we're sitting in desks, wide enough for two people to sit on, no backs. Very comfortable. We sing a few songs, but I don't have a song book, so I just do my best. I think in the course of the service there were approximately 3 sermons. Sunday school was pretty much a sermon, then came the real sermon, then another guy got up and appeared to be reiterating all that had just been said. There were also 20 minutes of announcements, and at the end, a 15 minute lecture about being on time to church in order to show respect to God. Oops. Only about 15% of all the speaking I really understood, which is actually an improvement.
So the service is longer than usual, and I don't get home till after 1. I immediately go to the kitchen to start preparing for our July 4th cookout. My responsibility is chips, salsa, and guac. So I go to make tortillas and discover we barely have any flour or shortening, and have no milk. Darn. So I look up a non-milk recipe for tortillas and try to make do. The tortillas are gross, but I have to make them into chips anyways, because there's no redo having used all the flour already. Then I go to make salsa. I pull out the produce I bought the day before to discover I only have 4 tomatoes, a kind of imperative ingredient in salsa. So I make the salsa with the ingredients I have, only I decide to put in 2 small hot peppers, making the salsa scorch the inside of your mouth. Sigh.
In the meantime, a neighbor's 9 year old daughter has come over just to hang out. I give her a soda, but am busy in the kitchen, so she eventually gravitates there. She helps me squash the avocados, which is nice I must say. The problem is, she's also peeping around in all the cabinets and occasionally leaving the kitchen to peep in other places. She gets some nice chocolate out of the fridge and eats it (and gives me some to eat as well). So the kitchen is a wreck with nasty dry tortilla/chip crumbs everywhere, all my chips are burning in the oven, and the salsa is virtually inedible.
So I try to get ready to go to soccer at 4. I pack bags with the stuff for the cookout, and the child is still roaming around, now counting up the Uno cards. When I'm about ready to kick her out, I notice that she has made a little "goodie bag" for herself. In a little ziplock bag she has places 3 little powdered drink packets, a sheet of paper, two (imported) Bic pencils, and a nice inky red pen from the US. Both the pencils and pen had been retrieved from my room, at least I think so. I look at her questioningly about the bag, and she looks a little embarrassed. She's a sweet kid and wasn't being sly about it, so as a compromise I take out the nice pen and one pencil, leaving her with the rest. She also borrows two books, but does finally leave.
Then my taxi is late picking me up. All my usual rides are gone, so I end up just waiting for 20 minutes for the taxi. I finally get to soccer, a highlight of the week for me, and after about 15 minutes in goal, I have to go inside because I have horrendous stomach cramps. So I spend most of the next hour in the bathroom. Meanwhile, my friend Kelly has added a load of tomatoes to the salsa, which has dumbed it down a bit, but still leaving it quite hot.
So then we decide to head over to the location of the July 4th cookout. Though an American party, we head over Tanzanian style. In one Land Cruiser we have 4 adults, 5 kids, lots of food, and a water cooler. Please don't ask questions about car seats and seat belts.
The cookout was great. We didn't really cookout, but we had pretzel dogs, potato salad, cabbage salad, my chips and salsa, watermelon, fresh lemonade, festive cupcakes, and smores. We sat around the campfire, sang songs, and told stories. Was great American style fun and a great way to celebrate the 4th. Their neighbors also had a huge fire and it was popping loudly with about 7 foot flames. The popping sounded a bit like fireworks, so we all felt it was very appropriate.
When I finally got home, I decided my final celebratory activity would be watching an episode of West Wing. Then in my exhaustion, I fell into bed with the decision not to go to work the next day, but instead have an actual day off. Good decision.