Progress and Despondency

The weather has now swung around to being grey and cold. So it's gone from one extreme that's bad for me to the other! I'll settle down soon enough I'm sure.

My illness is acting up, but I suppose I should be used to that by now. I'm planning to spend a lot of today just resting, I need it. Yesterday I woke up late, pottered around a bit, had a lesson and realised that it was Wednesday and we had Pre-Sanctified Liturgy (Mass, but they keep the communion from Sunday instead of doing the consecration again) that night. A few phone calls later, and we figured out Jeremy couldn't take us, as he had something else he had to do and had gone that morning to another Church (at 7:30am, the nutter). So we rang Abouna, the priest from the arabic parish. His english is pretty good, but on the phone, with people around? Ha! It took a few goes, but finally he figured out who I was, understood what I was asking, and got the address to pick us up from. Fixed. Troy was feeling particularly grumpy and staring at the wall so I dragged him out of his house for a walk to the store (a km or so I supppose? I'll have to measure it) to get some bread and juice to take to Church for after. Was good for him, but not really for me - I was dressed for Church so my shoes weren't walking shoes, and I'm sick. Oh well, I'm still alive! We got back just in time for Abouna to pick us up, and went to Church.

Weeelll....none of the usual choir were there except one lady, and no Jeremy! So we had the service book (in arabic), the one lady who knows how to chant but not the tones (different tunes that you chant to), me, because Abouna had asked me...and a lot of prayer. Like I said last week, noone really knows this service very well as we only really do it in Lent, so it was interesting. We made it through though! It was kind of fun, in a weird way. We had one particular visitor that's been coming a few times, who is not Orthodox but is arabic, and he smiled at me and was following what I did - as if I'm an expert on these things! Weird, but I think I did alright. He's nice. I was clever, too, and wore a very full skirt - I remembered stepping on my hem as I got up from prostrations each time the other day! Prostrations are...well, the way we do them is like the final bow with forehead to the floor that the Muslims do and is always shown on tv. You do that, and get up again. Do that, and get up again. Usually in sets of three. Stepping on your hem is NOT fun while doing that! As my friend said though, you know it's Lent when you've got rug burns on your forehead.

After that, we got ourselves dropped off at the netball courts in the parklands that surround the city where Troy's brother's girlfriend was playing, watched half the game, and then all four of us went for pizza. There's a pizza place near there that does wholemeal pizza, and they do a mushroom one which is delicious. So we got that with no cheese (Mushrooms! Yay!) and ate it rapidly. Mushrooms and chickpeas are my new favourite foods now I've got to Lent. Oh, and real baba ghanoush...yum...

Troy's brother brought us home and now I'm still tucked up in bed, avoiding the cold, and my homework. Eventually I'll get up and do it I'm sure!