Five hours of Church

is always fun. I love vigils.

I haven't had the chance to blog since Thursday and I STILL don't have photos of my skirt despite having worn it twice - my sister hid the camera, and I'm still in my pjs, not having to go anywhere today. I'll try to get her to take a photo of me wearing it later, she's watching a movie at the moment.

Thursday night was fellowship/Bible study as usual, which was its own wonderful self - the second half of chapter 5 in St Mark's Gospel, and Pater pointed out some things I hadn't noticed before. And we finished early enough to do Compline at 9...on the dot. I love Compline, especially since we do it in English on Thursday nights. I came home, crashed, and then slept a lot of yesterday. I woke up feeling sicker than usual, and was in a bad mood about it, and that bad mood didn't really go away despite my trying. I picked my sister up from school (+40min to my driving log total) and had a long bath to try and soak out the aches before dressing in about a thousand layers (I know how to dress for vigils now) and catching the train to meet Jeremy in the city and go to Church.
We got to Church early as usual, which gave us time to settle ourselves down, light candles and pray, and then we got into the Vigil itself. Vigils are basically a series of the liturgical services - Compline (evening prayer), Vespers (sunset prayers), Matins/Orthros (morning prayers) and finally the Divine Liturgy (mass). In the middle of all of that, Pater read from St John Climacus but it was in Greek so I read my Bible, and I hadn't communed at a Greek parish before so that was different. It was nice though, and he said my name etc all in english which was cool too, sometimes I hear it in english sometimes in arabic.
A month after my baptism I'm still receiving gifts, too. Thursday night I was given a lovely little chest-like box with the Theotokos on it and some incense in it (which is now in my icon corner) and last night a lovely sky blue shawl. People are so lovely :)
After the vigil we went next door and sat down at a very crowded table to eat large quantities of fish and lemon soup, and talk and laugh...I think the meals after might be one of my favourite parts of vigils. It's not just about the liturgy, it's about fellowship too.

Finally I got home at about 3ish, and after checking a few things online I went to bed and sleep. I'm feeling sick again today, but that's not abnormal - and I've lost my voice! Much to the amusement of my family, as I'm famous for how much I talk.

Now I'm just resting, it's a nice day to do so.