So I just thought I’d add a quick update. Saturday night, the boys watched Monsters and Aliens in Spanish. I hadn’t seen the movie, but I’m beginning to ever so slowly understand movies. We cleaned the church very well, and it was shining for Vespers and the Liturgy in the morning. The services are actually a great asset in learning Spanish. In addition, I’ve been trying to do my personal prayers in Spanish - that’s really helped too.
The big family atmosphere here is something I've really grown to love. Today I went and got my hair cut with Fr Michael’s wife Vicky and two of their children Josh and Elena. As I’m sitting in the chair it crossed my mind how odd it was. I felt completely normal to get a haircut with a family that I’ve only really known for a few weeks. I can promise you that that would never happen back in the states. However, here it’s just a big family and it didn’t even cross my mind how different it is from “normal” life. Tomorrow evening the Nassers have invited Karen, Alex, Madi and me over to their house for dinner. Karen and Madi are having Alex and me over Thursday night. Two different friends house for dinner in the same week might be busy week for most. However, here it’s family, Father + Uncles, Aunts, Brothers and Sisters, you barely notice the difference.
I got a haircut! Though haircuts are rarely worth noting this one truly amazed me. I am used to the American Super Cuts, you walk in, sit down, and they quickly cut your hair. $15 and 10 minutes later you’re out with a $5 haircut. I mentioned to Fr. Michael a few days ago I was hoping to get my haircut when we were up in the states. He suggested I wait and go to a haircutting place here. So I went with Vicky and the kids, and got mine done with Josh. My fairly simple haircut ended up taking about 25 minutes because the barber took so much time on detail. I asked for a two on the sides and finger-length on the top, (through my simple Spanish). This barber carefully cut and trimmed the sides. He then took an old fashion razor and did my sideburns and neck. I have never, ever had a barber do that, but it came out a much cleaner edge. Generally I try not to have anything important after a haircut, because I know my head will look like a freshly trimmed bush, rough with odd patches sticking out for no reason. But this time, it looks good, imagine that!!! It’s exactly what I ordered. I walked to the counter, and discovered it was only $5! Amazing! I gave him a $2 tip, generally pretty small in the states, but here it was 40% and I walked out paying less than half of what I would have in the states. I doubt that I’ll ever feel good about an American haircut again! Anytime I come down to San Diego and need a haircut, I’m going down to Rosarito!
Other than that I had to feel the painful existence of being Charger fan this weekend. I could got on, but it’s not worth a word more. Trying to talk in Spanish about the game, while listening to the game in English, wasn’t very helpful either.
Today I worked on making a ton of flash cards I hope to use. I’ve got to work on getting some main verbs down and then a lot of adjectives and nouns. We’ll see where I go from there.
Thank you for the prayers!
Under His Mercy,
Joel
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