Spa Day

I bet that is not a title you thought you would ever read on this blog?? Am I right? Well, guess what. I totally went to a spa! We have been in Goroka for the last 12 days. We came up here because our daughter's passport will expire next February. Why are we renewing it now, you may ask? Well, you see children have to be sighted with both parents present in order for them to get passports, and we can't just go down to the local post office to do that. We have two options. 1) Fly to Port Morsby and go to the U.S. Embassy there or 2) Fly up here to Goroka when the embassy representative was here to sight anyone else at the mission base that needed to be sighted. Number 2 was the cheaper of those options. It took a very literal 2 minutes for us to see the embassy representative and sign the papers for the passport. So why did we stay two weeks? I am really asking myself a lot of questions in this post. I bet that is annoying. I will stop. Well, to answer myself, we had to stay this long because of the flight schedules. The only flights we could get on were 12 days apart, so needless to say, we had a lot of extra time on our hands. As a mom, I was generally doing all the same things I normally do, but at home I am also doing a lot of language study on top of all that. We could only bring one of our books with us because of the size of the plane (and the fact that we pay for every single kilogram we put on that plane), and we don't have relationships with nationals here like we do at home, so it is harder to just go hang out and talk to people. It has also been stressful because I have had to cook with very little ingredients, since we didn't want to have to buy a whole bunch of seasonings and stuff like that since we knew we wouldn't be able to fly it back. And to top it all off there were not many kids here our kids ages, like at home, so they were constantly fighting with each and telling me how bored they were. We only knew one family in this town and they are pretty awesome, but they live on the other base, so we only got to really hang out with them one day out of all 12! People kept asking me if we were having a nice "break". I wanted to tell them that this felt more like an interruption than a break, I mean we had only been in Wewak two and a half months! We were starting to feel really comfortable and home there, and we had to come up here and learn a whole new system... but I just smiled and said "yeah". However, one incredibly awesome day, Kirstin, one of the ladies I met here (and immediately liked because she was southern and her voice reminded me of home, and grits, and boiled peanuts, and big hair, and SEC football, and all that is right with the world) came and asked me if I wanted to go with some of the other ladies for a "spa day". At the other base, some 7th and 8th grade girls had set up a spa in their house to raise some money because they were bored during the summer (um, could you please come tell my girls about this boredom buster??) I know what you are thinking. That it was not all that great because it was 7th and 8th grade girls. But you are WRONG. It was awesome. I could not believe it! They really had everything set up so nicely and I got one of the best pedicures I have ever received in my life. Plus, I got a hand massage, a facial scrub, and a nice Orange Julius on top of that. The best part of the day came when all of us ladies went to pay and our sweet southern friend gave us a little card telling us that all our services were paid for by a couple in their church! There were 6 ladies in all, and we were each completely shocked and blessed by it. I cannot think of any women on the planet more grateful for a little pampering than women who live in the middle of the jungle! We all felt very relaxed and girly, like we were in a different world for just a little while, and I am pretty sure no one talked about diarrhea or fungus one time!!! It definitely relieved my stress and made me feel like this trip was a nice "break". So thank you very much to the Agees and to their friends the Campbells who made this day possible. My toes and my sanity are very appreciative.

**I would just like to clarify that Kirstin does not have big hair...although I might have liked her even more if she did.