You know how there are days that just don’t seem to go as planned? Without them, life would be too predictable and boring; but with them, I have to wonder if I somehow need them as a reality check. Yesterday, my day started off a bit backwards. The night before I sent an email response to one of my friends and instead of just replying to her, I hit reply all. It went out to a bunch of people, some I knew, some I didn’t. Let’s just say that email was only meant for a few people’s eyes… not 50. So, I started my day with embarrassment when I learned of this mistake.
I should have know it wasn’t going to be a normal day when I punctured my lip while washing my face in the morning. I guess I have an abnormally long pinky nail because while I was vigorously scrubbing my face, it struck my upper lip and instantly started bleeding. Seriously, I’ve never washed my face hard enough to injure myself! I spit out the blood and bravely went on with the day.
On Fridays I have duty during Chai Break (recess for the whole school). Another teacher and I have made a tradition of choreographing an interpretive dance by making up a move to add to it every Friday at Chai and performing it to see if the students would notice how great of dancers we are. Well, this Friday, we didn’t make up a new move because after the first leap off of a ledge, I toppled over and wiped out in front of 100 students who all just stopped and stared as I lay on the ground laughing with total embarrassment, avoiding all eye contact with anyone around me. I became even more embarrassed when I realized blood was dripping from my elbow as a result of my tumble. I see elementary kids in the office all the time nursing wounds from falling while they are playing during recess. I never thought, as an adult teacher, I would need the same doctoring :) My pride was definitely knocked down as I went on with the rest of the school day, acting as if I didn’t just make a huge fool out of myself in front of all of my secondary students. At least my students now know that I’m human! I’m sure they thought I had superhuman powers to always do the right thing and never get hurt before this incident, right?
Nothing too dysfunctional happened the rest of my time at school, besides the fact that I was still dealing with the aftermath of my crash landing. But then, a bunch of friends and I went out to dinner at this really nice Chinese restaurant called Zen. We walked there and, although it was further away than we thought, we made it there without any problems. But when we got there, we realized we were a bit underdressed. Most restaurants I’ve been to in Rwanda have been more fancy than one would expect, but this one was especially nice. As we were dining, I saw a guy that is in our bible study eating dinner with a woman… and so under my breath I thought I whispered something about how we should yell his name awkwardly, since it seemed he might have been on a date. Yeah, I didn’t need to carry through with the rest of that because he heard me scheming, looked over and waved at us. Oops! Turns out, since all restaurants are outdoors, sound travels quite a bit easier.
If that wasn’t enough, we ordered sweet and sour chicken to eat… and although it was delicious, I would not say it was sweet and sour. One thing you need to know about restaurants in Rwanda is you can never actually see what you are eating. The rooms are normally lit by a few candles on the table and no overhead lights. It’s actually a blessing, because I would not be adventurous if I saw everything I was eating all the time. But this time around, it would have been nice to see if I was about to eat a chili pepper so I could have avoided having fire erupting in my mouth for about 5 minutes after what I thought was just another bite of chicken. My lips and tongue were useless for that duration of time, so it’s a good thing I was almost finished eating by that time.
The last dysfunctional thing that happened to put the icing on the cake occurred right before we left Zen. We were walking to get out of the way of cars leaving the parking lot and I tripped over a bowed drain that was conveniently sticking up about 8 inches off the ground. At that point I decided I needed to go home and remove myself from any more potentially embarrassing situations.
I’m not going to say it was a bad day. Because, it wasn’t! A part of me feels like for some reason, I needed to be reminded of the fact that I am a mess! Wait, no. I already knew that. Maybe it was to reveal to the people around me that I’m a mess…. Or maybe, I just needed to be humbled 6 times yesterday! “Ok, I get it, God. I need you.” I probably won’t struggle with pride for awhile now, thanks to this marvelous dysfunctional day.
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