aww i love goggles!

that's for you ct~!

I really do love goggles though... swimming is one of my most favorite things in the world and I was reminded of this the other day when I went to Maria del Mar's pool in her hometown Loja with a bunch of our friends. She has a house just outside the town with almond, fig, pear, and palm trees. It is so beautiful and tranquil. This was maybe one of my most favorite days in Spain so far. And it got even way better when I put on these goggles that some one brought! I don't know what it is about swimming... but I really think I have my best thoughts while under water (with goggles on.. of course). It was like 8:00 when the sun was setting and everyone else got out to play trivial pursuit in Spanish... so I stayed in to swim laps. The way the sun was shining on the water and the smoothness of the water on my freshly shaven legs was so heavenly!

The other night my friend Maria was like, "molly I don't get why you like to get up so early to run." I said "I love it because it is a new day and as I am running I just feel so "lleno de paz" (full of peace)!!" And she said, "molly, when I am sleeping in my bed and you are out running I just feel so..."lleno de paz." hahahahaha I really liked her joke! So earlier that day (that I went to Loja) I was worrying a lot and as soon as I started swimming I just felt this peace come on me. I was literally thinking "I am so lleno de paz right now!" God was taking me back to all these other times in my life when I was swimming like, in Boone on campus after modern dance class, in Wilmington when I would wake up for the sunrise and run with my goggles in my hand to a neighborhood pool and jump in after pouring out sweat and last summer when I was living with Carole Ardizzone and her family on Figure 8 Island and I'd run on the beach and swim laps at the club house while old women were doing water aerobics. I was just reminded of God's faithfulness in all these other transitional times my life. And all I could do was be fully in that moment, enjoying my self and God, and savoring the experience of swimming in this beautiful pool on the Spanish country side! It was the most rich and renewing swim I've ever had.

So the next day I woke up with green hair. Apparently there was an extra dose of copper in the water that we weren't aware of. The green shows up on light colors... blond hair for example. So I was able to help them discover this problem with their pool before any other blond spaniard... might have to suffer from having green copper filled hair. I mean it wasn't just a slight tint of green, it was a very noticable green. (and I would've taken a picture of it if I had thought about it, but I was more preoccupied with finding a solution.)

I walked around Granada to every hair salon and farmacy I could find. I would walk in and say, "umm I have a problem, so I was swimming yesterday and the water made my hair green, do you know of a shampoo I can use to get it out??" This actually became fun to me because people seemed to find my predicament very funny. They all stopped cutting the people's hair that they were working on and really tried to help me! One farmacist girl was like, "whhoaa its soo cool I want green hair too!" Others told me I was going to have to become a brunette. I said "but I have been a blond all my life... I can't just switch hair colors in one day!" One guy just felt sorry for me and gave me free packets of sample shampoo. Another man was trimming the hairs of a balding man and said, "yeahhhh men don't really have that problem, let me call a woman" and put me on the phone with her. Another girl couldn't stop laughing and called her friends she was working with to come over and observe and touch it. I had so much fun connecting and laughing with the people working in these places that even though Anna texted me with some seemingly good solutions she found on line, I kept walking around Granada with my green hair and finding more hair stylists to laugh about this with!

As I was in my bathroom scrubbing my hair first with a mixture of baking soda and shampoo (which didn't work) and then drenching it in lemon juice I was just thinking, "so pool uncertainty must be one of those cultural adjustment things they were talking about in the overseas training..." Anyways lemon juice saved my hairs' life! and I am so thankful to be a blond again! I think I am going to go back to all the places and show them my hair and tell them how I fixed it. Since hair is their profession they should know things like this. Plus they never know when another blond will come walking into their salon with green hair asking for a solution.