"Teecha Laycho!"

This morning was spent doing a small load of laundry, running over to run an errand on campus, and packing my bags for Luangwa. When everything was ready to go I read my book for a while. Then around noon we headed over to Dee’s with our bags.

When we got to the airport we found the Pro-flight office and asked if we could fly standby. We were so hopeful that we’d be able to get on. However, there was only 1 standby ticket available. Now there was some confusion after this because then she made it sound like we could buy the one standby ticket and we could buy one full priced ticket. So we asked, if there was a full priced ticket left, then that means there’s an open seat on the flight; if we waited and nobody bought that ticket, could we buy it on the standby rate? No, the standby rate closes an hour before the flight departs. It was all very complicating but in the end, we didn’t get on. So we drove back home to try again tomorrow.

After this, our day was a lot like the last 2 days. We spent some time helping Anne and then watched Friends for a good portion of the afternoon. Then around 3:30 we went over to play volleyball. It seemed a lot more competitive tonight and the games were a lot closer. It was fun! Dave parks his pickup truck right next to the court and all the kids pile in the back and sit there the entire time. It’s like a jungle gym to them and they love it. Of course there’s hitting and crying going on too, but they love to sit in the truck and then Dave usually lets them sit there as he drives away at the end…they love it! So the back of the truck is like the bleacher seats for the volleyball games. The kids play and watch us and they all like to shout out “Teecha Laycho!” meaning “Teacher Rachel!” They switch their ‘l’s’ and ‘r’s’ around here so my name ends up sounding like Laycho. It’s so cute. All they want me to do is look over at them and smile and then they burst out giggling. By “they” I usually mean Corn. He likes to yell my name. The other day when I was at the gate of campus and Corn was all the way at the end of the driveway by Sarah’s house he saw me, knew it was me, and I could hear him yelling “Teecha Laycho!” Then he walks over to me and just laughs. I don’t ever know what’s so funny, but I’m glad I can amuse him like that.

After volleyball we had a light supper and then headed over for round 3 of fellowship night. We’ve got our duties down pat now. We set out the snacks and I passed out tickets. We finished up all the leftover snacks from the other 2 nights and we thought we had a ton of leftovers but we actually ended up finishing everything. We didn’t stay as long tonight. We headed back before 9 to relax and get to bed since we’ll be getting up around 5am tomorrow to head back into the airport again. Please pray that we are able to get 2 standby tickets!!