Fichas

You might have been wondering how I have been sleeping, not having reported about it for two days. Well, I had a good night of rest on Wednesday night, for the first time since Monday the week before. Yesterday, I felt awake and fresh during the day. The trip to Santa Vera Cruz Tatala was a great experience. I enjoyed it all very much. So last night I was looking forward to another good night. I did all the right things. I ate early, I drank plenty of water, and I exercised a lot. I turned off the laptop early, at 8:30 p.m., and did some journaling and reading before going to bed. I went to bed a little before 9:30 p.m. And then there was no sleep. I could not fall asleep for hours. I did not get any sleep until after 1:30 a.m. It was 15 minutes of sleep here, 15 minutes of sleep there, and then I was awake again. I got no sleep after 6:30 a.m. Finally, I rose at 7:30, having missed morning prayer again. I also missed the first two hours of classes at Maryknoll, opting to take it slowly, to catch up, praying a little, having a little breakfast, and then heading out. 

Insomnia is strange. Sometimes I cannot fall asleep for hours. Sometimes I wake and I cannot go back to sleep for hours. I do not know why my body is betraying me like this. I hope the specialist I am seeing Monday can help me understand my body and help me sleep better. Clearly, God is not healing this, much less fixing this, through direct intervention. Neither is God healing this through my own interventions. So we will continue to look to others to be the agent of healing restoration to my broken sleep cycle. 

Meanwhile, I am thankful that I had enough energy to go to Maryknoll for the second half of classes. In spite of fatigue, I enjoyed my classes and excursion this week. All the teachers are supportive of me in this mild trial of mine; Joshua has been a good friend, too. 

Today we had a good time, really and truly amusing, in the final hour of classes. For a change of pace, three of our classes came together for a game of Scrabble en español. There were three teams: one with Profesor Óscar and Charles; one with Profesora Karla and Sister Martina, a nun from Korea; and our team, Profesora Vicky, Joshua, and me. Joshua and I explained the rules to Sister Martina, who had never played Scrabble in any language before. We selected our tiles, or fichas, and began play with Team Óscar and Charles, followed by us, then Team Karla and Martina. These teams were evenly matched, I would say, because you had one teacher on each team. And though our team had three persons rather than two, it was only two and a half brains, with me half-gone to lunch from sleeplessness. It was a close race between our team and Team Karla and Martina. We were making more inventive words, while their team had the luck of higher-scoring fichas and had placed more words strategically over double- or triple-letter score or double- or triple-word score bonus squares. But in the end, our team edged out our rivals. The difference was our placement of the word cambio over a triple-word score bonus square, which gained us 33 points in one turn. 

It is worth noting that in the Spanish edition of Scrabble, the letter tiles do not always have the same value as they do in English; the tile letter distribution is different from English; and you have additional tiles for LL, Ñ, and RR. Very interesting. 

In all, we were educated and entertained at the same time. And while the fichas of my life are a bit scattered and don’t quite fit together harmoniously, for an hour, I found order, I found sense, and I found even a little victory.