So tonight was Egyptian night. Mariah and Amanda went to Egypt over Christmas break and tonight was their night to show pictures and tell about their trip. Amanda has been doing experiments with making falafel - they ate it a lot in Egypt. Her last try was AMAZING. To make it, you have to fry it. As Amanda was assembling the falafel tonight she put the oil in a pan with a lid on the stove to heat up. I walked into the kitchen to talk to her and Meg while everyone else waited to watch the slideshow of pictures in the living room. I looked into the pot of oil through the lid and it didn't look like it was doing much - it certainly wasn't boiling. A few minutes later, Amanda was done assembling and took the lid off the pot. Immediately the oil started smoking. Confused, Meg opened the back door to help let out the smoke and I picked up a towell to try and fan the smoke to the outside. When the smoke didn't stop and began to get worse, I picked the pot up off the stove and walked it out the back door. As I was standing and holding the pot trying to decide what to do - it caught fire. FIRE!!! The pot exploded in my hands. It startled me - of course - and burned my thumb, which then caused me to drop the pot without thinking. THANKFULLY (seriously thank you Jesus) the pot of fire spilled away from me. So now, the ground covered in oil is on fire and the pot is STILL on fire. I'm standing and yelling at the girls in the kitchen to get the lid to put it on the pot to put out the fire and the girls are yelling at me because all they can see out the back door is fire. So Jules (Amanda?) must have picked up the pot lid because the next thing I heard was a crash of glass - she had dropped the lid because it was still flaming hot from being on the pot. By this point the ground is no longer on fire but the pot is still blazing. I head back in to the kitchen to find something to put on the pot to put out the fire and find our cookie sheet and quickly head back out the door. After a few tries of trying to get the cookie sheet on top of the pot with my shaky hands, our guard Daniel came over and got it on top and finally got the fire to go out. Ahhhhhh! That's when I realized my thumb hurt pretty badly and was probably burned. Back in the kitchen I can't remember what happened but I started to feel bad that I had poured out all of Amanda's oil :-( Sorry Amanda! Anyway, my thumb is fine, just a tiny blister that will probably be gone by the morning but my lungs and throat could be better from all the smoke. Oh and I still have my eyebrows - yay! But really, this night so could have been SO much worse. What if the fire had started in the house? What if when I dropped the pot our guard had walked by and I doused him with fire? What if when I dropped the pot it tipped the other way covering me from the waist down with fire? I could be in a Ghanaian hospital right now. BAH! And none of it has to do with luck! It was nothing short of a miracle from God that everything happened the way it did and no one got hurt. God really protected me tonight and I'm SO thankful! Below is a picture of me with my bum thumb, blackened pot and broken lid.
Sidenote: Meg just turned on her iPod with it on shuffle and what song starts to play? "We Didn't Start the Fire" Meg's response, "It's Jesus!" Haha!Here's another picture and it's one of the oil spill...see how HUGE it was??? And can you see the splatter pattern? That's approximately where I was standing and see how everything splashed AWAY from me?
So, we're all alive and well thanks to the amazing God we serve! Thank you!Now the funny story :-) Actually, just the end of it is funny because the buildup won't make sense since none of you reading know this student. Anyway, this 7th grade student came up to me this morning offering me "candy." It looked like a big Listerine strip - you know those ones that you put on your tongue and they dissolve? It looked like one of those only yellow and bigger. So I kept saying no and finally this student says she'll eat some of it to prove to me that it is candy. She ripped of a tiny piece and put it into her mouth. From her face I could tell it was most certainly NOT candy and she started to laugh and gag at the same time. Come to find out - it was SOAP! This student was so committed to getting me to eat soap that she did it first! HAH. Really the joke was on her because I outsmarted her. Genius. I'm sad that this story sounds lame in light of the story I just told but really - it was hilarious when it happened :-)
Okay, I gotta get off here and go plan a European spring break vacation with Amanda!
Love and miss all of you in the States!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment