Halfway Point

I can't believe we are halfway done already.  It's a time paradox for me, because every morning we have a whole eternal day stretching out in front of us to fill, and yet what's in the past seems like it happened in a blink.  I've had some bouts of homesickness lately, I'm sure to do with the holidays, and a part of me looks forward to being in my familiar life again.  Even so, another part of me is so happy to still be here.  I'm blessed with amazing family and friends here, and I feel so lucky to be having these experiences that I don't want to waste a second.

Here are my thoughts of late:
1:  To the non-cooking friends in my life: my most heartfelt apologies for every time I gave you a recipe and minimized or mocked your stress about whether or not it would turn out.  "Of course it will turn out!" I'd say.  "Just do what it says in the recipe and you will be fine!"  And maybe you, my non-cooking friend, would wonder out loud that maybe it wouldn't turn out fine, and maybe then I teased you.  Non-cooking friends, I am you now.  I don't make anything that turns out like I thought it would EVER.  It's partly climate, partly ingredients, partly that I haven't bothered to invest in the right tools, partly my crappy oven.  I have made the simplest things, like brownies or no bake cookies, and still they haven't turned out.  And by "not turn out" I don't mean "not my best batch ever,"  I mean "not edible." Bottom line: we eat a lot of tacos. 

2: The 3 month mark is when my rose-colored tourist glasses came off and my resident's magnifying glass came out.  Things that I thought were odd or even mildly amusing at first make me want to K.I.L.L.  I am no longer entertained by the fact that 4 people at a single register at the grocery store take 10 minutes to ring up and bag less than a dozen items.  I would like to not pay $10 for Skippy peanut butter.  I am so sick of pollution and bones in meat.  I had a coronary at my last utility bill- $1100.  Eleven. Hundred. DOLLARS!  (For water and electricity only.)  Of course, there is a positive side to this too.  I am amazed by the resiliency and joy of the Filipino people.  I am really starting to dig the food.  I love living in a walking neighborhood.  The good here far outweighs the bad.  I recently began reading a history of the Philippines, and I'm glad I waited to read it until now, because it makes so much more sense to me having lived here a few months. 

3. When we decided to come here, a friend of mine told me, "You will make friends there that you will have for the rest of your life."  I wondered how that could be possible on a 6 month assignment, but now I know that she was absolutely right.  It's almost like friendships here have a fast-forward button, and I see a few reasons.  First, I think people who choose to live the ex-pat lifestyle (most in the service or employment of our country) are starting with some amazing raw material inside.  It takes a certain kind of person to be willing to do what these families do.  Second, friends count on friends to take the place of family.  Friends become substitute grandmas, aunts, and sisters.  Third, since we know we only have a limited amount of time together, we don't hold back a whole lot.  We just want to get to know each other as quickly as possible so we can just get right on being friends for life.  This is teaching me so much about how I want to approach life- can I be a more open, more embracing version of myself?  I really want to. 

4.  Last, in a nutshell and without saying too much, Bruce's work situation here hasn't been exactly what we planned.  I've thought a lot lately then, about what one should do when the possibilities of the benefits you thought you would get out of a situation evaporate.  I think that coming here was absolutely the right thing for us and our family, but we have definitely spent the last while thinking, "Okay, since this isn't turning out to be the career move we thought it would be, what in the world are we here for?"  I'm searching very hard to assign some meaning to it, but the most sensible part of me knows that this will be best sorted out in hindsight.  (I've already had a mini-lesson in this principle anyway- with home school.  I felt strongly that it was the right thing to do, but I deluded myself that it was all for Kate and her ease in the transition.  I know that while Kate has learned exactly what she needed in terms of curriculum, but it has actually been me who has been educated the most.  For starters, I've learned that under no circumstances should I ever consider employment as an elementary school teacher (Sorry, Mom, it must skip generations.)  It has been hard for me to learn that sometimes my natural tendencies are counteractive to what the girls need, but that has forced me to learn some better ways of interacting with the girls.  It's definitely humbling to have to admit that what comes "naturally" to me isn't actually the best parenting.)  In sum, I'm a little bit excited to be looking back at this time and thinking, "So THAT'S why that happened!"