School seasons....

So, I'm sending my firstborn son to school. A brick and mortar one. Me, a 1st generation homeschooler teaching the 2nd generation.

I've said things like "We'll send them to school if that's what's best for them." Lies. All lies. See, I never thought it would be what was best for them because I believe in homeschooling. I figured no matter what, we could make it work.

But then David came to me a month after I'd started our new school year and said, "I think we should pray about sending Seth to school." Insert mouth dropping open. I was just a wee bit stunned. But he had good reasons. He'd been reading a book on adolescent boy development, and he had subbed for me on a rough day, and he thought that Seth might need to see that he could conquer the school mountain.

He spent time praying over this, and he did the research on our available options. I stayed out of it and just struggled emotionally. I will tell y'all right now that moving my whole family to Asia was easier on me than considering sending one of my children to school. See, I figured we were doing this whole world schooling thing, and no matter what, at least we'd be together.

But world schooling is hard when you live in a city with the 3rd worst traffic in the entire world. Traffic will kill your field trip and outside class hopes and dreams faster than you can say "rain on a Friday payday." We weren't getting out as much to see and do as I'd hoped, and he wasn't stretching his wings quite like I'd hoped would happen.

His faith is strong, and he talks to us about the thoughts going through his head. So I figured, ok, maybe he'd be alright. We visited a small British international school. And now he's riding the school van and holding his own in his class. It's been 3 weeks, and at his term parent teacher conference, it was clear that his teachers like him and enjoy having him there. His history teacher said he might even be a bit bored because he knows so much. His science teacher said his science foundation was solid and that he didn't have anything he could improve on. :)

I've seen his confidence really go up. Sure, he's lost a ridiculous amount of things since he started school, but that number has started to go down. He's making friends with the other boys in his class, and I see him taking hold of independence in a way that he wasn't doing here with me. His appreciation for his brothers is at an all time high, and he's doing his devotions on the school van every morning because he says that starting his day that way helps him.

His best friend at school is an American boy in his class. I realized I knew his mom from a Christian expat ladies group. This boy was even homeschooled for a couple of years. God provides.

The Sunday before he started school, the sermon at church was on worrying. And boy was I ever worrying. I knew that God was telling me to stop worrying. He has this. He has my son, and He always has had him. I've never really been in control, but I realize that more than ever now.

It's hard for me to give up my best student so much of the time. I really do miss him. I don't want to plan field trips yet because I don't want to do something he'll miss out on. I'm sure that'll be better in time. I'm thankful that he argues strongly that he wants to go back to homeschooling when we go back to the U.S., but I know that he's also happy at school.

It seems like we're doing what God thinks we need to do for now.

And maybe when we come back, Seth will speak some of that Mandarin all the students are having to learn, and he'll also gain some delightful British words from all his thoroughly British teachers. Christmas Jumper Day, anyone? :)

Beautiful Borocay....

Sarah couldn't come all the way here without seeing paradise, so we jetted off to Borocay on the weekend. Yes, the water really is that clear. It's the clearest water I've ever seen. We could've spent all day bobbing around in the beautiful waves. I've got the sunburn to prove it.

Evening on our balcony as the sun went down.

The hotel where we were staying offered free sailboat excursions on weekends. We sat suspended above the water on plastic netted seats, leaning over to watch the sea urchins and starfish on the reefs under us.

It was such a relaxing trip! Now, Borocay isn't completely straightforward to get to, so you'll need a little info to duplicate our trip. First, you'll fly to the Caticlan airport. Once you arrive, you go outside the airport to the Southwest Tours office. Ask for transport to Hey Jude South in Station 3. (Station 3 is the quietest section of the beaches in Borocay.) They'll put you on a bus to the ferry port. After a short boat ride of about 10 minutes, you reach your area, and then you take a van to the hotel.)

We mostly ate at the hotel right on the beach, and the food was good, but there were plenty of restaurants around to choose from. Complimentary breakfast is included, and the have American and Filipino breakfast. The rooms are clean and spacious, and the AC is good, but it's not fancy. The beds are also comfy.

Massages can be had for 400 pesos per hour right in front of the hotel. :)

First visitor....

My girl, Sarah, came all the way to Manila, and all she got was fresh rambutan. ;)

Well, and fresh cacao.

I guess she didn't do so badly. :) We've been living here 5 months, but there's nothing like having a visitor to make you feel like you really do live here. 

Sarah and I have been doing life together since we were 6 years old. Back then, it was tea parties and doll theft and playing with bunnies. We were both homeschooled, we went to the same small church, we each had a little brother. We ended up at the same college, got married within 6 months of each other, moved to large cities, and ended up in Raleigh together to have our babies. We're the closest thing each other has to a sister.

She came to the Philippines to see it, but she really came to see me. And that means a ton. 

When I tell her I'm eating too much Din Tai Fung, she'll be able to picture it and empathize because she chose it twice while she was here visiting. :)

It felt like her 9 days here went by just like that. And like she'd always been here. I'm sorry I had to put her back on a plane, but I guess her husband and kids need her and stuff. Sniff. 

To the market...

When your mom gets you up early to go shopping for vegetables, and you're a 10-year-old boy, you might look something like this when she asks for a picture. :)

A sweet expat lady offered to show us how to market at the local palengke, so we decided to take her up on that one weekday when David was traveling and wouldn't need our van to get to work. We picked her up at her place, and she directed us to the side streets of Makati where the everyday magic happens.

You want fresh, shredded coconut? No problem. Just buy a coconut for about $.80 U.S., and then this guy will use his shredder to clean it out for ya. This makes those plastic bags of shredded coconut I always bought at Harris Teeter look pretty sad.

What's that you say? You want coconut milk? And not from a can? Well, this guy will take those coconut shreds the other guy gave you and squeeze them in this little vise you see here, and then the milk will run down this clean pan and into a plastic bag. Take that home and put it in a pitcher for a refreshing drink. It'll last a few days in the fridge.

Last stop before heading home was the local panderia. The locals buy their rolls fresh daily from places like this. We got a bag of steaming hot pandesal, but that wasn't all. We also discovered pan de coco. That's pandesal with shredded coconut baked inside. It's about 6 cents a roll, and it's just a little sweet and totally delish.

(Evan is ready to go home in this pic. But he definitely enjoyed the pandesal on the way home. Don't cry for him, Argentina.)

If you're local, you can find this daily market off of Evangelista St. in Makati. Go before 8:00 to find it fully open. I hear it closes up during the heat of the day and starts up again as people are headed home from work.

The Fun Farm in Ste. Elena....

We took a gorgeous morning to visit The Fun Farm in Laguna. It's about a 45 minute drive from us because we can use the Skyway, and the more I experience Manila traffic, the more I appreciate something only 45 minutes away!

Anyway, I was totally impressed. For 400 pesos per person ($8 U.S.), you can fish in the little farm pond. (They'll even keep baiting your hook for you when the wily and experienced fish nibble off your worms.) You can feed the sheep and the guinea pigs, climb all over their play equipment, ride a horse, take a carabao cart ride, and even use the zip line.

Our driver, Rey, will walk around with me when I'm out with the boys and having trouble keeping an eye on them. He'll even go on the seesaw if you ask him nicely, which Evan did. :)

I rode with Ben. He's at the age where riding with Mommy and Daddy is much more appealing than going alone, and I loved getting to talk to him as we plodded along in the dappled shade.

This carabao was kind of a grump, but that's ok. The only problem was that when I was trying to get a picture with him, he tossed his head in the direction of Evan and managed to hook the edge of his horn on Evan's sleeve. It was a stressful couple of seconds there, but I managed to get them untangled quickly. No harm, no foul. :)

We all got multiple rides on the zip line! It was great to be able to go on a weekday when it wasn't crowded. :)

Day trip to Taal Volcano...

It had been a bit since we'd gotten out of the city, and the temps are now in the 80's, so we decided it was finally cool enough to go out and see the Taal Volcano. :) (When we got here, the temps were about 100 F. most days, so this is "cool" in comparison.)

We drove a couple of hours out of Manila on a Saturday morning, leaving at 6:30 to beat the heat and traffic. The boys ate bags of dry cereal in the van and watched a DVD, so no issues with them. They're getting a lot more flexible about getting up and out as they get older.

We found out about a hotel on the lake from a friend from church that would let us park our car and then take us across Taal Lake to the volcano, wait for us, and then bring us back. The boat ride took about 40 minutes one way. We passed floating wooden structures with fishermen throwing out fish bait into the lake.

This village was our destination. We're talking bamboo huts and chickens running around and even a foal following its mother.

For some crazy reason, we initially thought we'd just hire one horse to go up and take turns riding it. It didn't take long to realize that that idea was just nuts. This is the back side of Taal, and its a little less touristy and more remote, and the trail is also steeper at points.

We ended up hiring 4 horses, and David later regretted his decision not to rent one for himself. Each horse came with a horse driver that would either ride behind one of us or walk behind or beside us holding a rope. We walked up to the mounting blocks, and they would motion for one of us to get on, then the driver would get on behind, and they were off.

I decided I must be at least a little brave as I watched my kids riding off ahead of me, sitting in front of Filipino guys who don't speak much English. This was after I'd signed a waiver completely in Tagalog. Wait for me, kuya!!! :)

We rode through waving cogon grass, and the morning was so lovely. I could hear bird calls unlike any you hear in the U.S. in addition to the driver clucking to the horse in my ear. We got to the top and took a rest for water and a few pictures with the crater lake in the background. It was a really bad air quality day, but the view was still great.

From this point, we rode downhill through the woods to the lake. The trail down was somewhat steep in places, and David can tell you that the horses were more sure footed than he was. :) You can see the white sand of the little beach where we ended up to the right in the picture above.

We'd come prepared for a swim in the crater lake. So, to get this straight for everyone, we live on an island, the largest island in the Philippines, called Luzon. We drove to a lake on this island, called Taal Lake. We then took a boat across that to a volcano, and then swam in the lake inside the volcano. So all my guys were swimming in a lake on an island that's in a lake on an island. :)

Taal hasn't erupted since 1977, but it is still a volcano. This lake had bubbling and boiling spots in it, so we were told where it was safe to swim. The water was warm and sulfurous, but nothing too hot. We wore old bathing suits because we'd been told the sulfur would stain them, and it did, though the stains did end up coming out. :)

Ben's driver spoke the best English. I sat with him and the other drivers in this little cogon grass hut, watching my guys swim. I've gotta say that it was a surreal moment when I told him that we were learning some Tagalog, including how to sing "Bahay Kubo," and he gave me a big smile and broke into song. We ended up singing together, me and this native driver in a cogon hut on the side of a volcano. How cool is that, right?

This trip took all morning, but we were back at our car by about lunchtime, hot and sweaty and with feet covered in black volcanic soil. Tita Emma, who owns this hotel on the side of Taal Lake, met us at the dock with cold calamansi juice. The boys ran around the green and shady grounds, and we gathered our belongings for the drive back.

In the van, David and I high fived each other. We came, we saw the volcano, and we conquered. It takes some guts to try this kind of thing for us, and you never know what you're gonna get when you head out of Manila because the landscape and the culture still feel so unfamiliar, but its been totally worth it.

If you'd like to replicate our trip, just contact Tita Emma and she'll help you out. Talisay Green Lake Resort was easy to find, just off the main road, and we just used Waze to get there. I don't remember the rates right now, but I remember that it was a little cheaper than the Yacht Club next door for a boat to take us there and back again. We didn't get a package with lunch because we wanted to get back earlier in the day. The resort is nicely landscaped and clean, and there was even a swing set that our boys enjoyed playing on while we sat in the gazebo and finished our calamansi juice.

You can text Emma at 0917 810 9192, and the resort landline is 63 43 773 0247.

This ended up being a relatively easy day trip, and I know we'll end up doing it again. :)

Putting some scaffolding in place...

We've been here 4 months now. Wow. We're getting to the point where it's feeling a lot more like this is our life. I was told early on that it would take about 6 months to feel like this was home, and that seems right. But I'm a lot more at home than I was even a month ago.

I no longer wake up and wonder where I am. That's good, right? :)

As part of the settling in process, I got super sick with a virus and cough and couldn't get much energy back for about 3 weeks. It feels like it was a waste of a month, but now I know that it came at a normal trough point for expats anyway. Being sick made the trough worse, I'm sure, but I might have lost my enthusiasm for adventure anyway. So we didn't do any adventuring, despite having the van again and a driver to take us around Manila. I didn't have it in me.

BUT... I signed Seth up for a Makebot class for 4 Saturday afternoons at the local science museum. He LOVES it. When I pick him up, he's practically jumping out of his skin with enthusiasm, so excited to tell me what he programmed his bot to do. Big win for him.

We had our pictures put up on the walls. That made this place finally feel like a home to me. I should've asked to have it done before I did. I wish I hadn't waited.

We joined a local, mostly Filipino homeschooling co-op. We're going to give it a try for 8 weeks and see how it goes, but Seth loves the Filipino hip hop dance class, and he's made a friend who also loves coding. They're all taking a musical theater class that seems to be good, and the younger boys are taking an art class while Seth is in dance.

Baguio, part 3

The indigenous peoples of Baguio are the Cordillera people. We went to a little tourist village to find out how they lived. (This is probably our equivalent of going to a Native American historic site and seeing teepees and wigwams, if that helps ya any.)

This is a rice growing region. On our way to Baguio, we saw field upon field of rice paddies, marked into squares. Sometimes farmers were working them with plows, but they were mostly being worked with special tillers. All over Baguio there are small rice markets you can see as you drive through town.

The boys are sitting by an old Cordillera rice granary. The rice gods sit in the granary to protect the harvest.

Baguio, part 2...

Despite my Baguio illness, we got out and were touristy. There is a great park in the middle of Baguio called Burnham Park, and we headed there on a sunny morning. We rented a boat to take out on the little pond. For about $3 U.S., we got the boat for 30 minutes. You could also pay for someone to row the boat for you for $1 more.

I took that deal. 

The boys were singing and yelling piratey things like, "Take that, scurvy dogs!" at other people in boats. We got a lot of grins. At one point, I asked if they could take turns helping him row with one of the oars. Seth did well with it, and so did Evan, but Ben's attempt had us about to run into another boat. Everyone in their boat and even our serious looking rower were laughing about that one. He managed to keep us from collision, but it was a close call. :)

There was a place where you could rent riding toys, and a long, blocked off road for riding them. So  awesome for kids. Ben abandoned his riding toy in frustration after he couldn't keep up with his brothers, so I got to do the walk of shame down the middle of the road dragging a tantruming boy.

I'd read about a place where they make fresh pandesal, so we tried Cafe by the Ruins Dua. You could watch them rolling out the dough and then shaping it, and when it came to our table, it was steaming when we pulled it apart. Best pandesal I'll probably ever have, and at this point, I've become a pandesal fan. I buy it a lot of places that I see it now. We had it with mango jam here, which was masarap (delicious), but we just eat it with butter at home. :)

Baguio, part 1...

David had a work conference in Baguio, a town about 5-6 hours north of Manila, so we decided to tag along for part of it. He went up early in the week, and we followed on Wednesday.

We are so blessed to be able to stay at the U.S. Embassy property in Baguio. Nature and privacy are really hard to come by in the Philippines in my newbie experience, so it was so amazing to be able to just let the boys out of the house to catch bugs for hours and know that they were totally safe. It was like having a fantastic back yard to play in again. I'm not kidding when I say that they were out there for hours each day while we were there.

This was especially good because the really bad fever and cough virus that had already run through the rest of the family got me after we arrived. I'm thankful that I could just lay in the bed and cough and know that they were so well occupied.

One of their finds. This was the coolest moth.

Who says the Philippines are just tropical? These mountains look really volcanic to me. I suspect Hawaii looks a lot like this, though I've never been.

Manila Maker Faire

A couple of weekends ago, the local science museum was having a Maker Faire, so we decided to walk down and check it out.

My favorite part was the booth where you could solder a circuit board to turn a kerosene lamp into a solar powered lamp. Seth spent 15 minutes with this man who patiently showed him how to do each step. He learned to use a soldering iron! The satisfied grin on his face when he saw his light actually turn on after all that work? Priceless.

This video showed him where his lamp will most likely go. There are remote areas of the Philippines that don't have access to an electrical grid, and kerosene is expensive.

Settling in...

It happened. Our household goods shipment arrived from the U.S. via Hong Kong. 

People have been telling me periodically, "Oh, it'll be better than Christmas when your stuff gets here!" I've heard that statement at least 3 times, and so I got a little geared up for that feeling. 

We spent yesterday unpacking boxes and setting up things, and most of it is done, minus some rearranging and buying of different kinds of containers to store things in. The books we brought are on shelves. I've but some decorative dishes in the china cabinet, and a few pictures are propped up. The kitchen is totally unpacked, though I'm moving things around based on how often I use them. 

But the feeling they said I would have? Nope. Not really. Maybe I brought most of what I really wanted to feel at home in my checked baggage and the unaccompanied baggage shipment? Maybe I'm not that much for a stuff person, or I got used to the bareness of the walls over the last 3 months? 

Or maybe it's that I have my stuff here, but the addition of the stuff doesn't make me look around and suddenly go, "Yep, now this is my home." It's not my home. It's a lovely condo filled with my stuff. My home is still in Raleigh where it's been for the last 9 years, and I don't know how long it'll take for me to feel like this is "home." But it ain't today, and getting my stuff didn't cure much homesickness.

I realized that my last post may have made my life look rosier than it is. "She has a driver?" "She has a helper that makes pancakes?" "Nope, no need to feel sorry for her. She's got it made!" You might think that, but I'll tell you the truth. I would give back the driver and the housekeeper in a heartbeat if I could find a way to live my American life here. I would rather drive my own car and ask my wonderful in-laws to babysit instead of my helper, and I would be fine with making pancakes for my little guy myself. 

I like my privacy, but in order to have any help at all with my boys, I have to hire someone to work for me all day at a set salary. (Swapping babysitting just isn't done here regularly, and you can't just hire a babysitter very easily.) And that person really needs the job that I give her, and though the salary she makes is top dollar for household help, she is still making $20 a day to work for me. Let that sink in for a second. She cleans and cooks for us, speaks good English, and plays with my little boys so I can go to the doctor or go out with one for a little while, and I swear that she never rests even though I try to get her to take a lunch break. And this is a really good job for here. She takes pride in her work, and she certainly keeps our home cleaner than I ever did. I'm thankful for her help with the boys and the house and for teaching us Tagalog, but having another person around all day 2 days a week is hard for me. 

Mostly ditto for the driver, plus or minus a few variables.

I post the good and the fun and the exciting to this blog because I'm pulling up my big girl panties and diving into the adventure. I'm a type A girl, and I've been working really hard to make this adventure feel like an adventure, even when it's been pretty challenging to get out and do and see.

But I've been here 3 months, and I'm feeling burned out. I'm more OK with holing up in our condo and watching Netflix and reading books and staying in my PJ's than I was when we first got here. When just going grocery shopping is overwhelming every time, sometimes you just hit overload.

I have been busy diving in and getting acclimated and learning the different colors of money and how to turn on the gas stove and pay for water delivery and meeting everyone I can at the pool and cornering them to ask for advice. All of that takes time, and some of it is exciting and novel, and there are times that I'm definitely glad I get to do it.

But I looked at David the other night and said for the first time to him (and to myself), "This isn't worth it to me. I gave up so much to come here. You have your job and the challenge of it. But I gave up a life I spent years building gradually, and a homeschooling network that was starting to feel more solid, and the choir that I finally got to begin singing in after the boys were finally old enough for me to have a hobby just for me. And I gave up close friends that I laughed and cried with and grandparents that loved the boys well and did great things with them so I could give up the guilt of not teaching all subjects. I don't have a job to dive into like you do. I have to build the scaffolding of my life and the boys' lives again from scratch." 

I don't think I'm resentful of that. I know that we're both here because we believe that God asked us to come, and though his fulfillment is higher than mine right now, I also know his stress levels in many areas are also higher. 

But I gave up a lot. And I'm beginning to really acknowledge the loss now. I was too busy before.

God is caring for me, and I feel His kindness. I'm grateful. But I'm glad that I didn't know how hard this was going to be ahead of time. I doubt I would've been strong enough to say "yes." Funny how that works, isn't it? He doesn't tell us the outcome before He asks for our obedience. 

I know this isn't the end of the story. I hope that one day I'll look back and say, "God was so faithful. He made a way in so many areas when I couldn't see how we were going to get what we needed. I'm so glad He asked us to come and live in the Philippines for 2 years." 

But right now I'm at the beginning of this, and I can't say that yet. 

A Saturday in the life...

Just a taste of my Saturday in Manila.... David gets home late Friday from a week away teaching a conference to Filipino academics and law students. We wake up this morning to discover that David's huge bathroom mirror behind his vanity has come unglued in the night, but it lands on a plastic cup sitting there, so it doesn't fall completely off. There are large chunks of glass on the bathroom floor.

It's 7:30, and our household helper had arrived since this is one of the 2 days a week she comes in. I tell Ben to ask her to get him breakfast. He requests pancakes, and she makes them for him and his brothers.

David meets with the driver we are negotiating a contract with at 8 a.m.. We keep in mind that he's reading a contract in a foreign language to him, so it makes sense that he has questions. They work it out, and he agrees to sign it. This is good, because our van has arrived from Hong Kong, and it should be out of customs soon. This is also good because I am tired of taking Uber after almost 3 months of depending on that to get around.

After a morning of much needed time with Daddy, David and I head out for a lunch date and to go shopping for exciting things like drinking glasses and a mop, since our shipment of household goods in arriving on Wednesday. Our helper, M., puts out lunch for the boys, and we say goodbye. We call an Uber in front of our condo building, and the driver drops us off in front of a mall. There are a lot of malls here, but this one is where more Filipinos than expats shop, so it's a little cheaper. :)

David wants a fountain drink, so we go to Wendy's. Yes, Wendy's. I'm able to get a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger that tastes almost completely like the U.S. version. The fries are good, too, but they usually don't give you nearly enough of them. Fast food restaurants also have rice here. It comes in a small paper packet and costs the equivalent of $.30. I try the pork spring rolls on the menu. They're OK. I eat just one.

We finish lunch and walk into the department store. I pass displays of women's shoes, and I pick up a couple of them and put them to my feet. Regrettably, none of them fit me. The largest size here is a women's 9. I wear a 9 1/2. We spend a little time looking for the type of mop that M. described, and we have no luck finding it. We buy drinking glasses. I ask where to find rain ponchos for all of us because it's rainy season, and we got poured on during soccer on Wednesday. As often happens here, I get told to try two different floors by multiple salespeople. I leave with no ponchos.

Hailing an Uber is harder on the way back, and I'm grumpy standing out on the curb with a dish drainer, a box of dishes, and other assorted household goods. We've stayed out longer than I had planned, and I worry that we won't get back before M. needs to get home. I wish our van was already here so we could use the parking deck. It takes half an hour to get an Uber, and then we have the drive home in the usual dreadful Manila traffic. I remember that we're getting a driver because of how stressful it is to drive here and find parking. I wouldn't leave our little area because of fear of having an accident with the boys, and that would be a waste of the opportunity to be here.

We get home. M. has made chicken afritata (chicken stew made with tomatoes and vegetables) and rice, and David and the boys will have it for dinner. We play pick up sticks with the boys, and she laughs and wants to know who won.

I leave to meet another new foreign service mom to go to dinner. We walk through downtown, and we decided to eat at a place that advertises USDA beef. (Good beef is hard to come by here, and it's also usually expensive.) This is the kind of hip, expensive looking restaurant that would be super pricey in Raleigh's downtown, and there are expensive items on the menu, but there are also several entrees listed for about $7 U.S. We get a few and split them. The waitresses laugh at the way we're cutting up, kind of giddy to be out of the house. We exchange "how we got here" stories.

After dinner, we wander over to the closest mall, and we have Baskin Robbins. It's the only way I can have mint chocolate chip here. It's imported direct from the U.S.! She needs to buy a present for a birthday party, and we walk into the local British toy store. Once inside, I realize that all the employees are wearing costumes. I tell them I like their costumes, and I ask if I can take a picture. My new friend, not yet remembering that we're in a culture that adores picture taking, murmurs that maybe I shouldn't ask. But when the employee I asked calls everyone else over and they strike a pose and then ask me to take a selfie with them, I think she remembers we're not in the U.S. anymore. :)

A great end to a normal Saturday for me in the Philippines. Peace out. :)