Books in our homeschool...

I've been reading The Read Aloud Family by Sarah McKenzie, and it is reminding me all over again of a primary reason why our family homeschools. There are so many wonderful books in the world, and I want to give my children lots of time to fall in love with them at a young age.

A couple of really important things that I did before we left the U.S. were buy an iPod and sign us all up for library cards. We were primarily using my card in North Carolina, but when I signed us all up for cards, that meant that we each got 10 digital downloads at a time per card. I'm very grateful that we still own a home and pay NC taxes so we can still take advantage of our excellent library system.

The boys will play quietly when they get up in the morning while listening to books like Ramona Quimby, age 8 or Pippi Longstocking or The Long Winter. They're even occasionally willing to listen to challenging books read well by an excellent narrator that I would never be able to get them to listen to if I was doing the reading. The video above is of Evan doing a spelling activity while listening to Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Audiobooks are my biggest reading aloud "cheat." The boys are engaging with wonderful stories and building their vocabulary while I'm taking a shower or getting my breakfast, and I can definitely tell the benefits in the words they use when talking with me or in writing stories. This is vocabulary that they wouldn't be able to acquire by reading to themselves yet, but they can definitely get it from hearing books read aloud.

I've had some headache issues since moving to Asia, and whether that's because I'm getting older or because of the pollution, I've found that walking seems to help. I'll do 20 minutes of walking around the paths behind our building in the morning while listening to podcasts. The "Schole Sisters" podcast feels like teacher in service training for homeschooling moms. I've gotten some fresh insights to add to our school day by listening to that one. Other favorites include "The Read Aloud Revival" and Sally Clarkson's podcast.

I'm seeing my boys really starting to click with their reading this year. I love that I'm teaching them, so I get the chance to cheer with them and encourage them when they hit a new milestone. I'll often find Ben writing his own stories now, and that's so exciting to me. He even spells a lot of the words right!

Evan and I are reading Toliver's Secret together every day. He's at the stage where he doesn't love to read yet because it's hard work, so I'm trying to pick books that I think will really interest him, and then I'm helping by doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I read a page, and then he reads a couple of paragraphs, and we alternate, usually only reading 15 minutes at a session to keep us both from getting tired or discouraged.

Our evenings are quieter in Manila than they were in the U.S., and that means that we've covered a lot of ground in reading aloud as a family after dinner. David loves to read to the boys. He read the older two boys the entire Harry Potter series in the last year. At this point, he's going through all of the Chronicles of Narnia with them.

Ben is 7, and he just isn't interested in a lot of chapter books that the older boys like. That's ok. I've been reading picture books for 11 years now, and I have no desire to stop. We pull out books from our bookshelves, and I read to him.

We're a bookish family. That's just us. If homeschooling has given my boys the time to fall in love with books through lots of time to interact with them, I will consider that part of our educational journey as a success. I want them to love to learn and to turn to books to answer their questions and increase their wonder, courage, and empathy.

Letter on Vacationing in Ubud, Bali...

A guest post from my hubby, David. His letter to a friend was so good that I thought I'd post it here for posterity.... 

"Vacationing in the third world is very fun but stretches our adventurous spirit.  Ellen and I didn't want to spend $350 a night to stay in a pricey place, so she found a cheaper recommendation that looked good on Air B&B.  It was a group of bungalows that had been converted into a sort of hotel.  We got two rooms for about $75 a night.  Plane flights were at crazy hours, so we arrived in the Bali airport around 11:30 p.m. where (thankfully) a smiling Indonesian man was waiting to take us to our hotel.  He spoke decent English but was hard to understand because of his strong accent.  Because it was a drive, we arrived at 1:30 a.m. or so.  

When I woke up in the morning, I heard the happy sounds of roosters mixed with other birds and perhaps other creatures.  It is definitely a wild sounding mix.  The roosters, of course, were cock fighting roosters, some of which were being raised by the owners of our Air B&B.  We saw them in baskets later  After breakfast, we walked to the Monkey Forest.  Admission is $14 for all of us.  The monkeys are crazy.  If you stand near them, they climb on you.  In the course of 15 minutes, a monkey gets angry at Ben and is growling at him (I think because Ben pushed him),  another one has opened our backpack and stolen a pack of paper towels, and a third has bitten Evan because Evan make the mistake of reaching his hand out to the monkey who had climbed on his head.  Thankfully, we all had rabies shots, so we just had to get Evan two boosters when we get home.  It still amazes me that after all that, Ellen was still willing to return to the monkey forest.  We left our backpack behind this time at the desk, and we instructed the kids not to encourage the monkeys to climb on them anymore.  Everyone had had a monkey on their head except Ellen, and she was ok with missing that privilege.  The park was beautiful, and we saw baby monkeys carried by their mothers and a lot of other cool things.  It was also fun to see the monkeys harassing other people, I admit.  One lady make the mistake of wearing a long dress, and the monkeys thought it would be a great way to play hide and seek, so they took turns grabbing and pulling her dress and then jumping underneath it.  Everyone was amused but her.  

That night, we decide to go to dinner at an Indian place recommended by our Indian neighbors in Manila.  So we ask our "hotel" if they can get us a taxi.  But the uncle who does transport isn't available, so they offered to take us on motorcycles.  I am literally on the phone with my parents updating them on the trip, when Ellen asks me if it is ok if we take the kids to dinner by motorcycle.  Sure!  So, Evan and I were on one motorcycle, Ellen and Ben on another, and Seth on a third, all being driven by family members of our Air B&B.  When we arrived at the restaurant, they told us no charge for the transport.  =)  (No helmets either).  After a wonderful meal, we then went to a fire dancing ceremony, which was pretty cool.  The boy's favorite part was where the dancer kicked the fire with his bare feet.  The dancers were elaborately dressed, some to look like kings and princesses.

The next day, we took a 30 kilometer bike ride (downhill) through the Bali countryside.  On the drive to our starting point, we stopped at a place where they grew coffee.  We all tried a variety of different coffees (free samples) and even had some of the Luwak coffee (not free- $3.50 for a cup that we shared) which is the kind made from coffee beans that are eaten by a wild cat, soaked in its stomach acids, and then pooped out.  After they are washed, pealed, and roasted, you get coffee.  Yum.  The bike ride required little peddling because it was mostly downhill, but you had to use the hand brakes a lot.  My hand brakes didn't work very well, so my left arm got quite tired squeezing the hand brake for dear life.  Evan and Ben each rode on the back of a bicycle of Ellen and mine. 

The countryside was quite pretty.  We saw a lot of women carrying baskets on their heads, rice fields, and other cool things.  On a hill up, we had to all get off our bicycle and push the bikes up the hill.  It was hot work.  One of the locals saw Seth struggling and took his motorcycle, grabbed Seth's bicycle and drove it up the hill.  He then drove back, picked up Seth, and drove him up the hill.  Seth went without question.  When Seth arrived at the top on a motorcycle with a big smile, Ben said, "No fair!"   Ellen (far from being worried about Seth) was hoping the guy would come back and offer her a ride.  He didn't, so Ellen had to struggle up the hill herself. 

At the very end of the ride, there was another big hill, and Ellen decided we should just be picked up there.  So we waited at a small local store (think of a very tiny convenience store except outdoors) that was closed with two dogs guarding it.  Our guide took the others in our tour group (two ladies from London) on and said he'd send the car.  After a few minutes, the owner of the store (or perhaps son, uncle, etc.) showed up, and we asked him if we could sit down.  We then bought five wafer crackers for $0.65, but I had no idea how much it cost because at that point, I was tired and having trouble calculating the currency, so I thought we'd actually paid $6.50.  15,000 rupiahs to the dollar is a little hard to calculate, especially when you are tired.  Ellen and I spent millions (literally) on the trip.  The store owner then gave us all several bananas for free.  

 All three days, we spent time at our hotel pool, which was shaded and had two statues of ladies with pitchers pouring water.  It was small but had a shallow end that all the kids could stand in and a deep end that was over six feet deep.  On one side of the pool, there was a steep drop off into the woods.  We told the boys not to stand on that edge.  That night, we found a good pizza place.  Because it is Indonesia, our meals (even good international food) all cost $20-30.  

The next day, we went to the elephant adventure park and rode and fed elephants.  For $50, you could buy a shirt painted by an elephant (I'll never understand modern art, but the elephant art looked just as good as a lot of other modern art).  They had a modern artist in a video saying that the elephants were surprisingly talented (which I think calls into question the field in general).  The kids loved the elephant art gallery, which included works made of elephants, not just works made by them.  We also saw a chocolate factory and bought the kids ice cream.  After another trip to the pool, we had dinner, shopping, and then our ride to the airport to catch an 11:20 p.m. flight (arriving at 3:30 a.m. in Manila).  Ben fell asleep on the airport floor and all three boys slept on the plane.  Ben said it was the shortest flight ever and thought it had lasted 30 seconds or less.  Our driver met us at the airport and drove us home.  We were back by 4:30 a.m.  Seth and I didn't go to work/school on Monday." 

A field trip on Philippines sugar production...

So many things can be a field trip when you're living overseas (or if you're being a tourist in your own culture.) On Thursday, I decided to teach the boys a little about sugar production in the Philippines. 

I had been scratching my head over why the big supermarkets here had so many different kinds of sugar. Well, the reason is that sugar was the most important agricultural export of the Philippines for about 100 years, from the late 19th century through the 1970's. Sugar is produced throughout several islands and regions, but the most important area of sugar production is Negros Occidental, so I decided to take the opportunity to head to their annual trade fair at Glorietta 3 in Makati. 

So here's how ya do a field trip on Philippine sugar production if you're a homeschooling mom. :)

Step 1: Throw your kids in the van and pull up a couple of Youtube videos. This one was good. And so was this one. Ask them what they noticed in the videos, and have a short discussion while you're headed to Makati.

Step 2: Get there as the mall opens and while the fair is still setting up for the day. Make sure you're prepared for this by bringing a bag of books to read in a McCafe while sharing a hot chocolate. Be thankful that your oldest student knew that this was a Filipino field trip and threw this wonderful picture book into the bag. (Go ahead and watch it read. I dare you not to cry.)

Step 3: Find the garden set up of regional plants. See them get excited when they find rambutan. Smile as the friendly volunteers encourage them to try walking on coconut shell stilts.

Step 4: Oooh and ahh over regional masks. Remind them of the fiesta we went to with church friends, and tell them that these are masks that people wear in Negros during their fiestas.

Step 5: Make note of all the booths of sweet things to try. Ask your kids why they think there are so many bakery items produced in Negros. Watch the wheels turn in their minds and things start to click. Hint: when you've got access to a lot of sugar, you bake with it. Try a lot of samples, and watch your baby have his first suman dipped in coco sugar.

Step 6: Walk to the handicrafts section of the fair. Enjoy hearing about the production of stone decorative items in Negros using all native stones and native metals. Ask questions.

Step 7: Make sure you've got plenty of Negros baked goods and muscovado sugar to sample for later.

Step 8: Type up what your kids remember about what they've learned the second you walk through your front door. Print it out. Have them draw pictures and describe them to you. Call it a day and pick up the learning some more tomorrow.

Step 9: Learn about muscovado sugar production. Muscovado sugar is sometimes called poor man's sugar because it is the least refined sugar using the simplest methods. Basically, you squeeze the cane, use the cane husks to build a fire, and boil the juice until it's concentrated. Then you pour it out and keep stirring constantly as it dries. That's muscovado sugar, and it's delicious, with a strong taste of molasses. If you want to see more, watch this video. 

Step 10: Have a taste test of refined sugar, brown sugar (which is refined sugar with molasses added back in), and muscovado. Decide which you like the best. Make sure to let your ate taste as well so she can vote also. Promise your children Negros treats for dessert after dinner.

Sweetest field trip evah! ;)

Embracing the Philippines...

Learning and practicing their Tagalog words with Ate Maryann.

Way back when we first started thinking about trying to go overseas, I remember trying to articulate why I wanted to do this. Sure, traveling is great. I was itching to travel, after being tied down to baby and toddler schedules for several years. But travel wasn't the only thing that I wanted. 

I wanted to live in another culture and learn that culture. A week here and a week there won't cut it for cultural acclimation. I was totally jealous of the years that David lived in Germany as an Air Force child, and I wanted that for myself and for our kids. I wanted us all to have our eyes opened to life outside of our wonderful American borders. 

Now, I didn't know how that was going to pan out. That part wasn't up to me. David applied for short term details overseas, and our deal was that he wouldn't tell me where he was applying. Seriously, I didn't want to know. I didn't want to invest any emotional energy into something that didn't have a decent likelihood of panning out. 

So when he got an interview for a position in the Philippines, I had to Google "living in Manila with kids." Our part of the U.S. doesn't have a big Filipino population. All I really knew was that it was about as far away from the East Coast as you could get, and that this "Ring of Fire" dealio could make me intimately acquainted with earthquakes. 

I had never imagined myself living in the Philippines. Like, never. I thought he'd applied to Eastern Europe. My imagination involved bicycling through the Albanian countryside. It wasn't populated with palm trees, rice fields, or smiling trike drivers. 

But this is where God landed us, and at this point, I am beyond relieved that I'm not somewhere in Eastern Europe. For one thing, I'm getting the idea that a lot more people speak excellent English in Manila than Albania, from the executive working in the high rise down the street to your local coconut vendor. This is an excellent "starter country" if you've never lived out of the U.S. before.

For another thing, Filipinos are some of the friendliest people in the world, and they love children. And when you have 3 wild little boys, you need some indulgent people around you who shrug and grin when your kids start climbing things or dropping things or get lost when you turn a corner. In the Philippines, I usually feel like the locals have my back in this mothering thing.

I took my boys to the Pacem Eco Park in Antipolo, and Ben fell in a pond. He missed a step, and just like that, he's over his head in stagnant water. I had no extra clothes, no towel, no nothing. I took him back to the office, and the lovely ate in the shop took him over to the hose, stripped him down, scrubbed him down, applied betadine and a band-aid to his banged up knee, and put him in an oversized t-shirt from the gift shop. I'd lived here long enough that I knew enough to just let her get to it. This is the love of the Filipina. They will mother your children while you run to the van to see if you've got a towel in back (I didn't), and you let them 'cause you know your baby is safe with them. 

Another highly significant thing is that we are Christians living in the only predominantly Christian country in Asia. That makes it a lot easier for us to become a part of the local culture through our church. We go to Victory Church at the Fort. It's a Filipino church led by Filipinos mostly for Filipinos, and we love that. We can get a window into culture here just through being members. We are part of a small group, we help teach children's church once a month, and I'm on the crafts team for children's church. Our kids see the same kids in their classes, week in and week out, and they learn a Tagalog word here and there. We have been embraced and loved by this church and its members, and we're so grateful for that.

It would be too easy for me to live in an expat bubble. I could get by here without really doing life with Filipinos, but that's not why we asked God to give us the chance to live overseas. We want to know the people in this country, and that takes some effort on our part, but that effort has been so generously rewarded. If you reach out to Filipinos, they will reach back to you and teach you so much about true hospitality and generosity.

I have been a grumpy expat, kvetching about hating this or that about an unfamiliar place, but I have no desire to be that lady most of the time. There is so much to enjoy about the Philippines. This is the experience of a lifetime, and I want to find the leche flan inside the suman whenever I can. ;) 

This international living moment...

Suman brought in by my helper for a company dinner. Suman is a sticky rice dessert, usually wrapped in banana leaves, and it's especially good covered in a coconut milk and sugar syrup.

I recently finished a book by D.E. Stevenson called "Mrs. Tim of the Regiment." It's based on the author's memoirs of her years as an officer's wife in Great Britain, and I smiled quite a bit through this book. There was plenty of moving houses and dealing with household staff and worrying over what her kids would be doing for school when they moved and whether or not she'd like it there or make any friends. In short, I found some definite similarities to my expat life here. 

Should I keep a careful journal so I'll have material for a book one day? Seriously, there are so many points in some days that I think, "This is my life? I can't believe that just happened." 

The other day, we got in our elevator, and some sweet Indian grandparents in our tower were already there. Indian Grandpa offered them Filipino suckers, and they were thrilled. (These suckers deserve a post of their own. They're like DumDum pops, but the amount of skill and effort that it takes to get the wrapper off of one makes me think there is something essential my kids missed out on because they didn't go to Filipino preschool. "Ok, children, now that we have shown you how to wash your hands, we'll have our lesson on getting into a lollipop.")

Evan and Ben hopped out on a lower floor to go visit their good friend, a Filipino American kid who they love not only for his charm and kindness, but for his kind ate (all around helper) and nanay (mom) that let them go and scavenge in the pantry for merienda (snack) whenever they feel like it. 

Seth and I got off on the ground floor, where we said hi to another friend just getting home from his day at school. We were greeted with a smile by the doorman and the front desk staff, like we always are. "Hello, ma'am. Hello, sir." I'm handed our phone bill... because they know who we are and where we live, even though we live in a huge high rise tower with at least 50 stories. (My mind was blown by this when I realized it only a couple of months after we got here.)

I walked Seth out to the circular driveway in front where our driver had pulled up in our minivan. (This poor minivan is not only bewildered because it has been moved to a foreign country where people are regularly surprised by its automatic doors, but also because it is shockingly clean every day of its life. It doesn't understand either of these things.) Seth climbed in, and I reminded him how to get to Boy Scouts when Rey dropped him off at this international school (that he doesn't attend) for his meeting. I told Rey that Seth would get a ride home with another family, and that he could leave for the day after he's dropped Seth off.

Then I went back upstairs and thought for a second about all of the things I have just experienced that I have only ever experienced living overseas. :)

Visiting Japan....

A few months ago, I said to a friend, "Hey, let's take a girl's trip somewhere!" My idea was that a few of us would go somewhere within the region, but a place that was a little pricey for family travel. We'd check it out over a long weekend while the dads were home to watch the kids, and if we loved it, then we could consider taking the whole family one day. Genius, right? ;) (Well, maybe just a convenient excuse to hit the road without dragging along the younglings, but it is what it is.)

I suggested Japan, and Joy and Eugenia agreed that it sounded like a good plan. Plane tickets were bought, and a hotel was booked. And that was about the extend of the planning. :) We knew we wanted to bop around Tokyo and eat good food and shop. We would only have a few days, so we couldn't get too ambitious.

The first day was a little rough. We got off the plane, and things got confusing from there. We bought the wrong train tickets into Tokyo from Narita and ended up taking a long train with multiple stops. We also discovered that the Tokyo subway is really made up of rail lines operated by 6 different companies and "subway" really means "Subway, Inc." That can make for some stressful times when you've got a map that isn't showing the lines of the train you're riding on, and you're being reassured by a Japanese hipster that you're still on the right train, but he doesn't speak a ton of English, so....

We made it to our stop, after a decent amount of asking around and wandering metro stations, and when we did get off, Google Maps immediately started taking us in circles. The hotel was in a business district, and there weren't a lot of English speakers to help. I went into a restaurant and showed the guy inside the hotel address, and he just looked at me and said, "No, no, no." We stared at each other, and then I walked out.

We finally hailed a cab, and an angelic Japanese lady stopped to help us. She spoke to the taxi driver for us, and we loaded our suitcases... and then a lady walked up, and she and the taxi driver started yelling at each other in Japanese. The Japanese Angel explained quietly that she had called this cab, and he thought we were her. Our suitcases were quickly and unceremoniously dumped back on the sidewalk. Japanese Angel walked us to a main street and helped us flag down another cab and explained the address to the cab driver.

After we got to the hotel, I wondered how bad it would be to just stay in my room and watch Netflix all weekend? That bad? Maybe not? :)

After an hour to calm down and take deep, cleansing breaths, we ventured outside our hotel to get dinner... within a 2 block radius of the hotel after making careful note of landmarks. ;)

It was Friday night in Tokyo, and we were eating dinner with a lot of Japanese businessmen and women, ties loosened and having a beer after work. I ate some of the best and freshest gyoza of my life. We were doing this thing.

I took this picture to help me find our hotel again. It was a great little hotel, and it wasn't terribly expensive and was centrally located. It's the Tosei Cocone Kanda, and you'll find it within a very short walk of the JR Kanda Station, West Entrance. You'll see this view when you exit. Walk this direction, and then fire up Google Maps. :)

We decided to stay on the JR line, so the next day, we bought a tourist pass at the JR Kanda station. For 750 yen, you can ride the line all day, which takes away some of the stress of possibly going the wrong way on a line and having to figure it out coming back. We got a map, and we headed to Ueno Park. Ueno Park is large park complete with the zoo, several national museums, some shrines, etc. It's a good place to get started if you're a clueless tourist.

650 yen will get you a day pass to the National Museums. We got the audio tour for another 500 yen. (The exchange rate is roughly 100 yen to one U.S. dollar.)

An ancient scroll depicting a story of a rat that tricks a Japanese girl into marrying him. This is her noticing that his attendants are all rats and starting to get a little suspicious.

We walked out of Ueno Park into a local business district as the sun was setting, and we stumbled onto an arcade. A guy on the plane into Narita had told me about these photo filter machines in arcades that will make you look like a 17-year-old anime pin up. We did a group shot and single shots 'cause it was so much fun. :)

The Japanese love vending machines. We paid for our meal here using the machine, and then a ticket came out. We gave it to the cook, and she gave us hot, fresh, fragrant bowls of soba or udon noodles and broth, which we then ate at a long counter with chopsticks.

This is a hand battered corn dog, studded with bits of potato, and then deep fried. 

Gotta love animal shaped bread from a bakery near Ueno Park. The pandas were filled with cream cheese. I'm wishing I'd bought more of them.

The second day, we went shopping at Takeshita Street. This is the entrance, right across from the JR station. We roamed the shops full of secondhand kimonos, Japanese Star Wars shirts, food themed squishy toys, and the mother of all 100 yen stores. I get really excited about dollar stores, and this was a 3 story one full of Japanese items. Daiso was like a museum where you could buy all the things and take them home! (If your luggage allowance would allow.) I went a little crazy. We all did. And then we had to rent a locker right across the street to store our stuff before we could keep going. :)

We walked and ate and shopped until we were footsore and drooping, and then we headed back to our hotel. The next morning, we took the JR line to Ueno Park, took a short walk from that station to the Keisei Skyliner Station, and picked up the Skyliner back to Narita. This was much faster than the slow train we took into town, and I highly recommend it when coming into Tokyo from Narita.

I'm not really a city person, and I was honestly a little surprised by how much I enjoyed Tokyo. This Japanese city just feels so different from other cities I've visited. The food is fresh and delicious, and I am admittedly a pretty picky eater. The Japanese do things precisely and well, even their "fast food." The architecture and ways they use machinery, even the compact way they put together a hotel bathroom, the way you can pick from a variety of pillow styles in the hotel lobby, the vending machines, the different foods... it's all fascinating to me. This was a really enjoyable Far Eastern cultural immersion.

Also, it's pretty rare that I do a girl's trip. As much as I enjoy traveling with all my boys, they are boys. It doesn't even enter my mind at this point in my life to plan a day of shopping or going to a spa when I travel with my family. :) No one in my family is interested in doing girly things except for me, and that actually hadn't occurred to me until I was on a trip where I could do girly things. Hey, I like doing girly things sometimes! Maybe I should try and do them occasionally. It's fun! ;)

Brain dump on a Wednesday...

Our guinea pig, Dobby, getting some fresh air down by the pool. 

The boys are downstairs playing at a friend's condo unit, and Seth will be coming home from school soon. His rooster alarm on his Kindle is set for every day at 3:00 p.m., so when I hear it, I start to miss him. I think it's funny how he reminds us of him this way. I sure didn't set the thing. :)

Living overseas, I feel sometimes like I'm living kind of a funny 3/4 life. So many of the things that I did in the U.S., I don't do here, but it's not like it feels like I've replaced those things with other things. We do very little in the evenings because traffic is so crippling, and no one wants to get in their car and spend 2 hours going 3 km. Small groups and choir practices and such aren't on the weeknight agenda for most expats in Manila, unless they're walking distance. I don't go out to the library or swing by the grocery store. I may be living as full of a life as I did in the U.S. if I sat down and calculated it, but it doesn't FEEL that way. You know? My life feels quieter and more closed off than it did. Maybe it's because we're home more often during the day, maybe because I've got one less student at home, maybe because I can't understand most of the conversations taking place around me when we leave our building, or maybe because I don't drive my own car very often. But I feel more still and often more fragile and more unsure of myself.

I'm not alone in this. David feels the same quite often. His job is overwhelming and full of whirling fragments that he has to corral. He said once that it feels like he's putting together a plane in the air while flying it. My guy struggles to keep up with the deluge of emails and deadlines, and when he misses something, it's hard on him. He wakes up in the morning and braces himself for another day as often as I do. 

I read an article today that someone posted in their Facebook feed from our church planting network in the U.S. What jumped out at me from this today was all the examples of the things he'd done in the past that hadn't led to increased confidence. You think that you're going to do something out of your comfort zone, and it's going to make you feel stronger and more resilient. Maybe you think you'll gain some incredible insight or wisdom that you can carefully pack in your Life Toolbox and take out for future use later? (I'm realizing that that was what I was hoping for on some level from our time overseas.)

Instead, what you get is a crushing awareness of how puny you are, how weak you are, and how much you just can't do ___ (insert Hard Thing here) without Him. I don't think anyone really gets excited about signing up for that lesson. Humans are so quick to forget their need for God without being forced to see how dependent they are. I guess it should come as no surprise that our year here has been plagued with medical problems, work challenges, and decisions we would rather not have made.

My Instagram feed isn't going to show the tough stuff. But I can tell you that I was sitting by one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, watching my sons play in the surf, when I got a text from a nurse friend telling me that the open wound on my hand that I'd been dealing with for months was infected, and I needed to get to a local doctor. I cried.

By the time we got back on a plane to go home from New Zealand to the Philippines, it looked like this (despite 4 days of antibiotics) and was oozing pus. David had coughed up blood from a chest infection he got as a result of his run in with a motorcycle in November.

People have this desire to conquer and see the world. We chase comfort and experiences. But we are still confronted with our weak flesh and the realization that we are not in charge and this world isn't enough, no matter where we go and no matter how beautiful our surroundings.

I have wanted to shake my fist at God. "We're here because we think you asked us to come. Why isn't this easier? Why aren't you smoothing our path? I'm just waiting for the next thing to hit at this point." But I guess the answer may be because if it was easy, I would think this was about me and David and about what we can offer. And it hasn't been easy, so we throw up our hands and admit we need Him to be of any use at all.

So that's what I've got on a normal Wednesday in Manila. Peace out.

December 2017...

December was mainly a month of recovery from David's accident. He didn't sleep well most of December, and he took pain meds around the clock. But mixed in there, we had Seth's first school clarinet concert...

And plenty of Christmas fun in BGC. We ran into Santa Claus on High Street. For some strange reason, the Philippines imports Santa's from the American Midwest, it seems? ;)

And our local homeschool group Christmas party included lots of games. That's Evan, decorated as a Christmas tree.

We bought tickets to New Zealand in July at a really good price, and we were so excited about going there for Christmas. This was a huge, bucket list trip for us, and we had the holiday parks and Air BnB's reserved. David's doctor made a face when we said we still wanted to try and go, but he didn't tell us not to go. :) We changed our itinerary and expectations to make this a lower key trip that was mainly about being in nature and green space and much less about doing things and seeing sights, but we were both still nervous and stressed and exhausted going into it. Stay tuned....

Motorcycles in Manila...

On Monday, November 20, I got the call that everyone is a little afraid they'll get one day. David had been hit by a motorcycle as he was crossing a service road near the U.S. Embassy in Metro Manila.

It was near the end of the work day, and he'd gone to the local Starbucks during a break after a stressful meeting. Motorcycles weave around parked or waiting cars here, and they drive in the wrong lanes. Crossing the street isn't easy, and it is often dangerous.

He had to be taken to a hospital near the Embassy because he wasn't stable enough to be moved all the way to where we live. I was driven there to be with him, and when I got there, I found out that he'd had a seizure in the waiting room in the E.R., so I was so thankful they hadn't tried to transport him farther. He had lost quite a bit of his memory, including everything that had happened in the last week. He repeated himself often.

That first night in the ICU, I really wasn't sure if he'd wake up in the morning. Every time they woke him up, I woke up. I think I mostly dozed on a bench beside his bed all night long.

24 hours made a huge difference in all our outlooks. He was remembering more, though still repeating himself a lot. I went home and got a shower and talked to the kids on the advice of the Embassy doctor.

Our Embassy community rallied to be the local family we don't have here, and I'm so grateful. Friends arranged to stay with the boys. Our wonderful ate, Maryann, worked extra, spending the night with the boys several nights. Groceries were delivered. I was able to stay with David in the hospital for the entire week that he was there.

I got a firsthand look at why Filipinos are known as amazing carers. The nursing staff was warm, friendly, and attentive. The doctors at Manila Doctor's Hospital checked on us regularly, and our local Embassy doctor helped me understand all the information coming at me from all sides.

A wonderful Embassy nurse came often and called to check in. The Ambassador made a visit, and I even got a call from an assistant Attorney General in D.C., since it appears that being hit by a motorcycle in a foreign country while working for DOJ is a big deal. :)

David came out of the encounter with a serious concussion, a thin fracture in a bone in his upper spine, and fluid on his lungs from the impact. By the time he was released from the hospital, his memory had mostly returned, and the regular repeating of questions had ended, but he may never remember the accident.

I know that God was upholding me that week. I feel like I was just existing in "get it done" mode, making sure that a U.S. judge in town was taken care of, communicating with relatives and work contacts, making sure that he had what he needed when he was groggy and couldn't hit his call button.

It wasn't until we got home that I think we all fell apart. It took me a full week and a half to cry over all that we'd been through. We'll be dealing with the effects of this on his health for months to come, but I'm so grateful that it wasn't worse. He's alive, and he's with us. Watching him read to the boys the week after he got home to the hospital felt like a miracle of grace.

So, if you're interested in tips on staying in the hospital in Manila, I guess I'm your girl. ;)