Find me...

.... today at "A Life Overseas! I'm so excited to be able to contribute to a website that has been a real encouragement to me in our expat journey.

https://www.alifeoverseas.com/after-moving-season/

Roma, Part 1...

David has a yearly conference with this overseas assignment that seems to always take place in some amazing European location. Last year it was Malta, and we found a way for me to tag along. It required signing the kids up for camps and coordinating child care, and I said that I probably wouldn't do it again. And then, they announced that this year's conference would be in Rome. David and I just looked at each other and smiled. Yep, gonna make THAT happen somehow.

Getting to Europe from Manila is almost as long and exhausting of a trip as going from Manila to the East Coast. The first leg of our flight was to Dubai. By the time we got there, we were whipped, and we still had another 7 hours to fly.

They called us up to the podium right before our flight to Rome, along with several other passengers. I was so worried that we'd been bumped. I just stared in jet lagged incomprehension when the ticket agent exchanged my coach ticket for business class. We'd actually been upgraded.

The irony was that David and I were just talking about how we'd never, ever, ever get to ride in first class. (The U.S. government does not buy first class or business class tickets, no matter how far you have to fly. They'll give you a stopover break, but that's going to be it. It's understandable, but really long flights in coach will make you ache.)

So I felt like I had won the lottery when I sat in my business class seat. Seriously, I wanted to weep with gratitude. I was soo tired, and I was going to be able to lay down to sleep for 7 whole hours! It was amazing. This was just the beginning of what would be a trip that felt like a generous gift from God from start to finish.

I have discovered that I really like to take a walking tour in cities to get my bearings (when I'm not with my children). I've done it in Boston and in Malta, and it really helps me enjoy the trip so much more. I am a big history buff and a homeschooling mom, and I just want to know the stories behind what I'm looking at. Maybe I should consider becoming a tour guide in my post homeschooling life? Hmm.

Anyway, I'd been listening to a podcast called "The Bittersweet Life." It's hosted by a couple of ladies who are expats in Rome, and it's all about the joy and pain of building a life in another country. Anyway, I decided that American Tiffany Parks was my kind of Rome tour guide from listening to her voice as I cut up veggies in my Philippines kitchen. I emailed with her about scheduling a private tour for the day after we arrived. She gave me so much advice about what to see and do in Rome in her emails that I cut and pasted them into a document to take with me for reference.

Tiffany spent the morning with us in the heart of Rome, and her stories gave me a deep dive into the layer upon layer of history and change that is at the heart of the Eternal City. It was unseasonably cold and windy for April in Rome, but I barely noticed, and that's saying something since I am totally acclimated for a tropical climate. If you're ever in Rome, consider booking her for a tour. No, it isn't cheap, and I've never spent that much on a tour before, but her suggestions for things to see and do in "off the beaten path" Rome fueled my touring decisions for the rest of my trip. I chose her as a tour guide because I felt that she understood what I was looking for in a visit to Rome, so her suggestions were really on target for me. It was worth the extra cash to me for that reason.

Apulit Island in El Nido...

We've been in the Philippines for 2 years, and we still hadn't been to Palawan! Everyone says that Palawan is a "must see", and I wasn't about to argue. The pictures looked amazing. We just hadn't gotten there yet.

Our family has definitely explored Philippine beaches. I've been to Borocay with a friend, and we've been to Mindoro/Puerta Galera, and we've been to Bohol twice. But Palawan was supposed to be the mother of all gorgeous beaches. :)

I decided to take the advice of another foreign service friend and spring for a long weekend at a high end resort in Palawan as a birthday present for me and David. (Our last beach vacation involved a hotel where dogs howled at night outside our door, and I was hoping to guarantee some quiet. I admit it :)

We went to Apulit Island in El Nido. In order to do this, you fly via AirSwift to the Lio Airport in El Nido. Once you arrive there, your bags are put on a mini-bus or a van, and you're driven an hour through the countryside to a port. From the port, you take an hour long boat ride to Apulit Island. The resort takes care of absolutely everything from the time you get to the gate at the airport until you arrive at the resort, and I wasn't a bit stressed about the logistics.

This is a private island owned by Ayala Resorts, and I'm here to tell you that it did not disappoint. It is natural, gorgeous and utterly serene. The water was crystal clear, and we got the cutest little water cottage with a small balcony on the back. We could look into the water and see tropical fish swimming by anytime we wanted.

The resort is all inclusive (all meals and activities included), and the meals were really good. There was a lot of variety, and it catered to Westerners. The salad greens were the best I've seen since we've been here, and while I enjoyed getting to have pasta dishes and beef, they also made a delicious banana q. :)

We could take out kayaks and paddle boards, and we went snorkeling off the house reef and also at Apulit's private beach. David went rappelling one morning off the cliff, and I went out and snapped some pics before we had a leisurely breakfast overlooking the water. Another evening, we kayaked out to watch the sunset. The wildlife was also amazing. I saw multiple huge monitor lizards!

How gorgeous is the view from all these windows? I loved sitting and reading here.

I'm so glad that we were able to see this slice of paradise for ourselves. It was really, really special, and I see why Filipinos take pride in Palawan and want to show it off to the world.

G'day, mate, part 3...

We stayed in AirBnb's in Perth. Our first Air BnB was in South Perth near downtown, and that was a great location for exploring, even if the place was a bit small. We had a 2 bedroom unit on the ground floor of an apartment building in a residential neighborhood, and it cost us about $95 a night. Not bad for a family of 5! There was a yard right outside of the sliding glass doors, and the boys ran around out there to get out some energy.

Our second AirBnb was a little farther out, but it was larger and nicer. It was also in a cute neighborhood of neat bungalows that looked like they dropped right out of the 1940's. The boys could walk to a little playground less than half a block down the street while I made dinner. We even had enough room there to invite the family over for dinner. They brought meat pies from a bakery, and Jennifer made a pavlova for us to try for dessert.

When I found out about the Perth Mint, I knew that Evan would love it. He's my coin collector. Western Australia had its own gold rush in the late 1800's. The Perth Mint converted the gold that the miners were finding into gold bars, and it still refines gold today. Western Australia is home to a lot of mines.

The Perth Mint has the largest gold coin in the world. It weighs a literal ton. They decided to cast one that would beat Canada's record hollow, and they did. ;)

Evan and Ben posing with huge gold nugget replicas.

You could weigh yourself and find out how much you'd be worth that day if you were made of gold. 

More playgrounds. A lot of them had flying foxes (long ziplines). Evan especially liked those.

I enjoyed watching this guy mow the grass. Make note of the hat he's wearing. No baseball cap for him. :)

The people in Australia seemed to take a lot of pride in taking care of their homes. I loved walking the neighborhood in the evenings with the boys and looking at the neat yards and picket fences and smelling the eucalyptus that seems to be everywhere. I'd love to go back one day. Australia was really good to us.

G'day mate, part 2...

Probably my favorite experience in Perth was Caversham Wildlife Park. It's full of native animals that we don't usually get to see or touch in North America. We got to pet koalas, see gigantic bats called flying foxes, and spent time in a kangaroo petting zoo. We could feed the kangaroos and wallabys and hang around with them for as long as we wanted! Several of the animals were ones that I'd never even heard of before that day. There are so many kinds of interesting marsupials in Australia, not just kangaroos. All the boys agreed that the little bilbys were their favorites.

I loved this baby wallaby. He was absolutely adorable. I wished I'd spent more time feeding him, but I had to fight my boys for the honor.

We met David's Aunt Sue and Cousin Jennifer (with husband Michael and Baby Sadie) at a great park. The boys ran around and played on the multiple playgrounds, and we strolled the trail around the lake with Baby Sadie. I'd met Aunt Sue a couple of times before, but I'd never met Jennifer before. It was so good to spend time with them all, and Jennifer gave us a ton of great tips about playgrounds and parks to visit.

 Australia reminded me a bit of North Carolina when it comes to beaches. It is just so easy to get to the beach in both places. You drive down a quiet road to a nice parking lot, you park, and then you walk onto the clean and lovely public beach. (There are some totally gorgeous beaches in the Philippines, far lovelier than anything I've ever seen in North America, but they are definitely not easy or free to visit.) Because of that, it was fun to just drive to the beach and run around for a bit. It was a little chilly because April is early fall in Western Australia, but that didn't stop us from getting a little wet.

G'day, mate...

We decided to go to Australia for Seth's spring break, and being us, we wanted to save as much money as possible on plane tickets. ;) There's a budget airline (Scoot) that goes through Singapore that was a great deal, and I assumed that we'd be able to spend our 12 hour layover in the sleeping lounges.

I am here to tell you that those sleeping lounges are all full if you arrive at midnight. Look up to view our deluxe sleeping accommodations. :) That floor was harder than it looks, but at least we got a back corner where a lot of people don't go. Why didn't we just stretch out on chairs at empty gates, you may ask? Well, in Singapore, you only go through security at your gate before your flight, so all the gates and all those chairs are locked up. Because of this and the full sleeping lounges, the airport that I thought would be the best in the world for an overnight layover turned out to be the worst. (This is an FYI for those of you that might try to replicate this trip.)

But, hey, when you wake up, you can play free video games, watch a free movie, check out the sunflower and orchid gardens, and play in the indoor playground. Silver linings...

Our Australian destination? Perth in Western Australia! We picked Perth for a few reasons. One important reason was that it was pretty affordable. Accommodations and rental cars seemed pretty comparable to U.S. prices. It's not a major tourist destination, but it had all the things that we value right now... fresh air, a Western grocery selection, parks, playgrounds, nature, and interesting animals. Another reason was that it was in our time zone, so we wouldn't have to deal with any jet lag. The third reason was that David has an aunt and cousins in Perth, and it was about time that someone from his family visited them instead of the other way around. We were within striking distance, so we decided to go. :)

Our first day in Perth, we went to King's Park. It's the largest urban park in the world, rivaling Central Park in New York in size. There are botanical gardens filled with strange plants and trees that you won't see anywhere other than Australia. (Did you know that 80% of the plants in Australia are only found in Australia? How cool is that?)

We had hit the grocery store right after we got off the plane, and I'd brought a cooler with us from Manila. We had our baon (packed lunch) under the trees. Honey ham sandwiches with cheddar with mayo and mustard on good, whole wheat sandwich bread! Hummus! We can't get those things easily at grocery stores in Manila, so we were thrilled.

King's Park had multiple children's playgrounds, but we only spent time at Rio Tinto Nature Playground. It has 3 man made pools and streams for children to play in. We spent hours there. There are also climbing structures. We just kept finding new things to play with. I even ran into some Australian homeschooling moms and their kids, and it was so fun to talk to them about homeschooling in Australia. :)

Just life...

I ended up with a few minutes while the boys are finishing their swim lessons down by the pool, and I thought I'd pull up ye old blog. But it's kinda hard to know exactly what to say today. :) My days are mostly full of ordinary life. The second year here has been more full than the first. It's funny how that works. The first year of life in a new place, you've got a completely clean slate. You have too much time on your hands. 

But you meet people, sometimes when you're not feeling it at all and sometimes when you're desperate for contact outside your family and your four walls. Things start taking shape. You've got a playdate here and a class there. The sights from your van window, like the one above of a Jeepney and the "fellow Filipino" hotel, become normal. They don't make you nearly as curious as they did when you were fresh off the plane, though there are new things to figure out. (What are they selling from that cart? Should I get up the guts to try banana que from a street vendor?)

We finished up another "winter" season of soccer at Futbol Funatics. We've come a long way since Ben was 5 and refused to do anything but sit on the ball and complain that he was hot.

Our homeschool classes with local homeschoolers have just ended for the Filipino school year. It was their second year doing hip hop dancing, and I'm even more proud than I was the first time they gave a recital. Evan even had a few seconds of Justin Timberlake lip syncing in there that made me laugh.

Our pool is open again after months of being closed for renovations. I recently blew up an outrageously huge lobster float, and we're all excited about using it. We've got a lot of late afternoons and evenings in the water to look forward to when it gets really, really hot around here, and that time is coming after a delightful winter of temps in the 70's and low 80's.

Homeschool was feeling a bit stale, but social studies have gotten more interesting to all of us lately, and that's been a gift. I also realized that we'd been spending too much time praying for good days for those of us that had left the house and not enough time thanking God for our time of homeschooling. It was a subtle shift in my focus, and it's been really powerful for me. It is hard to be a homeschooler in a place where I feel very little approval and support for that choice, but we're homeschooling because we believe that that is what is best for these children at this time, and I'm going to wave my freak flag high in my prayers for us. :)

Ok, time for my oldest boy to step off his bus and time for me to spend precious minutes listening hard to him download his day while he stuffs his face with Piknik (shoestring potato fries and popular here). Paalam po. (See ya.)

Processing and Chinese New Year...

Seth slurping a new fave, Ramen Nagi.

Today was the Chinese New Year celebration at Seth’s school. Just to give you a little background, Seth’s school offers Mandarin as the only foreign language. This was pretty intimidating to me when we decided to enroll Seth, but we just crossed our fingers and shrugged our shoulders and started praying.

Lo and behold, Seth’s first term grades came back, and he was pulling in a solid B in Mandarin. (This was one of his best grades that term as British schools don’t seem to give participation trophies or smiley faces.) His attitude towards Chinese was pretty dismal, and I couldn’t blame him. Mandarin is only one of the world’s most difficult languages. BUT, we talked to him about his grade and told him that he seemed to have an aptitude for Mandarin. He could go far if he applied himself, we told him.

This kid turned his attitude right around. He became a dedicated Mandarin scholar. His Chinese teacher began to love him. You want to know who the only kid in the upper school was that signed up for extra Chinese enrichment for fun? Yep, my kid. This blue-eyed American boy speaks Mandarin to unsuspecting and delighted Chinese grandparents in elevators and Chinese kids at the passport photo office. He sings Chinese counting songs as he walks through the aisles at Filipino Costco, earning him smiles and turned heads from our Chinese neighbors. 

He works hard. So hard. And he’s doing so well for having studied Mandarin for less than 2 years.

I went to his school celebration today, and there were several kids from his year that were emceeing the program in English and Mandarin. Most of them were native bilingual speakers, but there was also a French girl in his grade.

And right there, I got annoyed. Seth works so hard. I can understand why the native Chinese speakers were chosen to emcee, but what about her? Her accent didn’t seem much better than Seth’s to me (though I know I’m biased). I felt the tiger mother rising in me, red as the Chinese New Year banner. I wanted more recognition for all his hard work.

The program ended, and the kids went back to class. I congratulated his French classmate’s mother on her role in the program. (Treat others the way you’d like to be treated today. Check.) And that’s when I got educated. I found out that this classmate had moved here from… Shanghai. She’d been taking Mandarin for 5 years and has had a tutor. She is trilingual in French, English, and Mandarin. Ah, glorious perspective.

It is dawning on me almost 2 years into this that there are things about our family that may be making it harder at times to navigate the waters of living as expats. Our family is not bi-cultural, bi-racial, or bi-lingual in an expat community where most people are at least one or all of these things. It didn’t occur to me before that this may make adaptation a little harder for us, no matter how much I wish it wasn’t so.

So I need to cut us all some slack. I need to cut us all some major slack.

I know what we are not. But I also know what we still are.

We are brave, dang it. Day in and day out, in big and small ways, even when we don’t feel like it, we’re still brave.

And when Seth feels like he doesn’t measure up at school because he doesn’t speak at least 2 languages and have other particular creds on his expat kid resume, I will say, “Baby, you are so brave. Look at what you’ve done. Look at what all of us are doing! Don’t compare if everyone else seems farther along in some areas. It’s not just you. There are probably a few other kids like you if you look around who are feeling the same challenges. We just need to find them.”

They say that a foreign accent is a sign of bravery. It really, really is. I will remember that when I hear those beautiful tones around me when we’re living again in the U.S. But going overseas when you have no toehold and experience outside of your country, and it would be easier to stay where you are? That's brave, too.

Sunday afternoon....

Back in Manila after a great Christmas in North Carolina. Battling homesickness and the mystery illness that has had me dealing with some dizziness and vision issues for many months now. Doctors in the U.S. haven't had real answers, and neither have doctors here. I am left confused, tired, fragile and wishing for clarity, and in the middle of that, we have had to decide whether to stay or whether to go. 

There are times when you really don't want to have to decide, but we had to. So we decided to do what we felt like God wanted us to do on brighter days. Sometimes you're obedient when you're really not feeling like being obedient.

We're staying in Manila until July 2020. May we be blessed and be a blessing where He has planted us for now.

We walked the American Cemetery this breezy winter afternoon, and as we exited, the guard said, "You are always welcome here." I wanted to cry. This cemetery is America, and it is not. We have one foot in each world, and we are welcome in both. But that only makes is harder sometimes to figure out where we should be. 

So much to appreciate in both places. He is in charge, and we are excited to see what He'll do in our remaining time here.

Becoming seasoned travelers....

Ben sleeping on the airport floor in Bali before our midnight flight home. He was carried on the plane and hardly woke up. He later declared the flight to have been the "shortest flight" ever. He also said that it lasted about "one minute." We wish, bud. We wish. :)

Before moving overseas, we were not a family that did a lot of flying. It's just a lot cheaper and easier to travel via car in the U.S. Living here, there is so much to see and do in the region, but it requires relatively short and cheap flights. We're taking advantage of those, and we're doing some bucket list trips, plus going back and forth to the U.S. to see family.

All that to say, we're getting a lot of time in airports. A lot of time. 

Here are a few tips I've learned along the way for successful travel:

1. Buy a cushion for your posterior end if you're going to be on a flight lasting longer than 8 hours. I had a bruised tailbone on our move here from the U.S., and I was not ashamed to be blowing up a cheap, inflatable donut pillow about a third of the way into the flight. At this point, I've upgraded to this beauty, and I don't ever regret it. It'll barely fit into my backpack, but I'm ok with that. If necessary, you can just take half of it, and that would be fine.

2. Always sit facing your gate, just in case they don't call your flight. We learned this the hard way when we missed our connecting flight from Istanbul to Malta in the early morning. They didn't call the flight, and it was a small gate, so we'd taken seats at the next gate over. The only ones left weren't facing our gate, but we figured we'd hear them call the flight. Nope. The flight left without us, and about 8 hours later and several hundred dollars poorer, we finally left Istanbul for Malta. We weren't the only hapless travelers in this situation, and no, we got no sympathy from the staff in Istanbul. So, don't assume they'll call your flight, especially if it's a small one leaving early. They might not. You'd better be watching.

3. Check to be sure that you've bought plane tickets for every member of your family more than 4 hours before your flight is scheduled to leave. Perhaps you bought 5 plane tickets for 5 members of your family. Perhaps you (or perhaps your husband) bought two tickets for one of your children and no tickets for one child. More than 5 hours before your flight would be a good time to check and make sure that you have a ticket for each family member. That would be far better than frantically making phone calls on the way to the airport to see if there is any way that someone will have mercy on you and switch the tickets around. Yes, we received mercy from the wonderful staff of China Airlines in Manila and made our flight, and we are beyond grateful, but let's just say that Christmas in New Zealand might not have happened the way that we'd planned. 

4. If you lose your blonde haired child somewhere in an airport in Taiwan, it'll probably be ok. He'll stick out enough from the crowd that kind people who don't speak English will notice your panic and point you in the right direction. 

5. There is no parenting award for not letting your children play video games for 24 hours. Just let them. Our kids now look forward to the long flight to the U.S. They know that they can use the power banks until there is no more juice left on their devices, and then they can switch to unlimited movies. This is like heaven for them and for us, honestly. Just do it. It's really ok. You just need to get there.

6. Do not wake your exhausted child for a crummy airplane meal. He was only going to eat the cookie or the roll anyway if you were lucky. And you won't be lucky if you wake him up. He'll just confusedly cry and cry and refuse to eat and keep trying to go back to sleep. You're going to have to try and wake him up to get him off the plane anyway, and that's going to be hellish enough. If he can sort of walk himself to baggage claim and fall asleep on top of the luggage cart, you've won! :)

7. If you've got over the head earphones for your younger kids, bring them on the plane. Most airlines don't offer anything but earbuds, and those are hard for our kids to use for movies. They end up holding them into their ears. 

8. Trust that it's going to be ok, and you're going to get there, and it will be fun. Flights leave way too late at night or way too early in the morning. Flights get delayed or missed altogether. You're going to get through it, and you're going to have some great stories to tell. You'll be so proud of the great travelers that your kids have become through all that practice, and you'll tell them so. Vive family memories!