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.)
