If You Have a Shopping List…

becky    Uncategorized    

Those of you with kids might be familiar with Laura Numeroff’s books, many of which say “If you give a (fill in blank with several animals) a (something)…” Samuel ended up with “If You Give a Pig a Pancake” from Chick-fil-a at one point and we read it plenty before we moved (it didn’t make the cut when choosing books to ship).  As we’ve figured out how/where to shop here we’ve started our own sort of “If you…” about shopping, so here it goes:

If you have a shopping list, then you have to figure out the best place to go to get as many items as possible in one trip.
If it’s more than groceries, it’s likely that the mall (which has a grocery store in the basement) is the best place.
If you’re going to the mall, you’ll have to park in the car park.
If you park in the car park, then you’ll have to make sure you remember where you parked, how you left that area of the car park, and to take your ticket with you.
If you finally get inside the mall, you have to look at your list and figure out which stores you need to visit.
If it’s electronics, you’re likely going to level 3, if it’s home goods, you’re likely going to level 4.
If you parked in the basement car park (which is much better than the very confusing multi-story car park), you’ll have to take the elevator to one of those floors.
If you’re going to level 4 you have to get off in the really fancy furniture store (some of the furniture actually has Swarovski crystals on it) and tell the kids not to touch a single thing because anything in the store is worth more than everything you own and then some.
Then  you start trying to find the things on your list, going to multiple stores and sometimes having to change levels.
If you have to change levels you have to find one of the seemingly hidden lifts (elevators) to get to the right level.
And then you keep shopping.
If you have groceries to buy, that’s usually best to do at the end.
If the grocery store doesn’t have the brand you’ve figured out you like you’ll have to try a new one.
If they just don’t have the item, you know for sure that you’ll have to go to a different store later.
And once everything you can find has been purchased (sometimes with trips back to the car in between to drop stuff off) you’ll have to pay your parking fee at the autopay station.
If you have to pay at the autopay station you need exact change including bills.
At the autopay station, which is constantly saying “please insert payment, please insert payment” or something along those lines, you put bills in hoping that they’ll be accepted.
If you get your fee paid you have 15 minutes to leave the car park and you hope you can remember how to get back to your car and get the kids in within the time limit.
If you finally leave the car park you drive back to your house and look over what’s left on your list to decide where the best place is to go next.
And if you have to go shopping it’s likely you’ll have to park in a car park…

Shopping is quite the adventure and I seriously had a day when I had about 12 items on my list and ended up having to go to three different grocery stores to get everything on it and I think it took me three days.  Oh, I miss Kroger!!  We have figured out a few things that we like (and finally have 2 brands of milk that we like the taste of and are actually 100% fresh milk from the case-most of the milk here is boxed and on the shelf with a use by date somewhere months into the future) and where to buy those things. A lot of things we’re still trying and deciding what we like, what we don’t, and what we should try next.  Many items we’re used to buying just don’t exist here or are pricey.  And there are shopping options-like fruit stands and wet markets-that we still haven’t tried and will soon.  Most stores don’t have websites, so even trying to research say, where to buy a couch, is difficult because information is not as easily available and large, spacious stores with lots of options are rare.  It’s all part of the never ending ways life is different and the countless adjustments we have to make to live here.  I often wonder if I’ll ever figure it all out and decide I likely won’t, but at least I know that I go to one store to find the bread we like and another to buy cheap bananas and to have them weighed and priced in the produce section.

Counting Blessings

becky    Uncategorized    

Last year I wrote a post about the things I was thankful for-one thing for every day of the month of November from the first to Thanksgiving Day.  This year I’ll do a list-one thing for every day of the entire month of November.  And here it is in no particular order…

1. Our gracious, loving God and the amazing, saving grace He extended to me
2. Toffer-I could go on and on about the wonderful man God gave me as a husband
3. My dear children-Samuel, Benjamin, and Tadpole
4. Our families
5. Our Friends, especially the ones who have made an effort to reach out to us since we moved
6. Training-I will always be thankful and grateful for the 3 weeks we spent at MTI and the people we spent that time with.
7. The organization we serve with
8. Our team here in Southeast Asia-they’ve been invaluable during the past month and a half
9. Our house-there’s space for the kids to play including a large patio outside and we even have an oven that fits the 9 x 13 dishes we brought from the US
10. Our car-it’s big enough for our family (most vehicles here aren’t) and is even a manual!
11. Internet-I know opinions differ on the internet and ways of connecting on it, but in our situation we’re very thankful for it because it’s our only connection to people in the US right now
12. A complication-free pregnancy (so far, which is longer than we got with either of the boys)
13. A natural-birthing advocate doctor who will let me have the birth I want
14. My boys wanting to listen to or sing “One True God” by NewSong when we live in a country where most people worship false gods
15. My boys like to pray and Samuel sometimes asks to pray for very sweet or deep things, not just thanking God for toys (though that has come up a couple times (:  )
16. Our faithful prayer warriors
17. Our faithful supporters
18. The import grocery store that carries some tasty treats from home and makes good bread that’s cheap
19. Living in a gated community with guards that is less expensive with a larger home than other places we looked at and it’s a small, safe community
20. Thunderstorms-Samuel is not fond of them, but they bring a much needed cool to the air and some of the lightning is incredible
21. Lots of good good-byes in the US before coming here
22. Our week of family time the first week of October-we NEEDED that time to be together and to shift gears after so many good-byes and leaving everything we’ve ever known
23. Humility and learning more and more how little I deserve God’s love and how much I really need Him
24. “Verses”-memorizing with Samuel and new things God has shown me
25. That friends bought some of our things before we moved and will make their own memories with them
26. All the places in Murfreesboro we loved and miss
27. Our home church in Murfreesboro
28. Seeing all of our siblings within the last few months before we moved and most within the last few weeks and getting to see so much family this year
29. That we invested in our lives in the US up until the moment we got on the plane
30. Being in God’s timing and not our own
Bonus:
31. Good last holidays in the US (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter) over the past year

Grief and Loss

becky    Uncategorized    

As we continue through transition (which will take 12-18 months) we’ll probably reference a lot of things we learned in training.  We will be forever grateful for the things we learned at training and the friends we made there. No one understands what you’re going through except someone who has been there before or is doing it themselves.

One of the sessions during training was grief and loss.  We usually think of those topics in relation to losing a person, but there are a lot of other losses we experience in life and grief comes with them.  We experienced a great amount of loss with choosing to go down the path we are on.  I say choose because we could have chosen to say no and not do what we’re doing, but I also want to be clear that not all choices are easy and doing what’s right and following God where He leads does not mean there is not an incredible amount of pain and difficulty in the following.

We left MANY people who we love-our family, dear friends, supporters, church family, etc.  Yes, we can email/call/Skype/etc, but nothing is the same as sitting in a room with someone and being able to physically interact.  One of our very dear friends had a baby less than 24 hours ago and I wish I could be there to give her a hug and hold that sweet baby girl and congratulate the dad and baby girl’s big sisters.  That pain, that loss of interaction, will be much worse when it comes to my sister-in-law having a baby within a week of Tadpole being born and the knowledge that our kids could be over 2 before they ever meet.

And then we go to the loss of the familiar-everything here is different.  Even Sprite tastes different here.  The only thing we’ve found so far that tastes just about the same is Baskin-Robbins ice cream.  And the only thing I’ve found that seems to smell just the same is the Gap store we found last weekend.  Driving here, as we’ve said, is very different. The housing is different. The foliage and critters are different. Even the road kill is different-I never encountered a large lizard as road kill in the US.

And the loss of knowledge of surroundings.  We’ve been quite adventurous, but still don’t know what areas to avoid.  We know that the area we live in is generally safe along with the areas either direction of us, but beyond that we have to just feel things out and watch ourselves.  It’s probably why I find it somewhat unnerving to be watched everywhere I go because I’m the pregnant white girl with two little boys.  I knew it would happen, but we’ve been a few places where we are the ONLY white people in the building (including a couple large shopping centers) and it’s a strange feeling. And that leads into a loss of privacy to an extent, though we are thankful  that we don’t think neighbors will be particularly nosy and invade our privacy like we know happens in some places, but we’ll see. I could be wrong on that count.

We definitely have experienced times of grief over everything we left and have lost.  There’s much, much more than I can recount here.  I’m thankful we knew to anticipate this and to know that it’s healthy to grieve those loses, some that we will likely always grieve.

Right now we’re all missing home, which is normal and expected.  If we didn’t miss home it would be a pretty sad statement on how we felt about where we lived and the people we left.  We’d rather miss people, things, and food and have invested in our lives in the US than to not have invested there and not really miss anything at all.

I don’t say all of this to garner lots of sympathy, though prayers and encouragement are much appreciated.  I’m just trying to give you another glimpse into our lives and what we’re experiencing as we walk this path we’re on.