Day-to-Day Living

As we approach the 6-month anniversary of moving to this country, we realized that most of the posts have been about our "bigger" highlights...

• Moving here and settling-in
• Finding a pre-school for Verity
  
• Buying a car
• Family birthdays and anniversaries
• Our 1st overseas Christmas
• My parents' visit
• Surviving our first medical "scare" with Annalise

But in-between posts, we are daily celebrating "little victories." During our first week in-country, I would wake up with a paralyzing fear that I might never learn to survive here. But I also knew that in time, with God's help, we would learn to not just survive here but to actually thrive.

Here is a peek at some of my "personal victories" which, to some of you, may not seem so noteworthy but to me have been somewhat significant.

A common question for me is, "Where can I find [blank]?" We have relied heavily on our friends who have moved here before us to point us in the right direction. (ex. Where do we pay our electricity bill? At the post office.) Many of my "little victories" are being able to do simple, everyday things without help. For example, clean drinking water was a huge need & someone helped us set up an in-home water delivery. The only times we use the tap water here is to wash our dishes & for cooking. But for everything else (drinking, washing produce, brushing teeth), we rely on this water delivery. Knowing how to order water, among other things, helps me feel like I am indeed figuring out how to survive here.

Without some of the appliances I enjoyed back in the States (like a dishwasher or a clothes dryer), it took me awhile to get into the groove of keeping up normal household chores. Washing dishes after a meal or keeping the laundry basket tamed were overwhelming at first but another "little victory" for me was finally getting used to managing a family of five without some of my favorite conveniences. Here I am hanging out a load of laundry to dry on our drying rack. I'm not brave enough to hang them on the lines outside our 3rd-story window like most locals - what if they fell off?

Aaagh ... food. How can I provide nutritious meals for my family without some of my favorite ingredients? With the help of my friends, I have found a few grocery stores (spread out across the city) where I can find (most) of the ingredients I need. At least once a week, I hit one of the bigger stores in town (like the one in the above photo, where Verity LOVES pushing around the kid's cart ... just like she used to at Henry's Market in California). Then day to day, David is really good about calling me on his way home to see if I need any basic things (bread, eggs, milk, fruit) from the smaller shops near our apartment or from people just selling them on the street. (And of course, we are so grateful for friends and family who have mailed us those special ingredients that are not available here!) Also, when we first arrived, I was petrified about lighting our oven. I have to lift a hatch in the bottom of the oven and manually light it with a match or lighter. After 6 months, I have finally found a comfortable routine of grocery shopping, cooking (mostly from scratch) and yes, lighting our oven without fear.

And a VERY recent victory. This is actually not just a "little victory" but a "very big" victory. You have to visit us and see these roads firsthand to understand why. On Friday, I finally drove Verity to and from preschool! David has been driving since December when we bought the car but it took us awhile to get the document I needed to drive our car here. Watching the "there-are-no-rules" style of driving here, I wondered if I could ever drive safely in this city. Just thinking about it made my palms sweaty. In fact, my dad noticed the chaotic driving the first morning he woke up in our apartment. He was watching the street below from our window and finally looked back, laughing, "There are no lanes here! Nobody drives in the lanes!" Here is the view of the street outside the girls' bedroom window. I am excited to say that I am officially driving the streets of this country by myself!

Thanks for celebrating both our big and little victories with us! Your prayers & friendship have definitely been a huge encouragement as we learn to survive here. We are slowly but surely on our way to thriving here.

[P.S. Some of you have continued to e-mail & ask about Annalise's progress and as far as we can tell, she's back at 100%. We have video footage of her dancing to a TOBYMAC CD tonight after dinner to prove our point! Thanks for asking!]