A Weekend Update

My, how quickly the days are passing!  I think that’s a good sign, right??  Pretty normal week here but it seems worthy of a posting.

The Helper-  We finished our first week and are gelling already.  I am amazed at how fast I adjusted to having her around.  I honestly missed her presence on Wednesday when she was off for the Cory Aquino Holiday!  Managing a helper requires a lot of pre-planning so that you can use their time well and keep them busy.  Norma is especially efficient, so I’m really going to have to be on the ball.  Her cooking was what blew us away though – she is an exceptional cook of Asian and Western cuisine.  It’s impossible not to appreciate her talents – I am realizing how poor my output is compared to hers (food, ironing, sparkle of the floors, etc).  Maybe she’ll give me lessons before we head out!

The Rice Cooker– We got one!  This seems momentuous since I always thought this was a worthless appliance and now we seemingly can’t live without it.  I feel like we’re real Asian expats now that we own one!  What I expected to be an easy decision was actually quite complex – they do so much more than cook rice!  There was the 4 in 1, the 5 in 1 and the 6 in 1.  We started with the 4 in 1 and will work our way up…

The Cabbies– I am having the most fun, interesting experiences with Manila cabbies.  Nick always ends up in a fare fight or getting cheated but I, on the other hand, get lessons in Tagalog or lectures on the history of the Philippines or stories about their families.  It’s such an unexpected delight and since you’re in the cab for a minimum of 30 minutes usually no matter where you go, it’s nice to have it be time well spent.  Granted, there have been the ones that spit out the door or hack up a storm but my good experiences far outweigh the bad.

Our First Dinner Guests– We were at a party Friday night and I was just dying to have some people over for a late dinner when it was done.  We had a lasagna in the oven, so I knew we had something to serve.  We invited one couple from Nick’s training that are Minnesotans.  Then, just as we are leaving a woman named Kristie came up to me and said that so-and-so told her she had to meet me because we are soul-mates.  Well, this seemed like a good reason to invite she and her husband to dinner, so that’s exactly what I did.  Nick was fine with the fact that I’d added more people (although 6 was the supposed limit!) but he found it disturbing that I couldn’t remember their names or tell him which section they were in.  But we were soul mates, so what did it matter?  They made it over just fine and ended up being Minnesotans too!  How great is that???!  Thank goodness it’s easy to make new friends here.  I enjoy it so much that I could probably do it for my profession!

That’s it for now.  I’m working on keeping posts at a reasonable length!  Have a fantastic week…