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| Beautiful Trees |
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| Closest I've been to American soil in almost a year |
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| The famous exchange between General Washington and Kosciuszko. |
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| Hejjo sketching a cannon. |
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| View from the bathrooms, which of course we visited |
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| On the way down. |
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| Kacio nearly got hit by a bicycle several times. Like chickens with no heads they are. |
We filled this (almost) first year year here with so much work that we have barely had a chance to slow down. To take some time to ourselves. We do every now and then, but as a family we have been somewhat disconnected. When we came here, everything changed, not just our geographical location. Our schooling changed, our schedules, our support system, my abilities as an adult. Language, routes to the store, where to buy stuff. All of it had to be re-learned for me and as a family. The children have done wonderfully. Meeting new friends, speaking well, such good children I am blessed with. Martin already knew most of it before he came, routes to the stores, language, family, job. All of it, he knew before. So then there's me. And I feel pretty useless here really, not useful. Time will change that I'm sure. Just need more time to be able to contribute to the daily goings on other than ordering groceries online (which I still manage to screw up - a whole year later) and creating sub par meals from them before they go bad (at an astonishingly quicker rate than anything in the States) and trying to stay on top of the laundry pile which I have no motivation to conquer. Finding my way here has been hard for everyone and I am doing my best to pretend for the kids. Martin, well he gets the real stuff, too bad for him. ;)
I insisted that we send some time together as a family one day. With all our legal stuff taken care of, and the house plans in a constant state of moving forward but never quite finished, and working on the yard, we haven't done anything together as a family that didn't involve kids in the back seat and us in the front discussing the latest news about whatever it was we were working on and driving towards, telling them to shush so we could talk. No fun. So we took a day to ourselves. We parked on a side street and walked up to
Kopiec Kosciuszki. It was a really nice day.
Girl, I could have written that entire first paragraph. especially the groceries. And the uselessness. Such an eye-opener. I have to keep reminding myself that most people don't do things like this, and that there's no real precedent for learning to be a mom/wife/adult all over again, in a foreign country. At least not one readily accessible via google. Prayers and solidarity coming at you from down south.
ReplyDeleteI read your post the other day on you feeling useless and I couldn't believe it. I figured that my feeling was completely just me. And then you described exactly the same thing. How can we be having the same reaction and be in two different countries? It's a phenomenon for sure. And as of yet, I have no idea how to change it. Time I guess. Thanks for commenting, it makes me feel less isolated.
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