Whenever I talk to someone at home, their first question is alway "how do you like it there?" My reply is alway a chipper "I love it!" I then go on to describe scenes and moments that have brought me much joy here. Soon I say a quick goodbye and suddenly they are gone. I feel like though those times talking are precious, I have yet to accurately display the emotions and feelings of this place to a single person. It's a big task, but one that my heart is desperate to accomplish. I think one of the hardest parts about living in a foreign country is how your heart is split in two. I have two places I love, with two sets of people that I love. I want to share one with the other, and yet it is physically impossible to do so.Words and pictures are the only way I will be able to share this second world with so many of you, so that is my new goal. To not just "make" a blog post, but to write one from the heart, showing you around this new country of mine as if you were walking by my side.
Every time I rack my brain of new and creative ideas to share what it is like to live in a different country the best think I can think of to say is "basically it's not America, and I love that." Don't get me wrong, America -to an extent- is an amazing country and I am thankful for my childhood there; but living in a different country, especially one that is less well off, really expands your view of the world and how things function, how people live and what it really means to "have a lot". I realized quite quickly living here just how ridiculous some things in America are, and how many of the things I lived with on a daily basis, all of a sudden become luxuries and actually quite unneeded in my mind. (Hot water? Air Conditioning? Washing machine? Dryer? Stop signs?) And how many of the luxuries that I used to dream of having suddenly become obsolete and meaningless. (It's hard to dream of a house with a double oven anymore when 14 girls share a tiny one rack oven and things turn out perfectly fine.) Please don't take this the wrong way; I have no judgements to those of you who live daily with any of the things I just listed, I myself lived with them a mere two months ago. My desire is to simply share with you the things I have been experiencing and learning.
Being the sentimental person that I am, I constantly have moments where I think to myself "take a mental picture Bekah, this moment is priceless". Today I am excited to share some of these many, many "pictures" I have been storing on my mental hard drive. Like the moment where all 10 girls living in our house are sitting around our dining room table laughing and talking; or the moment where I am sitting on the back of a motorcycle for the first time (one of the easiest forms of transportation here is flagging down a motorcycle driver who will let you climb on the back and take you whereever you want). {Side note- riding on the back of a motorcycle is the bomb.} Or the moment when almost all the girls are gone and so the few left are blasting music while we sit in a circle studying. The moment when I watch a father pray with his daughter while she is in labor. The moment when I spend an afternoon fabric shopping with a friend having deep talks and going to McDonalds for a snack. The moment I find a baby's heartbeat on a Fetoscope by myself. The moment when it pours and a few of my dorm mates and I slide across the porch in the pouring rain. The moment I feel a little baby kick my hand in response to my palpation of the mother's stomach. The moment when we learn about how to judge Edema pitting by playing with playdough in class. The moment when we talk to our trycie driver and find out all about his life here in the Philippines, and I think "this is what expanding your mind really means".
These are my little thoughts, my little moments, and I am thankful I get to share them with you.
~Rebekah
