Impressions of home

Eight days ago, my daughter and I arrived in the States for an extended Christmas holiday. (Hubby will be following shortly for a less extended vacation.) Immediately we notice a few sublime differences, unabashedly pointed out by my 6 year old in that way that kids have.


1. Thee road is so smooth! There are no potholes, no speed bumps.

2. It's COLD! (Followed quickly by, "SNOW!" and much running around inside and out)

3. You can drink water from the tap??

4. While watching the Grinch on TV, with real actual commercial breaks..."Why do they keep saying, 'buy this' and 'you need that' all the time?"

5. At the store: Can we get cherries? (yes.) Can we get strawberries? (yes.) Can we get toaster waffles? (yes.) Can we get fruit bars? (yes.)..... et cetera.

6. (2 hours after sundown in a parking lot) It is not dark out here! It can't be night time!

I for one, am enjoying the sedate style of driving and am getting over my shock at being able to safely and easily go out at night to run errands and do Christmas shopping.

And the winner is.....!

Ah, December. I love this time of year. It's not the roasted er, eh, goat?, or the spindly pine-like tree delivered by bicycle, or even the shockingly out of place "Feliz Navidad" at the local shopping center. It's the time of year when we finally have an answer to the oft-asked and casually tossed-out question, "So where are you going next?"

How well do you
know your flags?

How is it that every other agency seems to know ages ahead of us? No matter. By this point in our move-everywhere life, it doesn't bother us to say that we don't know. Except, now we DO know. "The List" came out two days early (and in the middle of the night for us). Andrew is sitting in an office with a different email account at the moment and didn't see the announcement. He was surprised when he walked the halls of work Wednesday morning and people started congratulating him.

We had a little fun with it, a wee contest among Facebook friends.

So, 2nd runner-up goes to PK's vote of Philippines and Juli/Mom's Malaysia, on account of the fact that their guesses took the first forays out of the African continent.

1st runner-up goes to AmyJo, who guessed India.

And the winner is...Laura who landed on Nepal!

We are excited!