Last year, I wrote about being one year in to our expat adventure. Year two has been more of a challenge.
{Assortment of favorite photos from our year here}
I don't like calling things hard. I get that from Angel. Calling something hard sounds a little bit like complaining. And complaining and being grateful don't make good partners.
So let's say instead that our second year abroad was a year of growing. When my family asked what I'd learned in the year before turning 25--a yearly birthday tradition--I said that I felt the last year had been a big year for being brave. For talking to strangers, for being a leader and making my own decisions and being the one responsible for an event or program or project instead of the helpful volunteer who supports other people's projects and doesn't bear the weight of full responsibility. It's a different sort of role for me, one that has taken a lot more courage.
A lesson in courage is something I probably should have already learned before my early 20s, but so be it, I guess this was a good year to learn more about being brave.
I also learned that even in the busy and overwhelming times, I can't afford to give up creativity. For the first half of our year here, a packed schedule caused me to set aside much of my writing. I didn't have any craft supplies so I didn't craft. I didn't decorate our house, or sew, or do anything creative just for the pure fun of it. It just wasn't practical to spend time on extras. But as time went on, I realized I was starving, trying to live in such a practical manner. I'm not a practical person. In 2016, I've brought back writing, even exercising my fiction muscles and submitting articles to magazines and creating a song parody and writing devotionals regularly again. I asked for and received embroidery supplies and coloring books for Christmas. Writing and creating don't (well, rarely) make any money for me, and they are less 'useful' than doing housework, but they add needed color to life, and I know adding them back in was the right decision.
Angel has gotten back into running over the latter half of our year here, with pretty awesome race results. I've been so proud to be with him over the last year. Angel's never been the ambitious, workaholic type, but he's worked very hard at his job, taken on whatever hours and classes are necessary so that we can continue living here, and in his 'free time' he helps me and my parents with whatever active projects we have going on at the moment, whether it's taking kids to the pool, doing a fix-it project for somebody, giving someone a ride, going on errands, visiting an old folks' home, or bringing home dinner. In the meantime, he's had to figure out all the basics of life all over again--car maintenance, taxes, post office, paying bills, etc. in a different country and under a completely different system. Sometimes he even volunteers his nursing skills when he's been asked to. I love that I'm married to a man who isn't flustered by frequent and sudden changes in plans and routines.
This year has also been unusual for us in that we've hardly lived alone. For one reason or another, we've had guests--our own friends, friends of friends, friends of our parents' friends, etc. visiting and staying in our apartment for a total of more than 6 of the last 12 months. That alone could put a bit of a stress on any household's balance, but Angel's handled it all with his usual laidback grace.
We've had to find new traditions and new ways to have fun together in our new country. In China, we always cooked dinners together after we got home from work. Now, he works mornings and afternoons and comes home for lunch, so I have a homemade lunch waiting and ready when he arrives. Sometimes we have time to watch some youtube videos while eating lunch before he heads back to work, other times we don't. This year is the first time Angel's spent extended amounts of time with my family. They now know him as the guy who eats all their leftovers--he considers it his civic duty to make sure no leftovers go to waste, so oftentimes if he's in the mood for a snack, he says, "I'll just go and see if mom has any leftovers." He makes smoothies for my family once or twice a week. "Pizza Saturdays" at my parents' house has become something of a tradition, and once we even managed to pull off "Taco Tuesday" once as well, after a month or two worth of cancellations. Even for me, I haven't spent this much time with so many of my sisters--not since they were very young, anyways, and it's been fun getting to know them on a different level.
The family and friends we left behind are still very near to our thoughts. We know that the longer we are away, the more of life we've missed on sharing with them. It's been exciting this past year to watch cousins graduating from college and everybody growing up and growing a little bit older. We talk sometimes about all the people we're gonna see and all the fun things we're gonna do when we go back for a visit, but we're not close enough to that to start putting a trip into the schedule. Photos on Facebook never fail to bring us joy, along with emails and Skype calls. Being a long-distance family will almost certainly always be a part of our lives, but knowledge of that fact doesn't tend to allay the fierce sadness sometimes brought about by missing my favorite people in the whole world.
We're grateful for the beginnings of a community that have formed around us here. Pressing on to year 3! It is well with my soul!
