We celebrated our One Year mark
this past week by staying in a hotel.
Often our western friends will leave town for a vacation to refresh and
revitalize themselves. With two small
boys, traveling far is not our idea of relaxation. Therefore, we stayed in a hotel in town.
We thoroughly enjoyed the AC, the pool, cable TV (news, cartoons, and
movie channels all in English!), a large bathtub, and I, Erin, did not have to
cook! It was a wonderfully relaxing week.
Probably the most relaxing aspect was not having ANYTHING
scheduled. We did not have to be
anywhere, or do anything; we simply enjoyed our time together as a family. It was a real blessing to take some time off
and relax.
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| cartoon watching while cuddling under blankets |
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| wrapped up in the AC |
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| partial view of our city from the hotel |
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| playing at the pool |
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| enjoying the bath: even after swimming at the pool |
We returned home on Saturday and I
thought for sure the hardest part of returning home would be the heat as we do not
have AC at home.
I was surprised by
other aspects of real life that hit me.
First of all, it was nice to return to a place that was
comfortable.
Our house really feels like ‘our’ home.
There is familiarity and comfort.
The boys can play without my constant
watching, there are toys here, and we know the cleanliness of our bathrooms (a
small struggle of mine when visiting other people’s homes).
As the day progressed, real life became more and more apparent. First, as Caedmon was playing, he noticed a large
pile of dirt under a couch.
There are
super-ants here that some how dig up or dig out our grout and they left a very large pile under the couch.
Next, some neighbors where burning garbage on their roof top.
The smoke came right
down into our back yard and into our house.
This was compounded by the fact our two windows looking out into the
back yard only have screens on them.
Next the city water stopped flowing for awhile and because we still do
not have a tank, we were without water at bath time.
Thankfully we had a large bucket already full of
water in the bathroom.
Lastly it rained
and Whitman’s bed room roof has a significant leak.
There were already buckets strategically placed to catch the water, but
at bath time I realized one of the buckets was the boys’ “bathtub.”
This tub is too large to fit through the
bathroom door level and full of water.
So I slowly poured the water into the bathroom, through the door.
Not to worry, our whole bathroom is tiled and
pretty much the same as a shower.
Unfortunately I poured a little too fast and ended up with a puddle on
Whitman’s bedroom floor.
All these are
aspects of our life here are not so uncommon for us, but all were little forgotten after a wonderfully relaxing
week away.
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| pile of dirt from ants |
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| Caedmon cleaning up and finding the source |
