525,600 Minutes (feel free to sing along)

525,600 minutes
525,000 moments so dear
525,600 minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

In new friends, in vocab, in students, in communication?

In hair length, in miles, in laughter, or rice?

 

In 525,600 minutes? How do you measure a year in the life?

How about love? How about looooooooooooooooove? Measure in love.

In phrases she learned?

Thankfully I can say “Durian is disgusting and smells terrible” in two languages now! 

Or the time the sky cried?

“Cried” rhymes with “Tried” but what I meant was “Rained” (#poetry)

In that time she returned?

Or the meals that she tried?

525,600 minutes
525,000 moments so dear
525,600 minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

---

We have now officially ended our monthly tally of my first year in South East Asia. I will no longer count up the months when I tell people how long I’ve been here, I’ll just tell them 1 year until it’s acceptable to round up to 2. Everyone agrees that when a baby hits 12 months it’s really time to let go of the “monthly check-in” thing (and you’re probably too busy to keep track anyway).

 

And so the tally becomes a countdown, and I’m so grateful for the time that I had and the time I have left.

If there has been any good that I have done, any contribution to put forward, I can honestly say that the Father is the one who gave it. To Him be the glory and the honor forever and ever. Soli Deo Gloria.

And now please enjoy a slideshow of all my month pictures from this year, where my spelling mistakes are both hilarious and painfully obvious! Cheers to another year together!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

525,600 Minutes. (Feel free to sing along)

The Way Back

First: Here are the highlights of the past month (and lowlights…)

Highlight 1: I have been here 11 months! I am now entering familiar territory, and will soon have experienced what it’s like to live an entire year here. Cheers to the next year and to doing the same things over again (and to finding even more new things to do)

Highlight 2: Celebrating our South East Asian countries! We celebrated all ten of the SEA countries by dressing up in costume, cooking food (the teachers cooked…no one wants me to cook asian food in an asian country, let’s be real), and we had kids and parents at the school to help celebrate. I proudly represented Thailand! It was a really fun day!

Highlight 3: Visiting home. I had a chance to go home to America for two weeks to celebrate my brother getting married. I dressed my nieces up, helped my Mom and Dad plan the rehearsal dinner, and enjoyed all the sweet things that America can offer. (I ❤ PSL)

Lowlight 4: The flood. I don’t watch the news or check the weather while I’m over here. If it’s raining I wear a rain jacket. If it’s sunny I bring a rain jacket with me because you never know when it’s going to rain. So when it started raining…and raining…and raining some more, I was surprised, maybe a little alarmed, but I hadn’t heard to feel any different. Until it didn’t stop raining…for four days.

And when I say raining, I’m not talking about mist and sprinkles, I mean it poured for days and days and days. So much so that there were rumors of dams breaking, rivers overflowing, and many many houses being completely flooded to the roofs.

The water has just now begun to recede, and cleanup has begun. There are still streets where they have to use boats to get from house to house, and many villages still unlivable with their people displaced. It’s a lowlight-but an important one. It marks a big historical moment for our city, and one that will have consequences in the year to come for sure.

---

---

---

To Not Forget: A Haiku

remember yourself

not alone, somehow just one

daughter among sons.