A List or Two

10 Things that Make Me Happy:

1. Christmas shopping for Lane is D-O-N-E!
2. Not only are we done with her Christmas shopping, but we also got her Baby's First Christmas ornament picked out (oh, so stressful).


Don't even tell me this wasn't worth 100 minutes of my time.

3. I made a chocolate cake. It's cooling in the kitchen. Tomorrow I'm going to practice decorating it as if it were Lane's birthday cake.
4. Lane's yeast infection is finally gone which means we have been back to using cloth diapers for a week now!
5. The sun came out today.
6. My husband empties the trash every. single. night. And never asks me to do it.
7. Milk went on sale for 1 lira per liter. I bought 24 liters. We should be good on milk for a couple of months.
8. Lane has learned how to clap and wave "bye-bye." She is SO stinkin' cute.
9. Shannon bought me purple daisies today when I sent him to buy bread (he bought bread too, don't worry).


Pretty, huh?

10. Our babysitter fixed my 5-lira purse today (some of the decorative fabric had started to unravel) while waiting on Lane to wake up from her nap.

10 Things that Frustrate Me:

1. Carrefour went up on their price for chicken breasts, which means I practically wasted my time by walking there to buy meat.
2. Our "toilet room" has a funky smell emanating from it. It's either because it's a) the building's "potty shaft" and other peoples' stink is coming into our apartment, or b) the cockroaches are conspiring for their territory back.
3. Our internet works sometimes. And sometimes it doesn't.
4. Our phone works sometimes. And sometimes it doesn't.
5. We were advised last week to be prepared for our heating bill to be around $200 per month once it gets cold. We have no control over this, as each apartment in our building splits the cost evenly, the rates are astronomical, and we can't turn our radiators off.


This is the culprit! The good news? We can hang some of our laundry on it to dry!

6. Now that summer is over some things are getting really expensive: for example tomatoes, at about $3 a pound. Other things should not be expensive (like broccoli), but people at the bazaar try to rip me off because I'm a foreigner.
7. Amazon.com really needs a better way to narrow your searches.
8. As a woman, I'm not really supposed to be out alone after dark. With winter coming, this means that my "curfew" is soon going to be about 6:00 pm.
9. Ground beef is 22 lira a kilo here. That's $15.71 a kilo, or $7.14 a pound. We will be eating spaghetti exactly once this month.


Yikes!

10. Our dishwasher has been having problems. The dial gets stuck more often than not, which means that I have to periodically nudge it along. This means I have to pay attention to what time I started the dishwasher and check on it every 30 minutes.

Culture shock is starting to hit. The days are starting to get shorter. It's starting to rain a lot. And I'm starting to miss home.

As another friend of mine put it, I need to remind myself of only one thing: this is the best possible life for me. God has planned my life from before there was time. He knew I'd be here. He is the God who sees. He sees me. And he knows my heart and how I feel. He has not forgotten me.

He sees me.