Somebody Eat Toad*

The Great Illness continues unabated. I've taken to looking something like one of those poor, starving children you see in the Sally Struthers commercials since my legs and arms are skinny, and my fat, distended belly sticks out making all work clothing choices relatively uncomfortable. In the last few days I've manages to keep down some rice and crackers. I even managed some soup for lunch the other day. One of my awesome neighbors baked me a fucking loaf of bread** (Challah, even!), and I managed a bit of that, as well. I've been to see Med, and I've got another appointment with them on Monday so they can finish the tests that will tell us what gross, nasty bacteria has taken over my body.

In other exciting news, Husband and I had our first driving experience in Manila. Another colleague from the PD section was kind enough to lend us her car while she and her family are on home leave for the month of June, but I had to drive it home from the Embassy. Well, okay, Husband had to drive it home from the Embassy. It was really stressful because it also happened to be the first day of the rainy season here (celebrated with a flash flood rain during which the fire alarm sounded and the Embassy had to evacuate - pure awesomeness), so the traffic was bad even by Manila standards (meaning it took us about an hour to go around 7km - it might have taken a bit less, but I got confused while navigating and we took a wrong turn, which did not endear me to Husband by any means). We did eventually make it to our destination and Husband has found that he actually enjoys driving in the wild west-style Manila traffic where one can merge seamlessly in and out of lanes without regard to other vehicles and feel free to honk your horn as much as you please. I, on the other hand, am more convinced than ever that I need to hire a driver asap!

By chance the current owners of the house we'll eventually being moving into in Makati invited us over that same evening so that we could take a look at the place before all of the furniture was removed. It also gave us a chance to meet and interview their current housekeeper and gardener in case we were interested in taking them on ourselves*** It was incredibly kind of them to allow us that opportunity. The house is really nice (the garden is small, but there is a pool and the grounds are really lush and lovely) with plenty of space for all of the kids, a large kitchen with tons of counter and storage space, and a maids quarters for our yaya (nanny) who will live-in with us. Seeing the house made me really excited about the prospect of actually settling down in our permanent quarters. The street is on the outskirts of the village, so it gets much less traffic than some of the other areas, meaning we might actually be able to let the kids outside to ride their bikes once and a while. We haven't seen many of our belongings for over a year now (since we joined the Foreign Service), and I can't wait to get all our stuff and set up a real house again instead of feeling like I'm always living out of a suitcase.


Also, as a total and complete aside, I find the most amusing part of the new-ish blogger layout is checking what search terms people use to stumble across my blog. It's slightly disturbing to think that not only are people searching for things like: pupucorner vêtement, pu's fuck, and awesome playground equipment for your asshole, but that these search terms are actually contained somewhere in the vestiges of this crazy blog. Your welcome, world.

*Somewhere down the line I will do another post on Shit You Hear at Pu's Corner
**She is so fabulous, and I am inclined to kidnap and keep her in my closet when we move away to our new digs, but I have a feeling her husband and kids would be a bit lost without her, so I suppose I'll have to find someone else to make me baked goods :(
***We are. So now I've gone from no help to suddenly hiring three helpers (yaya, housekeeper, gardener) with a driver soon to be added. So weird!