Thankful

It is so good to be home and connecting with people. I love watching Gemma play so well with her cousin Ty, chatting with my sister, shopping with Baba, and watching Guinness smile at everyone. We've been very busy, trying to fit in as much as possible.

Lots of cultural things that are different between here and Taiwan.
1) I feel like I'm always invading people's privacy because I can understand their conversations. And it worries me that people may be listening to my conversations.
2) Everything is far apart here. We spend a lot of time in the car driving.
3) People drive WAY to fast here. I've rethunk my position on crazy Taiwan driving; it all seems so logical now and driving here seems so dangerous. Chris and I are pretty careful because we want ot avoid tickets and of course wrecking my dad's car he so graciously bought and lent to us. And when we are going the limit there is ALWAYS someone up our butt. Yikes.
4)I went to the grocery store yesterday, that was super overwhelming. One example is in Taiwan at our local grocery store we can buy one brand of granola bars, and two flavours: pecan crunch and peanut butter. Yesterday at Sobey's there was a 15 foot shelf stacked top to bottom with granola bars. Soft, hard, chewy, chocolate... I didn't know so many flavours existed! Same with yogurt: a 20 foot shelf of yogurts. I finally just picked the one on sale and went on. It made me realize how lucky we are and blessed to have so much. I mean, here I am picking out 1 of a 100 different yogurts and there are people in my city who won't eat anything today. I couldn't believe that with all that food there are starving people close by. I will be more diligent about supporting the local food bank and church food drives after this.

We are so rich! I am thankful for my healthy children. I am thankful for our awesome parents who are able to support us when we are home for the summer with lodging and food and cars. I am thankful for friends who don't forget about us, and a church that we can still call home.

I better go turn Oprah off now, before I go completely mush!