No joke: these serving sizes for food have been massive. The drinks are mostly somewhat small, when compared to the USA. But the food portions often feel even larger than their counterparts would be in the US.
Every meal, we order food and wonder if we might need to order more later, as we are so hungry and the description makes it seem to be only so much food. And yet, after we start eating, we find that there is almost no way we could eat all the food we’ve already ordered, even if we tried(!).
So, we keep aiming to manage our food better at every meal, and we keep getting surprised at every restaurant by how much food they keep giving to us. Sure, they aren’t the lowest meal prices. However, the dish always covers more than the cost for us, and by a lot.
A simple breakfast plate… simple my a, right?!
Oddly, I can hardly wait to get back home and eat light foods and small amounts of them!
What does one do when one loves another and wants the best for that other person, yet one disagrees with that person as to what is best for that person’s health and well-being?
Really, I’d like to know…
I suppose the only true answer here is to pray – let go, and let God.
Okay, God, I give it up to you. I am terrified, and I give it up to you, nonetheless and all the more. I trust in you. Please, help us to see clearly and to pursue your will and your love. Help me to speak the words that need to be spoken, to say what needs to be heard. And help us both to hear what needs to be heard on all sides. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Today, we went shopping for talaveras in Dolores Hidalgo, a town near Sam Miguel. If you are ever nearby, I highly recommend it. We found especially amazing work at Artesanías del Angel. We genuinely wanted to take the majority of it home with us, us was so gorgeous. Sure, we found great pieces at other workshops. But something about these pieces just hit home in a wonderful way. The longer we spent there, the more we wanted to get. We ended up spending far less money than I at all realized we were spending, and we got the following items:
Custom house address sign
House numbers (for on the fence)
Three custom University signs, talavera styled
Sun
3 Medium planters + water plates
Frog
Large planter
Cooking utensil rest
Multi-colored cuernas (longhorn skull)
Large sink basin
Metal sink basin mount
And Angel gave us the actual sink basin for free, because the one we really liked that was the big size we’d wanted was cracked. He at first wouldn’t let us have it, even, since it was cracked. But, once he realized it wasn’t for a backyard kitchen, but for a backyard basin just for washing hands or tools or whatever, he said we could have the sink and the mount for just the price of the mount itself. We gratefully and promptly accepted.
[This is where I would put some amazing photos of some of the wonderful pieces in the shop, if I hadn’t been so engrossed in everything around me, such that I have no photos I took! That’s how great it was!]
All in all, we spent a shockingly low amount of money, and we got some absolutely amazing pieces for our home and backyard. I am beyond excited for all of these pieces to bless our home. ¡Muchas gracias, Angel y los otros allí!
If you can ever go, please do! They have no website themselves, but you can find info for them from the city’s page or from Google Maps (with photos!).
It’s just nearly 9:30pm, and I am beyond wiped, wishing I could have been in bed already an hour ago. Today has been good overall, but I am exhausted. We started with watching the first sunrise of the year, as is custom in my family – because, you know, we’re part Japanese now. Then we drove to a nearby city to have brunch with my stepdad’s sister and her husband – wonderful time(!), but tiring drive. I’m so glad I have a man who can handle long, tiring drives and stay fully awake. I struggle to stay awake even as a driver on those, so I tend to stay away from them as a whole.
Anyway, we then meandered back to the city where we’re staying, took a way-too-long nap – well, he did, anyway, and I hung out next to him – and then finally went to dinner. I was super hungry and, so, ate too much. It was delicious food, but also food that doesn’t exactly leave me feeling very healthy or whole, thought definitely quite at home.
Hopefully, tomorrow starts getting some things checked off our list for the house. Fingers crossed that it goes well!
Thank you, God. You have clearly given us your help, and we are incredibly grateful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Amen.
When we’re not still in the middle of it all, I might come back and share what all this was. For now, however, I am grateful for the various resolutions we have reached, and I am hoping for continued increase in grace, joy, and ease for the both of us on this trip. God, please, continue to guide and to help us to be our best selves and to find love, grace, and joy in one another throughout this trip, and always. In your name, I pray. Amen.
I have to say: For some reason, I was utterly disinterested in reading The Chronicles of Narnia when I was a kid. We read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in fourth grade, and I enjoyed it. But I never felt a desire to read the other books. I loved other series, but had no interest in that one.
However, now that I’m three quarters through the first book, I’m starting to reconsider. I’ve actually liked this book, and so find it interesting how these stories all tie together, though with different main characters for each book – perhaps that was what had disinterested me back then, a lack of a stable main character. In this case, Narnia is the stable main character, in a way, though it is always kind of the blanket holding everything happening, as opposed to the everything that is happening itself.
We’ve been working on going to bed early this week, my man and I, since I was up until 4:30 Sunday night and he didn’t sleep at all, as we prepped him for his trip and sent him out the door before I went to bed.
Anyway, so far, we’ve made it to bed after two, after one, and after one… so much for going to bed early, eh?
I was struggling to get out of the house and get my errands done earlier today. Just as I was getting near the point of I must leave Now, my cousin reached out to me and my mom. She let us know that she was in town for the week and would like to see us, if possible. After a few further messages and a quick phone call, I hopped in the car and went and picked up my cousin.
She only had until about five o’clock, and it was already almost 3pm. But I picked her up – and she left her baby with her husband and in-laws! – and she went and ran my errands with me.
It sounds silly, perhaps, but I think we both had a really great time just being together again, and with no other real distractions, no one else for us to have to think about or check in upon. One of my errands happened to be to my mom’s office to pick up some pie, so my cousin got to see my mom for a little bit, even.
I dropped her off at their dinner reservation near 5:30pm, after a lovely time together, and with an intention of going to pick her up in the morning to come hang out with me at the house while I get things done here, both for the slumber party and for my trip. If the timing works well, she and I also will go to this wonderful shop that makes fabulous natural body products – oils, scrubs, lotions, soaps, etc. Then we can have some lovely tea/tisanes at the house together and just be all hyggelig together.
Why is it always so hard to accept dying and death of those we love?
For that matter, why is accepting their aging so hard past a certain point? Once they reach the point that their aging feels more like the beginnings of the body’s shutting down… of dying…
hannah ananas 