1) Doctors here text! This shouldn’t actually be a surprise since ALL business is conducted by text. The Philippines sends more text messages daily than the rest of the world combined-about 40 million
messages a day! I love this. Any time of the day I can text any doctor directly and they respond very quickly. Maybe this has happened in the US since I’ve been gone, but when I was in DC two years ago I had to go through a slow laborious process to leave a message for the doctor and wait for his call back. When I was pregnant with Malcolm I would text my OB ALL the time and more recently with Malcolm’s pinky injury I was texting with his doctor almost every night with a photo update. It is SO reassuring. I am completely spoiled.
2) The doctors we’ve had here have been excellent! When we first moved here I didn’t know how lucky we would be. We have an excellent pediatrician who I love (and who texts me back all the time), an excellent OB and the hospital where we had Malcolm was amzing.
I don’t think there are many USAID posts where I could have a baby at 31 weeks and have had the medical care that i did (not to mention at a fraction of the cost compared to the US – our insurance lucked out with that one). I also was able to stay in the hospital the entire 21 days that Malcolm was in the NICU. This would never have happened in the U.S. I would have had to go home after 4 days and I would never have been able to nurse him as successfully as I did. My OB and the NICU doctor talked and agreed it was the best if I stayed in the hospital the entire time to work on nursing and getting his weight up so he could come home. It was so much easier to go through his time at the NICO close to him the entire time and getting to see him around the clock. The NICU nurses were also amazing at helping me nurse him. The NICU doctor was so pro nursing she would even ask me to share my milk with other premature babies whose moms weren’t producing as much. From his first day they let me take this little peanut out of the incubator and nurse him and I think that made all the difference! Usually babies that early have a hard time nursing, but not this guy. He was a champ from day one.
3) I can go to a Pilates class out behind the Embassy on the Manila Bay with the birds chirping. The class is led by my friend and three of my good friends here often come with me. It’s such a nice break during work. It’s always funny to think that we’re doing pilates at the U.S. Embassy 🙂
5) This is our view outside of our bedroom window. We get to wake up to this beautiful view every single day. Ok we wake up to this on some days, most days it’s still dark out when the boys decide it’s time to get up, but this is the view we get when the sun rises. Interesting side note, the sun sets and rises in Manila at 6 am and 6 pm all year round (give or take a half hour here or there). Being so close to the equator means no late summer nights likein New York where the sun is still out at 8:30 pm but it also means no winter nights like in London where it gets dark at 3 pm!
Here is our view from the living room and Adam’s new favorite spot.
6) We’re able to have two people helping us at all times. Not only do we have two people helping us which is amazing and makes our lives a million times easier, but we also lucked out and have a wonderful nanny! Maria love the boys so much and puts in a hundred percent and then some each and every single day. I love that she knows so many interesting things that she learned growing up on a farm to teach Adam and Malcolm that we don’t know, like how to make a ball out of a palm leaf. She gets as excited as I do when the boys get new toys or clothes or learn a new trick or word. The boys love her and we are all lucky she is in our lives.
With Randy and I both working having help is a life saver and it means we get to eat a healthy home cooked dinner together every night with the boys and spend the weekends doing fun stuff instead of cleaning and doing laundry. And yes I think about how lucky we are every single day.
7) We hands down live in the best part of Manila. Just two blocks from our house is a great outside shopping area with water fountains, lifesize bells, windchimes and a fruit market at the end. Most stores/malls don’t open until 10 am so it’s nice to have someplace to walk with the boys in the early mornings. Added bonus with the stores closed in the area it’s pretty empty. It is a safe, quiet not crowded part of Manila with great shops and restaurants.
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8) Restaurants in Manila are great. You definitely have to know where to go but the longer we’re here the more places we find that are great. I complain alot about the bad ones but there really are a ton of good ones! Plus they’re all kid friendly and the servers always want to chat with Adam and Malcolm.
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9) I lucked out and I really like my job here. I know this won’t always be the case at all our posts so I’m very appreciative. I work in the press office of the Public Affairs Section and really love it. It’s so varied and interesting and on any given day I never know if I’m going to be videotaped eating an apple..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8-7Vqr97FM&feature=youtu.be
or be the APEC spokesperson- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptWt3xxg-cw
*Note to self- maybe style your hair every day as if you may in fact be on Youtube…
*2nd note to self- when reading off the teleprompter try to look up at the camera…
PS- We can’t believe it’s already been two years that we’ve been here! Just yesterday we talked about how Adam was Malcolm’s age when we moved here! Incredible how fast time passes. Here are some throwbacks to Adam right before we moved here and right after.
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bosas-from-us.com 