Now, I've learned to embrace the familiarity of the place I've been living in (well, actually this is the 4th house I've been and it is kinda hard to be sentimental about places because you leave them as soon as you've managed to finally 'move in' all your stuff - actually we hope this 4th house would be with us for about 2-3 yrs and counting) and have made an artificial security blanket (my hubby and my friends).
Lemme start with the disadvantages of living abroad:-
1) You make a lot of long distance calls which eats up your budget for the month. Even if you vow not to call, you will always call to check on them or if your sibling or mom called you up to tell you this and their line went dead so you call them and they bombard you with a lot of 'kwentos' until you hear 'sorry...please reload'.
2) A lot of the 'usual' dishes cannot be seen on your dining table. Yes, we try our best to still cook Filipino cuisine but you see our ingredients are very hard to find like for example, Calamansi (a fave for sinigang and bistek) is substituted for lemon which for me doesn't match the taste.
3) The 'happy-go-luck' attitude we have towards work. Yes, I've noticed that even if we spend almost the same amount of working hours, it's still not the same... I tried explaining it to myself but I can't find the reason why we feel ok. we whine, yes but still enjoy work.
4) Our energetic lifestyle and late-night coffee sessions. Even on a weekends, I still have that energy to loiter at SM malls, watch a movie or just go somewhere but here, I sleep most of the time as if I'm not given the chance to sleep during other days. I, too, miss my late-night coffee sessions... because Starbucks is to damn expensive here!
5) My family. No words can describe the loss...being that far from them.
++++
1) Independence.
2) Shopping a lot!!! heheh... can't do that back home because it's very expensive... Though living here is too but you can't feel it that much as long as you don't convert often.
3) Experience.
4) A less from the 'What if' list that I've come up with.
5) Did I say shopping??? hihihihi
