Coming back to Manila after being in the States for 6 weeks has it's ups and downs. We love being home because for the girls it's truly home. I'm the only one who needs adjustment when we return. It's so easy to get used to all the lovely conveniences of America. Coming back to the land of logistical nightmares has it's irritations.The good:
Lucy has been a different dog since the girls and I arrived home. While we were gone she had some health issues and got really depressed being without her family for so long. Now she's running around with us, wrestling for her ball, and just being her regular nosey self. I missed her a ton and feel terrible about how she suffered without us.
Being jet lagged this weekend and waking up at 4AM on Sunday meant that I had time to back homemade scones and a frittata all before 7AM. Yay for cooking in my own kitchen but see the bad list for the flip side of cooking in my own kitchen. Here is the scone recipe I used. They are awesome and I took the suggestion from the comments about using the food processor.
Sleeping in my own bed as well as the girls having their own comfortable bedrooms back is a huge plus. I also missed my huge master bathroom with walk in closets.Justin saved some Vietnamese coffee for me so we've been French pressing it in the morning and holy cow it's like a drug I don't want to run out of. I'm scheming how I can get some more when this bag runs out.
The bad:
We were eating amazing organic vanilla yogurt every week at my parent's house and I found this in our fridge the other day. Nestle is the staple yogurt here but it's not even made with fresh milk. It's sugary and gross. Grosser yet is this new jelly topped kind. Barf!
I was also sad to see the boring Gardenia whole wheat loaf of bread. The same bread we eat all the time here. Blah! Boring. The tiny $4 8oz Land o Lakes cheese was depressing too. 
Luckily, we haven't had any roaches in the house since being home but there have been some ants and a pile of molding potatoes in the pantry. Who leaves wet potatoes in a plastic sack in a hot pantry? Pew it stunk. Oh and Yaya just threw away the moldy potato and washed off the remaining ones. This is the way we live here.
In relation to cooking in my own kitchen I also sat and washed all the dishes by hand this weekend. To be fair, I left a pile in the kitchen for Cora on Monday morning since she had it so easy for the six weeks we were gone. I miss a good dish washing machine!In the really bad category is having the Jeep's radiator bust on us Monday mid-day. We were left with a few options: A)buy a rebuilt radiator for 30,000 PH pesos or $600 with no warranty. B) have the Chrysler dealership order one from the States and wait 2 months for arrival C) order one online and pray they will ship to FPO address (new for $130) D) order one and have it delivered to my Dad's local NAPA so he could ship it to me asap. All of these options would require us to get a rental car which was going to run $50 a day and come with a driver! No thanks. Once the Chrysler dealership here said they wouldn't even take on the problem because they couldn't find any place to ship it to them (seriously?!). At this point the technician ponied up the idea that he could fix our broken radiator in our parking garage the next day and it would cost us $100. We jumped at the idea of saving the money for a rental car and still plan on ordering a new one to install as soon as we can. Car troubles in a third world country are not fun.
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