Catching up.

I have been busy the last few days.

Friday, we interviewed a couple of ladies to be househelp. Our pool cleaner/gardener told us that he knew a couple of women, one old, one young. One had worked for an American family and spoke some English. When they arrived, we saw that they were both young, and it turned out that the one had worked for a Korean family, but had had to speak to them in English as their common language, so doesn't actually know that much proper English afterall. We hired them, though.

So far, so good. I mean, really, it's quite awful on the communication front, but they both clearly have brains and know-how so I think that in time it will get easier to communicate and things will be smoother.

A and I both feel like househelp are a big treat, me especially, because, in reality, THEY ARE. But at the same time, we don't want to be the Nasty Overlords, so there are a few things that we're doing a little differently than the standard set-up with househelp. First of all, we're giving them every Sunday off. To give you an idea of how amazing that was, the two of them nearly lept out of their seats when we told them that. It is standard practice for househelp to get ONE day off a month. ONE. A month. And from what I can tell, the attitude is that they should be happy to have that one day. I don't know. It just doesn't jibe well with me to make them work that much and be away from their families that much. It's sad enough that they don't see their children all week. Add to that that we don't believe in making people work on Sundays unless it's a crucial service, like police and hospital workers, it didn't seem right to avail ourselves of the services of househelp on Sundays, either. Since everything they do for us is stuff we did ourselves quite (ok, not quite) happily on our own before we got here.

I won't lie that it's also nice to have that one day a week when it's just us in the house, too.

There is a definite learning curve having help like this. Again, the prevailing attitude is that you have to be on them all the time. We're going to try just spelling out their duties clearly and see how that goes. Like I said, they seem to be more than clever enough to understand what is expected of them, as long as the expectations are clear. Housekeeping isn't rocket science. I'm not going to shadow them unless I have to.

Also, we unknowingly ate all their food this morning. Oops. I thought they had made a massive breakfast. Turns out that they put the food on the table, and then they eat whatever is brought back in to the kitchen. I think we'd left one egg and, like, 2 slices of bacon. I told them to make more food. When A gets home, I will tell them that they should take their portion off before bringing it out to us. I don't want anyone starving and the whole "we'll just eat what's left" thing doesn't seem right to me at all.

Anyway, enough of that topic for now.

Saturday, we had some of A's old mission companions and their families over for a pool party. They all brought food and it was the Best. Food. Ever. I was so stuffed by the end of it. I'm not even sure what all it was, other than delicious. The B's gave us an ice cream cake when we arrived, and I hadn't had a chance to try it until that day, and it was the tastiest thing ever. I was hoping to LOSE weight here. I don't know if that's going to happen.

Church went better than I expected. Tagalog speakers pepper their speach with enough English that I could get the jist of much of what was being said. There were two youth speakers, and they both spoke mostly in English, so that was great for me. Also, the Sunday School teacher spoke entirely in English when she found out I don't speak Tagalog yet. Relief Society was a blend, but they were teaching from a conference talk, and they handed out copies of it in English, so I had an idea. At one point, I was fairly confident that I knew what was being asked and I offered up an answer. Turns out that I didn't actually understand the question, but my answer worked anyway, so I didn't sound like a crazy person.

I learned two words at church. I'm not sure if I'll spell them right, but mabuti is good, and marami is many. Two words out of thousands ain't bad?

In Homemaking news, I have been trying like crazy to find dishes for us here. A got us a set of 4 melamine dishes to start off with, but we obviously need more now that we have 3 people working with us. Add houseguests and we're seriously into eating in multiple shifts. I think my problem is that I am too picky. I want white dishes. That's it. Just white dishes. It's not hard to find white-ish dishes or truly white dishes with things designed into the edge of the plate. If I wanted dishes with massive flowers painted on them, it would be no problem. I just want truly white, plain dishes, though, and it seems like that is a tall order. There is supposed to be an outlet somewhere, but it's quite a drive. I've tried the two likeliest stores locally, but no luck. I think tomorrow I will try a different mall and see what I can find. They're the last things that I really want to get right now.

A delivery person came by a little while ago and came right to our door. *gasp* SO RUDE!