I wonder

Yesterday we went to one of our favorite restaurants. Why is it one of our favorite places to go? First of all, we can eat there for a steal. You can get a BBQ chicken breast and a cup of rice for 59 pesos, which is about a buck. It depends on the exchange rate. Every month it gets a few cents more expensive since the exchange rate usually goes down and our dollar becomes less valuable. But still a steal! Secondly, Mirielle loves their chicken and she loves the restaurant becuase it is open air and she can run around and look at the turtles that they have in their little pond. So we go there when we need a family friendly place to eat.

After eating, Mirielle was running around with an entourage of waitresses trailing behind her. They were singing ABCs together and counting and Mirielle was telling them how old she was and her brother's name. I was thinking about how she will grow up to be a different person than if she grew up in the States. I wonder if she will grow up to be friendlier being here in a world where everyone loves the cute little white girl. Maybe she will eventually become more guarded once she gets a little older and it isn't as much fun to be the cute little white girl and to have so much attention. I wonder....

Here, everyone loves her attention. They love to talk with her, touch her white skin, they are always sharing their food with her. We really noticed the difference in her behavior when we returned to the States last year. Just after returning, we would be at a restaurant and she would want to interact with people, acting like they cared that she was there, wanting to crawl up in their laps. It was so weird for us to watch. She was so outgoing and doing what was just natural to her here and it came of seeming really weird in the States.

Things here are so different. I just wonder how Jason and I will change over the years and how our kids will grow up to be different than if they grew up in the States.

The other day, I was driving down the street and was watching kids pour out of the school that was near where I was driving and seeing the kids skipping down the road in their uniforms sent a big pang of saddness through my heart. The sight of it made me wonder if I would ever see my own kids skipping down the road to our house after school - certainly won't happen here. Maybe one year when we are home on furlough. (Although we just found out the other day that when we came home to have Kellan, since we came home becuase of me and I am not the primary wage earner, we ate up future furlough time because of tax reasons. That means that we probably won't be able to come home for a full year until Mirielle is 10.)

That means that my daughter may never grace the room of a classroom until she is 10. She will be forever stuck in this house with her crazy mother!!! And yes, part of the reason I am so crazy is because I am stuck in the house with my crazy daughter :-) I fear that my kids will never feel like they fit in here and when we go back to the States they won't feel like they fit in there either. I guess I fear that for myself. I wonder if we will ever adjust to living here. I wonder what that would even mean......