Well folks, thanks for allowing me to join Gladly, Beyond. I may not be able to charm you with elegant words or witty quotations but hopefully I can give you another perspective of our life and maybe make you laugh from time to time.
We’ve been in the states for six weeks now and we’ve noticed many changes or things that caught our attention. I thought I would use my first post to share a few of those with you. They may seem like very ordinary things but to us they are quite noteworthy.
Stain-Stick- In Papua New Guinea stains are unstoppable. No matter how hard you try to avoid them, they’re everywhere, on almost every piece of clothing or material. So, I’ve decided to stop caring. Plus everyone else has stains and, for the most part, have come to the same conclusion as me. HOWEVER, when they can be stopped, prevented, annihilated…sorry – they will be. The wonders of Stain-Stick and Shout. Sometimes I feel like I need to just spray Alan and I down right after a meal or at the end of every day just because I CAN and the stains actually go away!
Easy Prep Food- Now, there are quite a few in this category but I decided (aka Alan won’t let me write all 50 on a blog post) to just stick with Chicken. At the supermarket I discovered a bag of six individually wrapped frozen chicken breasts. They are already thinly sliced and only take a few minutes to defrost. To be honest, I got a little teary eyed when we cooked with them the first time. No bones. No cutting. Quick defrost. Amazing!
and last, but not least…
Portable Fan- We went in search the other day for a noisy fan. Why do we want a “noisy” fan you ask? First of all because houses in Papua New Guinea are not quiet and houses here are SUPER quiet. We are used to falling asleep to buzzing insects, the wind and rain on our tin roof, etc. And secondly…is drowns out Alan’s snoring. Not sure why he snores or when he started, but maybe he’s always done it…and it’s been too noisy!
So, it took awhile to find one, as you can imagine, that did not advertise its quiet nature, but finally we came across a small travel fan. We brought it home and while I was out of the room for a few minutes Alan began to “fix it” or, make it noisier. Since my thought was that we would return it if it didn’t suit our needs I was a bit surprised to find the poor thing mangled. This is what it looks like now.
And it’s just as quiet as before.
gladly, beyond 
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