Filtering

Quote for the day. Heck, quote for the past 10 months. Tim and I were trying to sum up our Ex-pat experience the other day as we sat in this beautiful garden on a canal in Bruges (more on that later). I mentioned that for me, learning this language and culture has been 80% amazing and 20% “Oh Dear God, What Did I Get Myself Into.” I’m finding that right now I’m doing a lot of filtering, unfortunately, when I can’t quite understand the people around me. Yep, pretty sure I have the vocabulary of about a 5-year-old. (But a really bright 5-year-old, dad-burn-it!) Not sure if you remember being that age, but there’s a heck of a lot that you just don’t get. Thus, one method to deal with your unsure-ity (is this a word?) is to completely tune out. This is what Tim and I lovingly call, "Screen Savor Mode." I know this place well.

Tim, as usual, put it a lot more eloquently. He said, “It’s like trying to get a drink out of a fire hose.” Amen. Welcome to our world.