Mothers Day Post

Hey everyone,

How are you all doing? Yet another week has gone by. It was a pretty low-key normal week. More painting of the little house and the outside of our house. The weather has been pretty awesome. The days start off pretty hot, but in the afternoon a storm rolls in, pouring rain for a few hours, dropping the temperature to a more comfortable level. The little house is shaping up quite nicely. Just one more room to go till it is all painted. The next step will to paper the walls. It is quite evident manang Laura and I are having some serious cravings for American food. While we were cutting out baked good and such from magazines, we would take turns gazing longingly at a page, praying it would turn into real food. What we gleaned, I crave food; she craves sweets. I would be pining over a cheese burger and she would be salivating over a pumpkin chocolate cheesecake. Haha aren’t we a pair J

A highlight of the week was an excavation dig manang Sarah and I went on in the deep freezer. I had forgotten about a beignet mix and cheese-its my friends sent me awhile ago. Well, manang Sarah reminded me that they were chilling, yes chilling, in the freezer. We had no idea where to even begin to look. Armed with strong arms, a spoon and adventure music (provided by yours truly) we began digging. Pushing aside glaciers of bread, digging through mountains of candy we extracted the beignet mix easy enough. The cheese-its were another matter. We had to push through the layers, finally glimpsing a red box at the very bottom. We had to chip away at the ice it was entombed in, at last peeling it away from its icy resting place………Okay so maybe, it wasn’t as dramatic as all that, but we did dig, while laughing at my adventure theme music J

After finding the box, I fried up the beignet’s for the manangs. I wasn’t confident they would like them, since they aren’t all that sweet. At Café du Monde, they serve they with a pound of powdered sugar. Not joking. I had a little bit of powdered sugar, but not that much. The first two batches, I made too skinny and they turned out on the crispy side. By the last batch, they looked like true fluffy beignets. All the manang’s and tatay loved them!! By the end of lunch, all the beignets were gone! Tatay said I should call them kelsey’s killers and sell them haha. His one critique was that since they are empty inside, I should fill them with some kind of frosting. If anyone has an opinion as to what to fill a beignet with, I’d love to hear it. I have one more box to fry up. While I was making them, I thought about the first time I had them in New Orleans with the H4H team, squashed awkwardly at a small table covered in powdered sugar. Then making them for friends back in LA, again covered with powdered sugar. Beignets will forever bring wonderful memories.

I realized how Filipino I have become. It would be really hard to not pick up mannerisms and words. But this instance took me completely off guard. They say dates differently. Instead of second or third, they say two or three. It was a thing I would always correct in class. If the kids said it was May fourteen, I would say its May fourteenth. Well, one of the manangs asked me when election day was, without even thinking, I replied, “November two”. Followed by a gasp and disbelief that I had just said that. Hahah the manangs started laughing at me. After thinking about it, I have quite a lot of Filipino mannerism, which my momma is happy about. I walk through crowds like a Filipina; I say e-he, tapus na, tendog, indit and other words that escape me right now; I like pretty much any Filipino food; use my eyebrows to say yes; and so many more things. Haha I’ll be Am-Fil by the time I get back J

            Please be praying for me as we start school next week. Please pray that I have the answers for their questions, the patience only God gives with the new batch of kiddos. I guess that God would equip me with all that I need to teach them as well as they deserve.

            Happy Mothers day to all you momma’s who read this! I am only now fully realizing all my momma has given up and scarified to raise me the way God called her to. Thank you momma!!

God bless, Kelsey