Blank slate. Fresh start. I find it tremendously thrilling flipping the sheets of a new calendar.

Every new year offers a symbolic chance to renew, revitalize, and improve. All the rituals of welcoming the new year, I take pleasure in participating in. The fireworks, the jumping, and the proverbial pansit are my favorite.

While the clock ticked away what's left of 2017, explosive colors also started to light up the sky. It is finally new year. If there's anything that I learned from last year, be it saying thanks and goodbye to time gone or embracing the start of what is to come, I learned to go at it with no regrets.

Last year

What a year that was! 2017 was a year of milestones. Milestones in quick successions. I went from being a Miss to a Missus then now also a Mama. In addition to that, not only have I found myself adapting to a foreign city but also moving to another one just when I have gained some footing. So yes, it was quite a year. I will remember 2017 in all its frenzied, at times disorienting but ultimately once in a lifetime moments.

This year

Now that I have acquired a working German language proficiency, I’d like to practice it more and more until I reach the level where I am able to hold a conversation and respond more quickly. Here’s how it looks like when I hear German:

1. Listen
2. Brain tries to make out the verbs and nouns
3. After that’s done, brain tries to form a response
4. More brain work finding and organizing the right words, article, and case to use
5. Many many seconds later, a carefully worded sentence gingerly comes out

I’m just not that great a conversationalist on the language. This year, I hope to improve my handle on German.

It’s going to be a new road to navigate on a professional level that with the time constraints that comes with caring for a baby and keeping together a home. With my husband’s support, whose ability to plan, focus, and carry it out efficiently I find exceptionally attractive, I am positive that this 2018 I can take select projects to work on.

Other than that, I’d like to use this space more to candidly show snippets of my life here in Germany. Many years from now, I think I’d enjoy skimming through random posts. I realize the importance of this now that I have a daughter. When I hear mothers say that babies grow up so fast, I can only chuckle not fully understanding what they mean. To be able to freeze and relive the experience in my own words other than relying solely on photos feel profound to me. In remembering an experience, photos set up the space where it occurred, but words take you back to the same moment and urge you to relive it. I have some new materials to write about and hopefully just as much (if not more) commitment to follow through as I have enthusiasm.

I’m eager to see what 2018 has in store. Los geht's!

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