Analea

Our helper has arrived in our house!  Her name is Analea.  She is from Tabuk Kalinga, Phillippines.  She is 29 and a single mother to a 6-year-old girl.  I'm not sure if she is even 5 feet tall.  Before becoming a helper in Singapore, Analea attended Medical College to be a Pharmacy Aide.  She is very cheerful!

On her first day with us, she cleaned four of the bathrooms!  She likes to eat rice for breakfast.  She normally gets up around 6 a.m. even though we don't come down until almost 7.  She is not used to an oven or Western foods.  Fortunately, she does cook and can follow a recipe.  I have spent a few days just showing her how we make things.  We found that we make spaghetti the "Phillippino" way and NOT the "Chinese" way.  Apparently this is a good thing.  We introduced her to macaroni and cheese.  It only took her one morning to learn who liked what in their lunchboxes (white vs. wheat bread, strawberry jam vs. grape).  It'll be fun to experience all the things that she makes (whether new to her or new to us) as time goes on.

I use my indoor mother-in-law room as a storage room and as a pantry.  We wanted to have her inside where it was a little more comfortable (than the outside helper room) so we moved all the bins out to the top floor family room (aka the kids playroom).  We had to keep the pantry shelves and items where they were, though.  We were able to move a bed, dresser, and small bookshelf in.  We did give her the outside helper bathroom so that we would not all invade each other's space with the bottom floor bathroom.