These agonizing choices

The walls of the buildings are colorful, the grass is a rich green, and the playground looks out onto the moody ocean and a street lined with coconut palms. The international school looks pleasant enough from the outside, but is ultimately an unknown. Just one more unknown in the mountain of unknowns looming in our children's educational future.

Every time we walk or drive past that school my brain hurts. I love watching Ray develop physically and mentally as she turns into a little girl, but the persistent passage of time brings us closer and closer to her first day of school. What will that day look like? Do we homeschool? Do we send her to the international school? Do we move to Ukarumpa, the SIL center in the highlands, where she can attend a school full of other missionary kids? Do we try to work out some sort of one-room school with other PBT parents? And my head hurts.

Those curls...

This isn't a problem isolated to expat parents of expat kids. In fact, if I wasn't the natural worrier that I am, we could procrastinate this headache for several more years. Many stateside parents have to make schooling decisions when their children are still being knit together in the womb. So I'm grateful that we aren't forced by society to frantically search for the right preschool and the right district before I even know my child, but I'm not very excited about any of our prospects and dreading the day we have to make a decision. When I see Ray's ringlet curls bouncing off her ears, then her shoulders, then her back, I have a marred excitement. She's growing so beautiful and strong... but she's growing. Stop doing that!  

Homeschooling is something I never wanted to do. I have a degree in secondary education, but a degree certainly doesn't make a person. When teaching days were good, I loved it. But it took a lot for those days to be good and I was not patient. Have I grown over the past decade and developed more patience? I certainly hope so, but I don't want to test that out on my children and their division problems.

The international school is rumored to be quite excellent right now. Right now. In PNG, expertise comes and goes. The hospital has exciting (and usually imported) flavors of the month that never stick around too long, but are delicious while they last. This month's flavor will be an anesthesiologist while next month's flavor will be a neurosurgeon. Or perhaps there won't be a flavor for one or two or ten months. One never knows. It's always best to try and plan your medical emergencies around the flavor of the month. The international school works the same way. The level of excellence is dependent on the leadership, and that leadership has a high turnover rate. This year the school may be of the highest quality, but next year under the new leadership? Not so much. Are we willing to risk that? Or will we send her there while the quality is high and then pull them out if/when the quality dips back down? 

Going up to Ukarumpa would be exciting for me. We have family up there (not blood, but family all the same) and the weather is crisp and cool. The school is better than most US schools and the girls would be surrounded by loving teachers that would be part of their spiritual growth as well as their educational growth. Seems perfect, but it's not. Our work is here and it just feels wrong to go up there. It's possible this will change in the years between now and then, but we really don't see how it could.

I think my favorite option is collaborating with other parents here in town. I can't even begin to know what that would look like or how we would pull it off, but in my head it's less lonely than homeschooling, more stable than the international school, and local.

I recognize that God doesn't always call us to places or situations that we feel comfortable in. Educating and socializing our children is one of those "situations" for me. It's yet another area of our lives, highlighted by living here and being isolated from the girls' passport country, God is asking me to leave to Him. To wait and trust that He does have a plan for this. While contemplating all of our flawed choices, my task is to find that happy balance between doing nothing expecting God to do everything and doing everything expecting God to forget this detail. That has never been an easy balance for me to achieve.

Returning with class

We've traded white and yellow cockatoos for leathery fruit bats, air conditioning for the occasional sea breeze, indoor church for outdoor church, restaurants for home cooking, and suitcases for closets. There are certain aspects of Cairns we sorely miss, and I briefly adorn my "going south hat" when I see the morning and evening flights in the sky, but overall we're relieved. We're home. It smells like home, looks like home, and feels like home. 

Getting here was relatively easy, but not without character. We had two short flights and a brief stint in Port Moresby's domestic terminal. Our morning started slow since we had a later flight and we made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Since we were a unique case, going through immigration took some time. Willa didn't exist as an independent person when we arrived in country and, as such, she didn't have a visa. But then she wanted to leave the country as an independent expatriate who happened to not be in their system and also happened to not have a visa in her brand new passport. In the end it's doable, but unique and complicated. Fortunately we had a very happy agent that chose to chat about the girls and baby names while we waited for higher-ups to sort us out. 

The hot and humid PNG air hit as soon as we climbed down the metal steps of the Qantas plane that bore us away from pleasant Cairns, but it felt right. I used to react to that air with nerves of excitement and dread. Now it's simply the air as it's supposed to be. Blowing hot and smelling hot. Two international flights landed at the same time causing the immigration lines to fill the small, dark room. One agent was available for important people, one agent was available for those getting a visa on arrival, and one agent was available for the many, many expats coming in with a visa. That was us, so in dismay we popped to the back of the line in the back of the hot room. Willa was strapped to Brian's front in the Baby Bjorn while Ray was strapped to me in the Ergobaby. I wasn't exactly sure how I would hold her in the creeping line. My back ached just thinking about it, but almost immediately an airport employee came around and quietly led us to the important people line where only one other family was waiting. Traveling with youth is exhausting, but it has perks!

We made it to the domestic terminal and settled into an empty row of seats. Ray warily eyed the precocious Papua New Guinean toddler sitting in the next row. Eventually they became over-the-seat friends sharing books, snacks, and squeals. In return for sharing her Olaf the Snowman book, the girl gave Ray some Twisties, forever addicting her to that processed puff of corn with questionable flavoring. 

Olaf and snacks kept her appeased for brief moments.

Climbing aboard the Air Nuigini flight from Port Moresby to Madang was less sentimentally appealing than the exit from our first plane. It wasn't a full flight, but even so the cabin felt tight. Small bursts of stale air would come out of the vents, but did little to relieve the overall stuffiness. We sat in our sweat feeling the tenseness of our fellow passengers, all of us wondering when the crew would arrive. The comfort level dropped even lower when the lady sitting behind Brian sprayed enough perfume to cover three rows. Ray was immensely frustrated at being strapped into another seat, this one much more uncomfortable than the first. She determined to follow the course of action dreaded by all parents in planes: bellow, whine, fuss, and flail. It's the first and only time I've been grateful she doesn't have full command of the English language. She began by reasonably asking to be let loose and when that was a firm no, she lost sight of reason. The rest of the flight went about like that. Brief moments where she calmly asked to do something she's never allowed to do, followed by a "why can't I have my way" meltdown. Towards the end, Brian looked at me from across the aisle and reminded me that it's just one hour (plus some wait time) where it could have been sixteen. Truth.

The flight ended exactly as it should have. Brian and I massively miscommunicated leaving me huffy. He efficiently gathered up Willa and most of the bags while I fumbled with Ray and the rest of our carry-ons. Not everyone was disembarking in Madang, so instead of the usual human crush to get off it was just a few passengers. This meant everyone could watch in stony silence as I bumped and crashed my way up the aisle with a cranky toddler in one arm and poorly positioned bags falling off the other. One would think it was my first flight. It wasn't until after that impressive display of personal organization when we were clear of the plane that Brian confirmed Sir Michael Somare (the last prime minister) had been in the front row. Awesome. I probably whacked him or his people on the head with a flailing Ray foot. 

All minor difficulties and embarrassments aside, we're here. Walking in the door for the first time flipped the invisible switch that sends a dreamy haze over the previous stage. Those months in Australia happened, but they feel so distant. If it weren't for Willa's presence, my own newly visible feet, and the sad remains in our neighbor's yard of what used to be a towering mango tree, I would question whether any of it happened. But it did. And I loved it. Now I'm here. And I love it, too.