1) Patience: In this respect I don’t really have a choice. Either I increase my patience level or I walk around pissed off all the time: Whether it’s waiting for the plumber to arrive or standing in line at a store, there’s a lot of waiting that goes on in these parts. I have to admit though, all this waiting has increased my BlackBerry skills. While waiting, I can have an entire conversation with friends and family abroad…and still have time to send some tweets

2) Carefree: This stems from my increased patience because sometimes things just don’t work out the way I plan them. When the internet is down, there’s no point in calling technical assistance to see what the problem is – you just wait it out. Luckily, I have my phone (are you sensing a theme here) as a backup if I really need to connect. If the water is turned off (unannounced) because the city is fixing a busted pipe, I simply adjust my schedule accordingly. I also have several gallons of emergency water supply just in case the fixing takes longer than expected. The point is, none of this frustrates me like it used to.

3) Better tipper: Americans are not known as bad tippers to begin with – 15-25% is part of our lexicon. What I have started doing here is tipping people that I normally wouldn’t in the states: the bagger at the grocery store, the bus boy at a small café, the water delivery guy. For the most part these people are tipped regularly by Venezuelans, hence no awkward “oh no, I can’t accept this” and every once in a while I tip someone who wasn’t expecting it and receive an unexpected display of gratitude making the extra expense invaluable.

4) Spanish: Well, if this didn’t make the list, I don’t know what would. I can now say that language is no longer a barrier for me in this country – there are plenty other things that I can list as barriers At the risk of tooting my own horn, I’m very proud of the progress that I’ve made in learning Spanish and this is something that I’ll benefit from long after my stay in Caracas. Although it’s been said many times, I absolutely encourage all expats to learn the local language.

5) More Active: As detailed in my post about losing inches here, I walk more here than I have walked in any place that I’ve ever lived. Considering that I can still remember looking at my car in the parking lot from my office window and wishing there was some technology that could transport me there without having to get out of my seat – this is progress. I can also remember places that seemed way too far to walk when I first got here that have now become a hop, skip and a jump away. My perception of distance has been altered which has basically made me less lazy. I’m sure this will revert back to its original state after a few months in the American suburbs.

Note: This list was extremely easy to come up with leading me to believe that things are always better than they appear.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, my son has developed a language all his own – which I’m sure most preschoolers do – but his is the most special, I promise I remember when I was pregnant and people kept telling me that he would learn to speak so quickly because he had an older sibling. Then, after I freaked out thinking he had developmental delays, a friend of mine showed me a study where they found younger siblings took longer to speak because often the older child did all the talking for them. I don’t know if this is the case for everyone, but my son was not an early talker. What I notice now, though, is that at 3 years-old he uses expressions that his 8 year-old sister says. At first I was quite impressed by his language development, then I realized he probably doesn’t completely understand every word in the phrase – he just knows when to use them.

For instance, when he sees that I’m struggling to do something, he says “It doesn’t matter, Mommy, it doesn’t matter” and shakes his hand so I know it’s okay to give up.

When you give him something that he doesn’t want to eat, he says “I can’t want it.”

If you confirm something he just said – usually by repeating it correctly – he says “Exactly!”.

Of course he says a lot of the typical words that a 3 year-old should say (his speech is a lot simpler in French and Spanish), but these few always make me chuckle – especially after worrying that his speech wasn’t developing as it should. Needless to say, I’m one proud mama