Some time has passed since my last post. After that post I was pretty excited to blog again, to elaborate, for example, on how much I love my new living situation over here in Germany. But as it turned out, a few days later I was awoken early in the morning by a phone call from my mom, telling me that my grandfather had passed away. Since then I haven't exactly been in the mood to blog. But perhaps soon I will be ready.

I love you, grandpa. None of us were ready for you to go.

It fills me with such happiness that you were able to come to my graduation last spring. Knowing how proud you were of me. That you'd fly across the country and put up with the lengthy, boring ceremony for the twenty seconds of me onstage. And now I think of what you told me when I saw you last summer in California. "Perhaps the next time I see you you'll be getting married." "Nahh, maybe before then I'll have gone back to school and I'll be graduating again." Perhaps that was a lie--I wasn't seriously considering grad school, at least not yet. But I said it because I wanted to make you proud of me again. That and I wasn't ready to envision myself as a grown woman, getting married. I was still a little girl being walked to Klockner Elementary School by her grandfather. Still her grandpa's "Sawsaw" (weird nickname in Tagalog that literally means "to dip (a food) in sauce"; all Filipinos have nicknames, some weirder than others).

No one called me Sawsaw but you, Lolo. But Sawsaw I will always be.

the prodigal Shan returns

I have decided to henceforth continue this blog. Nearly halfway through my Fulbright grant to Germany, but whatever. I've been feeling pretty bad about not documenting the riveting (to me, and a perhaps a small niche group of people) thoughts I've had since September. Not necessarily pertaining to Germany, either. Let's be honest, I'm primarily referring to food and TV shows (i.e. the exact concerns I was blogging about in 2011). Nothing changes! Except there's more schnitzel and I have to find sketchy ways to stream all the shows, instead of just using hulu or the DVR.