The last post on here was published on July 7, 2020, about 4 months after our still-ongoing lockdown in the Philippines. I stopped updating Hellobee without any explanation, and for that I apologize. I’ve just been feeling overwhelmed by things.

1. My laptop broke. There is no computer store here. I just got it fixed yesterday.

2. I’ve been going through several bouts of depression throughout the pandemic.

3. Mr. Bee has also been struggling with the ongoing trial for his mom’s case. The way it works here is there are monthly hearings, once a month for several years. Definitely different than what we’re used to.

4. Facebook randomly shut down the Hellobee Facebook page, which seemed like a sign.

5. I started focusing on local projects. I’ve done animal rescue the entire time I’ve lived in the Philippines, but being home 24/7 enabled me to do much more of it. I also built a beautiful children’s library for the kids here, many of whom haven’t been in school since the pandemic started. But due to ongoing lockdowns and spikes in cases due to Delta, we haven’t been able to open it. It got me really down for a while because I’d put so much into it, and it was very anticlimactic not being able to open. Then when we finally did open, we had a big storm and the library flooded.

We won’t live here forever, so the library was a passion project we wanted to leave for the kids of El Nido. We have so many goals for our library beyond lending books, and hopefully we can get to those again eventually.

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To be honest, I don’t know what the future of Hellobee holds. But I missed blogging and the community we have, so I’m going to try coming back if you’ll have me. What have you been up to for the past year?