C's First day of School

Inside the classroom, at his cubby, on Open House Day.

C began school on August 15, 2012. He entered into Year 2 at Discovery Minds Primary School in Discovery Bay, which is located in our community. We were very fortunate that he was accepted into this school because it is so close to our house. Schooling in Hong Kong for ex-patriots is EXTREMELY competitive, expensive, and overall a nightmare for every parent. There are limited spaces available and loads of students who need to attend English speaking schools. When we toured in February 2012 to decide if we wanted to relocate to Hong Kong, we were told by all of the schools that we had already missed the deadline for enrollment into the following year! (Apparently, even if you have no idea that you may relocate to Hong Kong, you may want to put your children on the school waiting lists now. This way, in 4 years, they will have a spot, should you so choose :))

Anyways, C & E were  numbers like 178 and 220 in most of the schools. Oh, and I forgot, to apply to the school it costs thousands of dollars$$$$. If you would like your child moved to the top of the list, some schools are willing to take an additional $100,000-$500,000 (Hong Kong dollars) from you. But be warned, this does not guarantee a spot, you just move up the list. We were fortunate the hubby's company does have an excellent reputation with the American school in Hong Kong, so we were offered spots for our children there. We reluctantly had to decline because the kids would have an hour commute, since we could not live on that island due to my motion sickness :( Luckily, our lovely new primary school opened in DB, and we actually were able to apply on time for that one, so places were given for the kiddos!!!! I am very serious about the school situation, there are some people here who have children in 3 different schools or have to home school because there are just not enough places.

Back to C. Discovery Minds Primary School is a British-based, English speaking school. C is in Year 2, which is similar to 1st grade in America. He has 22 children in his class, and he is the only American. He has lots of kids from Europe, several from Australia, and several from Asia in the class. All of the children speak English plus their native language(s). He takes Mandarin classes several times a week, in addition to citizenship, music, numeracy, literacy, handwriting, art, physical education, sciences.

All of the children wear these lovely little uniforms, as C is modeling on his first day.

Outside his school, without the hat!!

That's his teacher, Miss Simpson, in the line speaking to the children. He is acting pretty brave for the picture, but it was pretty tough for him (and Mom & NaNa!) NaNa was actually here for the kids first days of school. Mark was traveling back in the USA and I couldn't handle all of the stress of the first days of school, moving into the duplex, finding my way around Db and Hong Kong by myself! So thanks Mom!

His school day runs from 8:30-3pm. He was very excited to see us at the end of the day, but he did a great job and was very brave for us!

A quick hug for support from E! She started 2 days later.

Big Buddah Trip

In September, we took a ten minute bus ride to the nearby community of Tung Chung, for a visit to Big Buddah. This was really our first adventure to a tourist attraction with the kids, aside from the ferries. To reach the village, Ngong Pong, which is on top of a mountain, you must first ride a 20 minute cable car. These cars, at various points of the trip, can range from 20 feet above ground to 200 feet above water! I was nervous as all ****, but the kids and Mark were walking around our car taking pictures, which of course made it sway, and me more nervous!

We were greeted by free-roaming cattle in the village upon arrival. We then walked around and eventually made our way over to Buddah. The kids thought the statue was pretty cool, but their interest in a giant statue only lasts so long! We then walked around the village and visited some of the shops and had a beverage, at where else, Subway. Nothing quite completes an Asian cultural visit like visiting an American food chain restaurant :) Enjoy our pictures!

 The kids in our cable car, riding up to the village. It's higher than it looks!!!

This is the view of Buddah from the cable car ride.

Mark and the kiddos about 2/3's of the way up the 100 step climb to the Buddah. I have no idea why I can not rotate the picture, but if anyone knows how, let me know!

We made it all the way up!

Evie needed to be carried, just because that is how she rolls. The weather was typical for September, 90 degrees with 90% humidity. She was busy yelling at Mark about being hot and sweaty, while she demanded he carry her up all the steps!

C posing up at the Buddah. Those are mountains in the background.

Victoria Harbour

One of Hong Kong's famous destinations is Victoria Harbour, which is actually the waterway that separates Hong Kong Island from Kowloon. Boats and ships of all sizes pass through here daily, from one-man rowing boats to cruise ships and cargo ships. The area across the water is actually quite small and can be crossed via a 7-minute ride on The Star Ferry or underground via the MTR system. A tourist must-do is to take The Star Ferry, as these boats are very old and have served residents in Hong Kong since 1888 (not a typo!)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Ferry

The second major attraction to Victoria Harbour is the skyline view. Many skyscrapers line the Harbour and it is simply fascinating to view both day and night. Every night, at 8pm, Hong Kong puts on a laser-light show. Many of the buildings participate in this show with lasers of various colors flashing through the sky. Many buildings also have either large lights cast onto their building or change the lighting in the windows to make various shapes and sayings to go along with the season. There were Santas at Christmas, Snakes for Chinese New Year, etc, etc. 

We took my parents down to the Harbour for a waterfront dinner and view of the show, which you see in the pictures. 

This is the International Finance Center, or IFC building. It's the second tallest skyscraper in Hong Kong. It was opened in 2003 and has 88 stories plus 6 basement levels. It is supposedly similar in size to The World Trade Centers. The IFC is 418 meters tall! This building houses a MTR station (subway), 55-story hotel, a shopping mall, offices, and restaurants. The picture of Mom and Dad was taken across the Harbour opposite the IFC. The one of the IFC was taken on the same night, just about 100-200 yards from the base.

That's all for my cultural lesson today! I am hoping my computer will be fixed soon, so I can catch up on the blog. I've been doing it on the iPad, but its a little difficult, hence no postings for 3 weeks!

The little man's beach trip

In November, C's school took a class trip to one of the beaches on our island. We left school on the bus and drove about twenty-five minutes. I was a chaperone for the trip, and my lovely little group of four boys decided the best possible place to sit on the bus was in the very back. I have a tendency to get sick in a vehicle that I am driving if the roads are bendy, and the trip to the beach was around multiple mountains, yippie! My group pretty much had to fend for the,selves on the bus, as I was solely focused on not losing my breakfast, but they did well.

Anyways, I was told we were about to the beach, so Imstarted looking out the window, when the bus suddenly stopped to let us off. We were in the middle of a road, with curves on both sides of us, and a cliff. We had to depart and walk single file about fifty yards before we reached a safe sidewalk to use.  Now we had about fifteen adults and sixty-five little, excited kids with us, talk about a chaperones nightmare! Amazingly, no one was killed or hit by a car before we made it to the beach, but then it was a free for all!

My group of boys were absolute lunatics and were covered head-to-toe in sand within the first ten minutes. In fact, every other adult was laughing because I was responsible for cleaning them up prior to lunch and the again before we left for school again. They decided tackle American football would be great fun, as evidenced by the pictures.

The beach was actually very beautiful, and one that I believe we will visit again. There were shark nets surrounding the swimming area, so we want to do a little investigating to see of this is a precaution or there are actually sharks that frequent the area. On a side note, Hong Kong is known to have a pink dolphin population, so maybe we do have lots of sharks here too.

C was also lucky enough that this trip took place while his NaNa and PaPa were here visiting. Mark, NaNa and PaPa took a taxi out to the beach and met us around lunch time. We had beautiful weather, so it was nice for them to see one of our beaches.

Finally, we ended the day with a community sand castle competition. My group did not succeed in winning the best design, but did dig the biggest trench, which is really all they accomplished!

Overall, it was a very fun day for all the adults and kids alike. Many fell asleep on the bus ride, including C :)

Living in a large complex has advantages...

In case anyone missed talking to my mother about the July & August weather in HK, I am here to tell you it is HOT. We are talking over 90 degrees with humidity to match. The meteorologists' on Channel 7 would have a hay-day describing the heat index here. I think they start calling something like 70% humidity "oppressive" in Ohio, well Ohio ain't got nothing on Hong Kong.

Anyways, my wonderful mother was nice enough to help us move from Ohio to HK. For the first 5 days, we lived in a hotel with one king bed and a twin size pull-out chair. If you are good at math, you realize this was too many people and too few beds. So we were already all a little grumpy, jet-lagged, and tired of sweating the minute we walked outside. We were so happy on moving day to see the swimming pool at our complex!

NaNa was brave enough to take the kids swimming during the day while I worked on moving stuff. Then in the evenings, after dinner, we would all go back out to swim again. Hong Kong generally only has a 5 degree difference in temp from sun up to sun down, so it was still a nice warm 92 degrees in the evenings:)

Our complex also had a "welcome back" pool party. Mark and the kids had a blast. It was decorated with all sorts of blow-up animals, a raft, buckets, water guns, and beach balls. We were really hoping to meet some new people here, but it was pure chaos! We also had Carson's school open house, so NaNa and I didn't want to mess our hair up, hence no swimming.

Here are some pictures of our pool and the kids prior to swimming.  I'm still working on uploading pictures without crashing my computer, I do have some really cute action shots of the pool party. Hopefully I can figure it out, or my wonderful husband could just buy me a properly working computer ;)

C's birthday party pictures

 PaPa bravely put on his mask and turned into one of our party villians! He was then captured and tied to the chair with toilet paper by our Super Heroes to protect C's birthday party from evil!

 It was very difficult to take a nice group shot, this was as good as we got!

Our Super Hero, dressed in his Green Lantern cape, ready for action (and snacks)!

Happy Birthday C

Disclaimer: This blog is going in no particular order at this point, I am just trying to post some pictures and adventures we have experienced thus far.

In November, we celebrated our son's 6th birthday! He picked the theme "super heroes" for the party, so off we went to the markets to prepare for the big day. Our quest was to find fabric for the super hero capes, party favors, and supplies for the themed-games. Sounds easy enough, right? Oh no, not in HK, shopping takes on a whole different dimension. You cannot simply drive your golf cart to Wal-Mart, or any other big box store for that matter. You must take the ten minute bus to the MTR (train) station and board for a twenty minute ride to the Fabric Street. That's right, no place like JoAnn's here. After following the guide book, we made the decision to exit onto the street that I thought to be the Fabric Street. After all, I had just visited this place the week before with several ladies, so I was sure I would recognize the route once I saw the streets.

Well, not so much. First of all, I had went during the week, when most people are holding down jobs. My family was shopping on a Sunday, when most of the millions of residents also shop in the open-air markets. We were engulfed in a swarm of people, who do not routinely see young, blonde children. It was super crowded, people were staring, the kids were hot. I realize at this time, I have no idea which way to Fabric Street, and no one in sight spoke English. Our kids decide, now is a good time to need to use the facilities...that is a story and experience all in itself. I left the public facility so traumatized by the lack of American hygiene, we walked down a random street, saw someone selling felt, bought fifteen yards and left. I am quite sure we weren't in the Fabric area, as this was one random street stall and the actual street has twenty different shops, but I needed to get the kids and myself home for decontamination.

The next weekend, we bravely headed back to the markets looking for the 'party supply' street. This was moderately more successful and we left in better sorts.

Back to the party...
We were lucky enough to have my parents visiting for two weeks in November, so we held the celebration while they could attend. In total, we had six adults and nine kids. We had a super hero obstacle course with toilet-paper grenades and a pillow gauntlet, target practice with ping-pong balls and water guns, and a capturing of a villain. The kids had a blast and were awarded with super hero training certificates at the end. C had a great time with all of his friends and was very happy his Dad and NaNa & PaPa got to share in his special day.



 As an educational note, HK is very accepting of various vultures and ethnicities since there are so
many expatriots. However, some of the working class citizens do not routinely encounter ex-pats because of our differences in geographical location, sight-seeing spots, and day-to-day differences.