HKG274: Public Transpo FAIL

today, q and i had the opportunity to have lunch out....with real, live people! the kind-hearted mom i was talking to during the party livie attended on sunday invited me and q to meet up with her and two of her friends for lunch.

we had a great time, but the lunch ran a tiny bit late. i thought "no problem, i'll catch a cab back into central in time to meet livie's afternoon bus." i was in TST. for the life of me, i can NEVER get a cab to take me cross harbor (i have tried and failed at least five times).

for whatever reason, traffic was heavy this afternoon, and it took almost 10 minutes to find an empty cab. i found one, told him i needed to go cross harbor, and he gave me an emphatic "NO!" at this point, it was clear i was not going to get back to central in time to meet livie's bus, so i called the school and asked them to keep her there/not let her get on the bus. thank god i had that option.

q and i ended up taking the MTR, which was always an option (and a cheap one)...but it's pretty slow to get through the train station, get through the turnstiles, and get on a train...which is why i was trying to catch a cab to begin with.

livie survived her extended day, though she was sad and scared, which broke my heart. we made a special deal out of it...walked to a cool park near livie's school, went for ice cream, went to another park, and then stopped off at one of our favorite minimarts to get some fresh fruit and other necessities.

it was a pretty great day barring the 30 minutes of stress around being late to get livie. tomorrow, all of our goods begin their journey back to texas!

kids climbing at the first park

q is right in the midst of the I DO IT MYSELF phase, and here he is trying to get himself situated on the swing.

while i was working on packing slips and reorganizing the bins tonight (a couple were not completely full, so i had to rearrange/repack (if the bins are not packed super tightly, stuff breaks)), i moved this cushion to the top of a crate. waffle hopped up there as fast as he could and then gave me his regal "you put this here for me, right?!" look.

comatose q. he fell asleep on the train. standing up. he got a lot of giggles from a lot of people around us. he slept through three stops on the train, me carrying him through the turnstiles (which we barely fit through), through the train station, for the entire duration of a 30-minute wait in a taxi queue, in the taxi, and up and down the stairs at livie's school. he did not wake up until she came out of her classroom. i wish i could sleep like that!