HKG004 : Decisions, Decisions

today was pretty damn awesome. granted, it started a little early for the kids and a lot early for me and josh...turns out that the jet lag thing doesn't just make little people wake up early. 3:45 was feeling a lot like 7ish for us this morning, and it was very hard to convince our bodies that it was not time to be up for the day. it did not help that after struggling to get back to sleep ourselves, the kids were up between 6 and 6:15. josh says he read somewhere that it takes one day for each hour of the time difference to adjust...so i guess we are four days into our 14-day jet lag journey. though it hasn't been a cake walk dealing with the fatigue and weird schedules, it's really not that bad...especially since we know we won't have to make this adjustment again for about a year when we come back to the states to visit.

the kids and i started the day at our newly favorite playground while josh got some stuff done, and we had a BALL. the kids both made some friends and had a ton of fun playing for more than an hour. livie had such a great time with another little girl that we made tentative plans to play with her in the mornings. when he wasn't having a bunch of fun with a couple other little boys, quinn had a couple of semi-serious falls that resulted in a bruised chin and a scraped nose and upper lip. true to quinn form, he was barely bothered.

once josh was ready to meet up with us, we embarked on some errands. first up was a trip to a barber for josh, and a trip to a pharmacy and grocery store for me and the kids. we expected josh's haircut to take about 15 minutes. after an hour or so of shopping and wandering back to check if josh was waiting for us, we finally went into the barber shop to see what was going on. boy were we surprised when we walked into a very luxurious salon to see josh having individual hairs cut by a tiny pair of scissors and a very dedicated stylist! we were welcomed in and allowed to let the kids play in the kids cut area. we also got to play with two small frou frou dogs who "worked" there. it took another 20 minutes or so for josh's hair to be done. it looks great and he had a very relaxing experience for a mere $30 in u.s. dollars, but good lord....90 minutes for a guy's cut!!! i had been thinking about getting my hair cut as well today, but i figure i couldn't spare the 3 hours it would take to cut my hair since i have a lot more hair than josh does ;-p

after the haircut, we stopped at an italian deli for lunch. omigod. i was transported back in time to the smells and sights in my nana's house. wow. there were all sorts of homemade pastas and sauces, big blocks of gourmet cheeses, gellato, interesting italian sodas, AND grocery items. it was a truly delicious lunch! taz, i am sorry, but i was too busy stuffing my face to remember to take a pic. i promise to get a pic the next time i go there, which should be very soon!

after the lunch, we got on a tram to head out to the piers to catch a ferry to lantau island. the tram system was super easy to use and VERY cheap; i am glad we tried that out today. we headed to lantau island because we wanted to see what it was like and to see if we could look at some apartments. it turned out to be a very fun and very productive trip. lantau island is absolutely beautiful...it's like a gigantic sandals resort...beautiful buildings, sand, and palm trees everywhere. lantau island is more populated than lamma island, but is not as busy as hong kong island. it was FULL of expats and the setup/feel of it was very western. we heard english being spoken all around us. the apartments we saw were some of the biggest we have seen and were reasonably priced considering the size. even after all of that, though, we were not sold on choosing lantau island as our home.

why? you ask....well, we are now facing an interesting decision. when we were in texas, we assumed that we would naturally gravitate toward living in the quieter and more spacious areas of hong kong. now that we have been here for several days and especially since we have been in happy valley, we are finding that we actually REALLY like the hustle and bustle of hong kong. we like the sights and sounds and smells. though we feel pretty lost sometimes b/c of the language barrier and lack of familiarity, we like the challenge. our decision now is whether we want to go for comfort or for experience. we figure that we did not come 7500 miles to put ourselves in a situation similar to what we had in pflugerville; we came to challenge ourselves, experience something outside our norm, and learn something (lots of somethings). we are very strongly leaning toward choosing an apartment here in happy valley or in another part of this very busy, very interesting, and very lively island! we expect to make a decision tomorrow night.