HKG039: Hong Kong IDs

happy bug enjoying the playscape. she found a friend who was a little older than her and also very adventurous on the playground equipment, so she got pretty brave trying some new stuff...she did great. random note...this playscape is from nebraska. i am still very intrigued by the fact that every single playset we have seen, and we've seen many, is from somewhere in north america. the playset on the apartment playground is from ontario, canada.

quinn out cold. while i was waiting for quinn to wake up (and keeping his stroller positioned to keep him from folding double), i was sitting beside two senior locals who stared at quinn and talked about him the entire time he was asleep. they were pretty interested when he woke up and scarfed his chicken nuggets, too :-)

today was a day spent in bureaucracy. first, we headed down to the immigration office to apply for our hong kong IDs. later in the day, josh spent quality time playing email ping pong with folks in the ESF system. it's not looking good. the schools are way over enrolled and the wait list is very long. we are currently researching other options.

the immigration process was relatively quick and painless, but it was with two small children in tow, so no matter how short and efficient the process, there's going to be some level of mutiny. the clerks who helped us took pity on the kids and gave them warm smiles and biscuits. i think the crowd that was waiting for the last station was pretty glad to see us go, though. by the time we reached that phase, the mutiny was getting louder and more insistent.

after we finished at the immigration office, we headed to a mcd's for lunch. it was a nightmare. i don't know why we keep doing this to ourselves except that it's familiar and relatively fast. there's just no place to sit. the situation was complicated by a comatose quinn all balled up in josh's arms making it difficult for him to eat.

quinn remained asleep through that adventure, a walk to a park, and almost an hour of sissy playing at the park. he woke up happy, gobbled his room-temp nuggets, slurped some sprite (that's a rare treat, so he went a little crazy when i took it away), and then played for a bit before we had to go find a bus and head back home. the rest of the afternoon was discombobulated b/c of the crazy morning, lunch, and stroller nap.

tomorrow promises some more mundane adventures as we head back to the bank to rectify a small issue. hopefully, that won't be too painful, and once we are done there, i think the kids and i will head out for some kind of adventure. we'll see how we are all doing in the morning.

HKG038: There's a Lesson Around Here Somewhere....

....i believe it is "don't go open air market shopping with the kiddos and NOT expect a lot of tears!"

this is the aftermath of allowing a 2yo to have chocolate pancakes (with ice cream) for dinner.

q looking soooo sad on the mtr (this was on the way to dinner after the disaster at the market)...a minute later, he was laughing hysterically as josh played a game with him that left him hanging off this grip. sometimes, it's really hard to get q to smile/laugh, and other times, it's super easy and his pure joy gets the rest of us laughing right along with him.

kids snuggling on a bench at the zoo

flamingos...not pictured (or heard) is a major flamingo throwdown. there were some flamingo words being shared...unhappily. it was entertaining and LOUD!

very tall crane-like bird

timeout for snuggles in one of the botanical gardens that surrounds the zoo.

today started out pretty slow...just putzing around the apartment for a while before heading out to the zoo. our new apartment is a mere three stops from the zoo...very different from getting lost for eight hours before finding the zoo like we did a few weeks ago. today, more of the animals were out and about, and many more people were, too, since today was a public holiday. we had a great time at the zoo, and then returned home for what was supposed to be quinn's nap. you know where this went, right? *sigh*

after a non-napping afternoon, we headed out again to check out the ladies market in mong kok. this was an adventure of epic proportions. the crowd was immense, the market was densely packed with merchants and wares (and very little walking room), and the kids were on their absolute worst behavior. there was much potential for this outing to be fun, but alas, it was not. there's nothing worse than trying to bargain with a merchant while your kid's screaming bloody murder for the toy you are bargaining for.

after much angst and woe and two quickly-procured small toys (one of which produced many, many tears because it was not the coveted toy that cost a ridiculous fortune), we headed toward the tsing sha sui area of kolwoon to look for dinner and then to pick up the star ferry to head back to central. josh tells me that this particular ferry ride is on the 101 things to do before you die list.

dinner was an adventure; we went to a place that was called a pancake house, but it was actually a chinese restaurant that offered a few western-style dishes, lots of chinese food, and had a pancake dessert menu. being the stellar examples of parenthood that we are, we got the kids these pancakes, which come with ice cream, for dinner. josh and i shared an alfredo seafood dish and an appetizer of rice pasta stir fried in a delicious asian sauce called XO sauce. the food was great, but it just wasn't enough to keep us full with the four hours of walking we did this afternoon. josh and i are both hungry again. it's a good thing i made a pan of apple crumb cake this afternoon (another recipe i got from my favorite cooking message board)!

HKG037: Just a Monday

taking time out to model

livie's stellar manicure administered by me. quinn has a matching manicure...i tried to give him just the black paint, but he wanted the pink, too. we recently have begun to have evidence that quinn might be color blind (no. really. i am serious.), so maybe he thought the pink was green. i dunno. he WANTED it, though. josh seems to have survived the reveal okay ;-p

bug took this serious self portrait

today was super low key. we needed to stay around the apartment to wait for UPS to pick up the bikes and trailer to ship back to texas and for apartment repair folks to repair a toilet. we were fine with having a quiet day, and i daresay we actually enjoyed it. i got the kids out to the playground a couple times for short stints, and that kept them pretty happy.

in other random news, i learned today that my crockpot from home just won't work here. the voltage converters we came with didn't work at all, so josh picked up a special converter last week...a fancy schmancy one that was rather pricey...after two hours, the converter overheated and the whole shebang just shut down. it was a good thing we were home, otherwise, i would have come home to a ruined dinner. i am not sure if i will look for a crockpot here or just go without while we are here. we had crockpot korean-style ribs tonight, and even though the crockpot quit mid-way through the cook time, the ribs were still good...not as tender as they might have been, but still pretty tasty.

HKG036 : Fooooooooooodddddddd!

i guess foreigners need extra beer?

bug helping me make cookies

boys relaxing

livie took this pic of the playground...with people actually on it! we are lucky if we see one other kid on this playground each time we go to it.

sissy took this pic of q playing kneebouncers on my computer

livie took this pic of the foggy window and surrounding apartment buildings

not that great of a pic, but it was a pretty yummy meal!

today was a pretty quiet day...we mostly putzed around the house and recovered from our busy day yesterday. i finally got to catch up with my mom...haven't talked to her in two weeks b/c of our skype issues. i also spent some time cleaning, shopping, and cooking. cleaning this place is a snap...i think i am really liking this smaller space...it took me about an hour...maybe an hour and twenty to clean the whole place. i did the cleaning in spurts, and some stuff, like the floors, was messed up again by the time i finished everything else, but man, that's no time!

i also had some fun picking up special ingredients for a dinner i made tonight. i made this recipe along with some green beans and some beer bread. i have been craving beer bread since we left texas, and now that i have my nifty 3-in-1 oven, i can make it. today, i used guinness along with a sugar by the brand name taikoo. it's not a refined sugar, and i think that added a lot to the bread...it was sweeter, but also more flavorful. it was downright delicious...half the loaf is already gone!

other than the domestic bliss, we mostly just stayed quiet today. it was a nice, relaxing day. this week will be a little different...josh is off work on tuesday for the ching ming festival, so he will stay in hong kong for work this week instead of going to GZ for part of the week (since he loses tuesday in the GZ office). the kids and i have far fewer house things to get done, so we are going to catch up on fun. i think we might go up to the zoo again and maybe to the snoopy park we've been wanting to see. i've also been looking around for kids' activities and classes...i am finding some stuff, but unfortunately, there's not a lot that is suitable for both kids...most classes are grouped by age in such a way that someone is being left out. i will keep looking, but it looks like we won't do any class stuff until sissy is in school...then i can take q to some classes since he's not really gotten this opportunity yet (except for miss jeanette's music class in pville, which he used as an opportunity to terrorize the pville rec center (wreck center when q's around)).

HKG035: Macau (or Macao)

bug sliding at qube...that's her in the middle

bug giving me "dramatic" face at the end of the slide

stopped for a snack at the venetian. the food court here was interesting in that all restaurants served food and beverages on real plates and cups...i saw very few disposable items.

pic with the fake venice canals at the venitian

click the pic to see the funny sign inside that store with the green lighting

click the picture to see what we found to be a funny name for this pho place

within five minutes of being in macau, my hong kong drop phone started buzzing with spam text

quinn enjoyed climbing through this rope course at qube

quinn especially enjoyed this ball pit at qube...this was in a "baby" section labeled as being for quiblings...younger siblings of the big kids on the big slides and climbers. i thought the terminology was cute!

peyton f., this picture is especially for you...livie took this for you...she thought you might like to see this "cranky the crane" on the construction site next to our apartment building.

some of our groceries were frozen and came packed with dry ice. josh gave the kids a little dry ice show.

josh unpacking some of our delivered groceries

josh unpacking more of our delivered groceries

today started out nice and slow with a couple cups of coffee, an easy breakfast, and groceries delivered to the house. there is a wellcome half a block from our new apartment, but because this area is so hilly/steep, the grocery store is two stories...this makes it nearly impossible to navigate with the kids (q in the stroller). i have been doing our grocery shopping at night the nights that josh is here. this works out okay, but the grocery store also provides delivery and online shopping, so i gave that a try. it was quite fun. i scheduled delivery for this evening, but our stuff showed up before 11 this morning. that worked out okay today, but could have been disastrous...we had intended to be on our way to macau before 11, but it just so happened we didn't get out on time. we will try the delivery thing again and make sure that we have no big plans on the day we expect the delivery to be made.

we headed out for macau around noon. the journey was a little longer than we expected...we were on a high-speed ferry, but the trip was still about an hour (we mistakenly thought it would be about 30 minutes). when you get to the pier in macau, there are all sorts of hotel shuttles you can ride for free...we hopped on the shuttle for the venetian, and this turned out to be a great idea. there was a ton to look at there...we spent a lot of time just wandering and getting a snack. we decided to head out after an hour or so thinking we would just head back to hong kong, but on our way out, we passed by a kids' play area called qube. the kids haven't had a whole lot of fun this week b/c there's just been too much to do with setting up the new place, so we decided to take them into the play area. they had an absolute ball, and we're glad we did that. after playing for a while, it was time for dinner, so we grabbed some pizza/paninis, and then headed back to hong kong.

it was an exciting and tiring day. we are happy to have active visas and to be ready to take the next step of getting our IDs.

HKW05: Random Observations

1. going grocery shopping online is fun...and surprising. there were a few things i needed but did not order online because i could not decipher some of the descriptions. it will take more practice for me to "get it."
2. i don't know what a urinating beef fish ball is, and i don't WANT to know.
3. 3-in-1 ovens ROCK!
4. walking the hills around here to shop and get the kids to the park is really good exercise.
5. in my continued search for a group of moms to meet up with, i have found some interesting concepts. apparently, the fact that i am a stay-at-home-mom that actually stays at home WITH the kids is rare. i keep finding all these mom groups with events for ladies lunch and tea and shopping...no kids allowed. hmmmm.
6. i am loving that the walk home from the grocery store is downhill.
7. i have not ridden a public bus in almost 9 days. the shuttle that serves our apartment is genius.
8. while i don't see as many dogs here as i did in happy valley, i am starting to notice more and more dogs. shop cats seem to be somewhat common here; there's a real estate office around the corner that has two kitty ambassadors. i am tempted to go in and fake looking for property just so i can scratch those kitty ears and chins.
9. i have missed cooking...i mean, really cooking...using up every pot and pan in the house and making something besides a one-pot-meal. it is much harder to cook a big meal here b/c we have just two pots and three burners. i am falling in love with my new oven, though.
10. i cooked and cleaned everything that wasn't nailed down today, and i thoroughly enjoyed myself.
11. olivia and quinn are my goodwill ambassadors. when they are with me, the people who run the front desk/lobby here are super friendly. when the kids are not with me, i am invisible. in fact, i got "carded"...meaning a security guard stopped me to ensure i belong in this building (there are few westerners in the building, so i do kinda stand out as an odd ball).
12. when i cook, i like to share. livie and i baked a couple dozen cookies today. we made up a small pack to give to the guys at the front desk in our building. they had NO idea what to do with that...tried to take just one cookie and give the tin back...took some explaining that the whole thing was for them. i have a lot to learn about the culture here.

HKG034: Furniture, School, and Internet

part of livie's finished room...her dresser and egg chair. that's a stack of blankets and quinn's monkey on the dresser...not sure how sissy inherited the monkey.

view of livie's new bunk bed and the stuffed animal zoo in the window

another view of sissy's new bunk bed

exhausted mommy trying to look rejuvenated by the makeover that livie just did...not succeeding

nakie baby. if this kid could manage it, he'd never get dressed. his favorite thing to do is scamper off after his bath shouting NO when you tell him it's time for a fresh diaper and jammies. lately, i keep finding him with his pants around his knees or ankles...this is the problem with using disposable diapers. he's skinny enough that when he's not wearing a cloth diaper, his pants hang on him and he can pull them down easily. i can't wait until we start potty training and he's whipping off the pants to "practice."

this is our room...still a work in progress, but we've come a long way from sleeping on an air mattress on the floor!

other side of our room...there's only about 6 inches between the foot board and the wall...will have to do some creative rearranging once the bike boxes are out. our headboard has a built-in/removable shelving system that we would like to keep for the storage, but we've got to move it somewhere else so the bed's not so close to the wall.

this is 5 minutes after the movers finished assembling the beds...they couldn't wait to have a fake sleepover. there were some tears when quinn figured out he wasn't sleeping in this bed tonight.

another view of q's room...notice the decor on his headboard...we handed him a pack of toy story stickers and told him to go wild. i did find a few on the wood floor that i had to scrub off, but for the most part, he decorated his bed.

livie's self portrait of her halloween socks. she explained to me that she was taking a pic b/c they are halloween socks and it's not halloween. at least she understands that. she's not bothered by it, but she understands it.

livie's self portrait for today. wanna take bets that her left front tooth will be the first one to fall out sometime this year or next? this is the tooth she injured when she was two...it is now dead, which is why it is discolored. it's only been the last six months or so that i've really noticed the discoloration...i wonder if that means the tooth is getting ready to come out. fortunately, livie is unaware of the discoloration, and no one has pointed it out to her.

today's been pretty productive. i got livie signed up for kindergarten (preschool) today. in somewhat related news, i have recently gotten some information that has made it clear that we were WRONG about when livie is supposed to be in school. we want to enroll her in the ESF system, and going by their rules, she is to start year 1 in the fall of the year in which she turns five. that's this year, not 2012 like we thought. so, not only did we get her into a kindergarten today, we are narrowing down the ESF schools we want to apply to. this is not going to be a fun task. the ESF school that is for our area is at max capacity and has very long wait lists, so the chances she will go to the school she's "meant" to go to are slim to none. *sigh*

i am quite excited about the kindergarten, though. we got an impromptu and informal tour on wednesday, which left me with a very positive feeling. the official tour today cemented that for me. i've also run into 3 different expat families from 3 different countries who have highly recommended this school.

after our exciting morning of getting livie into school, we came home for an early lunch and early nap (certain people were exhausted from several days of boycotted naps) and to wait for the rest of our furniture to be delivered. as of this evening, we all have beds to sleep on (and a cushion-y sofa to sit on). woooo hoooo! the last big task is to ship our bikes and bike trailer back to texas, which happens on monday, and then we will be free of boxes and strangely arranged furniture.

this afternoon, josh brought home a little gift for me...a wireless LAN card to do the job my network adapter is not. this is the first blog post i've been able to write in less than 2 hours for the last 10 days. wooooooooooooo hooooooooooooo. this also means i can catch up on skyping with friends and family........wooooooooooooooooooooooooo hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

tomorrow, we have to leave the country briefly to activate our visas...we all finally have visas, which means we can now apply for IDs and finally be official here. this also means we can begin traveling...up to now, we have been unable to leave hong kong (except josh who is able to work in mainland china). we are headed to macau, a nearby island that is not considered part of hong kong island. we will head out for a little sight seeing and lunch before we come back into the country to activate our visas.