And we begin ….

A few weeks ago, Jonathan had these great plans to pack up the house while he was not working and going into the office. Those plans quickly changed when other things came up for the move, reading and working out. So when we thought that the last days would be spent relaxing, that just wasn’t the case. We did, however, get everything done, on time … and I guess that was the outcome that needed to happen.

Wednesday morning was another story. We spent the night at my mom’s house, which was great for all of us. I was awake by 5:15 with my Dad and then started to wake up everyone around 6 so that we could all shower and eat breakfast. Mom had made French toast and some bacon … two of the girl’s favorite things. We actually left the house around 7:30, which has to be a miracle for 6 people to do all that in 1.5 hours. We got to the Hillbrooke house around 8:15 after a quick stop at Target. We had a few friends stop by to say some tearful goodbyes. I had asked my friend Tammy to help take us to the airport. She took one for the team, and helped out!


When we finally got to the airport, we had to check 9 suitcases, 8 carry on’s and 4 people. It took us around 30 minutes to get it all checked in. I had called Delta 3 days prior to check to see if we could be upgraded. Score.. We could, and it only cost us 25K points, per person. This was well worth it. I told Jonathan that we should keep it as a nice surprise for the girls. We told my parents and a couple of other people, but the girls had NO idea. Jonathan really played up the fact that we were going to be sitting in the back of the plane, near the toilets (which originally wasn’t far from the truth). When we got to the airport, Gabby asked if she could buy a neck pillow because her bags were so heavy and she NEEDED one. I kept telling her no. and then as we were standing in line for boarding, she started to cry. As we boarded, I started up the stairs in the 747 … She immediately knew what that meant … we were in business class. The tears stopped as soon as she saw the pillow, blanket and travel kit.

The flight was not really bad at all. We were flying Atlanta to Tokyo (around 13 hours) and then onto Hong Kong. The first leg of the flight, we had no, I mean ZERO audio. This makes it really interesting when you want to watch a movie. Luckily, the girls had the laptops and the itouch’s. They ended up sleeping for around 5-6 hours each.. They gave us a money voucher for each of our seats to use on our next flight. We got to Tokyo with just about a 2 hour layover. The Delta crown room here is pretty nice. It had showers, food and beer. We boarded the plane again, heading to our new home.

As we touched down in HK, I told the girls … “We’re home”. They gave me a funny look and I think that had I not smiled at them, I would have puked a bit in my mouth.

We got through immigration pretty easily then it was onto grabbing our bags and then going through customs. This, by far, was the easiest custom’s I have EVER been though. We saw a sign that said, “If you have something to declare, enter here” that was it. Everyone else went through the other side, and then we were free to enter. We found out taxi man, packed up the mini-van (which was really pretty nice --- almost even nicer than the Odyssey) and moved into our hotel at around 1AM on Friday. As it goes, most of the time we arrive and need to eat right away. McDonald was right across the street … our first meal in HK! We ate and finally went to bed around 2:30 AM.


We set the alarm for 5:30 so JC could go out for a short run and scope out the area. We had made an apt to get an employment letter from JC’s company and then another apt 11 to get our HK ID card. Now, onto the bank … we opened an account at HSBC … which we later found out was a bank we could NOT bank at because KPMG audit’s them. Damn … 2.5 hours down the drain
Interesting Fact: People in Hong Kong really like to stamp things. They just don’t stamp with a “copy” stamp, but also stamp their names, company names ect. When we opened our account there were no less than 15 stamps on all of our papers.

Interesting Fact: Don’t bring all your money in Amex Travelers checks. Most banks can only cash in $US1000 at a time. This does NOT help if you are opening a bank account.

We made it until 6 that night and then woke up around 2 the next morning. This was not so great.

Saturday we were set to meet up with the Realtor that KPMG recommended to us. His name is Thomas, and really is a great guy that has helped us tremendously. We started looking in Discovery Bay. After taking the Ferry over from Central, we walked out and it looked and felt like we were at some kind of resort. There were SO many white people, I almost couldn’t believe it. I was shocked. I was told that there were a great number of expats here, but this was really crazy. We sat down in the plaza had some coffee an then walked around for a bit. I have a hard time trying to describe the feeling, but it was kind of like Panama City beach and Disney world combined. We saw around 8 -10 apt and really liked 2 of them. We were ready to put an offer in for one that was close to the pier and close to the plaza. The other realtor told us we needed to do it soon, because the landlord had already received an offer. JC and I discussed it and decided that we weren’t going to rush into anything, and weather this was a ploy or an actual event, we hadn’t seen enough of the areas in HK to make that decision.

On Sunday, Thomas took us in his car to look at some other areas on HK Island. We had already explored Happy Valley earlier in the day and found that we liked the area. It was close enough to Central for Jonathan, but still gave us a little more space and still felt like we were getting the HK experience. We drove through all three Mid-levels, Cyber Point and Aberdeen. We really felt like Happy Valley was the place we wanted to be. We took a look at one apt that day, and asked Thomas if he could find us a 3 bedroom 2 bath apt there … that also had an oven.

We also got cell phones on Sunday. This was quite an adventure. I had to decide if I wanted an I phone or a Blackberry. I chose the I phone. So, we bought that, we also bought the girls cell phones. I would have normally objected to this if we were back in the States, but here, after seeing the amount of people everywhere, I felt it was a necessity. While Jonathan was figuring out all the plans and such, I made my way outside to just stand and watch. (I really love people watching. I think that you can learn so much from it!) I found out Sunday is the day the Ama’s (Nanny’s) get off. Most of them are from Thailand and Philippines and they gather together on their day off. I guess they gather in Causeway Bay because there were gaggles of them in all the stores.

I can’t remember Monday … I’m sure it involved Eating, sleeping and the MTR

Tuesday – We moved to a serviced apt near the airport. This is on Lantau Island, the same island that Discovery Bay is on. During this move and after looking around the area, we thought that being on HK Island was the right choice. (If you look back in the blog, you will see this was one of our first choices when we were researching things in HK). We chose this serviced apt because it was really the only thing in our price range that offered 3 bedrooms. It also has a pool area for the girls and some other rec areas.

The rest of the week has been spent getting one more cell phone for us and then just exploring the area.

Today, Saturday, we are now at the pool and don’t really have much planned for today. Rob is coming here next weekend (on business) and so hopefully we will be able to go and do some things with him next Saturday night and Sunday.