This question comes up almost daily. It can take on many forms and mean many things depending on the situation of person being asked that question.
I sometimes wonder what “tone” is behind that question. Do people ask because they want to know and wish the best for you? Do people want to know because they think you are crazy for moving to another country and they want you to say you hate it?
Most of the time I jokingly answer, “everyone is happy and no one has died”. There are times when we get homesick, but still, more often than not, we are all pretty happy.
Here are some of the things we have done recently:
Spanish Galleon ship Andalucia
One of our friends took a wrong turn and ended up in Kowloon instead of going to Clearwater Bay. Lucky us, because if she didn’t we would have never had known about this ship. The Andalucia is a replica of a galleon that would have sailed from Spain to the America’s. It was pretty interesting, and honestly, I was in awe of it … when I wasn’t feeling like I was going to hurl from the rocking motion of the ship.
What a great thing that I got to experience with the girls and the other friends we went with. If we were actually going to a school, the three of us would have not gotten to see this because it was only here for 4 days, and only open during the school day hours. This was one of the many experiences I hoped to get from homeschooling the girls.
National Day – October 1, 2010
Jonathan got the day off work and it was really a great day. We went to lunch … Burger King (sounds awful, but sometimes, you just need a reminder of home so that you DON’T get homesick) and then went to the Wan Chai Computer Center. Jonathan had read on the internet that this was THE place to go if you needed computer stuff. We walked in and it was a flea market of all computer geek stuff. It was a building filled with little kiosks about 10x10 that were crammed full of geek out stuff. We needed to go there to get some more memory for the girls’ laptops, which we found almost immediately. We explored the rest of the ground floor and then moved up to the next two. We found a great Apple seller that had an older model of Mac book pro for $US900. It was a bit tempting … but we didn’t buy it!
Autumn Festival/Lantern Festival
A week ago was the Autumn Festival and the Lantern Festival. This festival is based on the Full moon in the 8th lunar month. During the time of the festival, you eat a pastry called Moon Cakes. Traditional moon cakes have a sweet bean paste along with a salted egg yolk. The bean paste is pretty traditional in Asian culture and the yolk represents the full moon. Many moon cakes have been “Westernized” are also now filled with things like chocolate, custard and nuts. We got some from Disney that were in the shape of Mickey and Minnie. Others have taken a more “adult” approach to Moon cakes.
We went to Victoria Park to partake in the festival. It was really very beautiful. They had lights and Lanterns everywhere.
During this time period they also have a “Fire Dragon” in one neighborhood near us. The story goes that in 1880 the fisherman from this neighborhood slayed a serpent from the sea, and after doing so, a plague broke out in their village. During the plague, a old village man saw Buddha and he told him to perform a “Fire Dragon Dance” and light firecrackers and the sulfur would drive away the disease. They have being doing this ever since. The dragon is 220 feet long and the body is divided into 32 segments. They burn close to 70,000 sticks of incense over a 3 day period.
High School Musical
In June we saw that HSM would be coming to HK. We thought that it might be a nice treat for the girls to take them to see it. We didn’t tell them where we were going, but at a week out Jonathan gave them each a clue a day, and they had figured it out by Thursday. They had a great time.
Disney – Halloween
KPMG bought ticket for each family to attend Disney and bought each family dinner at one of four restaurants. It was really a nice treat because Disney had just rolled out Halloween. It was GREAT. I loved seeing the villains and all the Halloween stuff. We went through two haunted houses and the girls had a great time. One of the best times was during the villain parade at the end. I loved it, and so did everyone else!
Home School
This is really going well. We have gotten into a routine and the girls seem to be adjusting well to it. We have daily subjects of Spelling, Math, Geography, LA, and Math word problems. On Wednesday’s we do a co-op called “Mapping the World” where the girls learn to draw the world from memory. Even if they don’t actually memorize it, it is really nice for them to learn what countries are out in the world, rather than thinking that the US is the center of it all! We are also incorporating museum trips and zoo visits on these co-op days.
Hipstamatic
After seeing our friend Joe’s pictures on facebook, I decided to give this gadet a try. You can download it from ITunes for your Iphone. I have to say, I LOVE it. I bought the black and white film and some more lens (99 cents each) and found a great new way to take pictures from the Iphone camera. I love the “old” look that it creates, but I also love the “artsy” look that I can get from it. You can see that many of my pictures are now coming from this application.
Funny enough, Jonathan did NOT like it at first, but has really liked some of the pictures that it takes. I’m sure you will be seeing it on his FB page too!
Next Up:
2 Peaks race for Jonathan on Lantau Island – 12 miles
Moontrekker run – 23 miles at night over a mountain (I don’t really get it either)
Beijing and Xi’An
