The highs and lows of the week

Last week was one of those weeks. 

Teaching
I gave up teaching Hannah on Wed-Saturday.  I got completely fed up with the mistakes that are done over and over again ... and then over and over again.  So, she was on her own.  She took a math test, got a 55% on it and I just handed it to Jonathan.  (JC was actually trying to study on his own stuff.  Yelling wife+daughter with a crappy test score = not a good study time).

What to do?  I'm not really sure at this point.  JC has already committed the money to a tutor when we get back.  I am back to teaching today, and it is better, but the real test will be what happens by Friday?

Hiking

We actually got to go on a nice long hike in Tai Po this week.  We met up with 2 other families and hiked for around 5 hours.  The girls did great.  We all had a great time and some great conversations with lots of laughs.

Booking Easter ...
Easter week in Hong Kong ... know as Holy week, not to be confused with Holly week, (which is one of those things I have seen on some booking sites).  Last year, the Spengler's came to HK, so we spent the week here, not really doing much of anything, but enjoying the weather and the beach.  Because of this, we didn't know how expensive it was going to be to go somewhere or how hard it was going to be to book something 8-6 weeks out.

This year, we thought we would go take a 3 day 2 night cruise on Halong Bay in Vietnam, then head to Hanoi or Ho Chi Min.  After getting a quote of $8000 USD for a week trip, I said No.  Jonathan tried to hard to make traveling to Vietnam work.  He cut the days on the cruise from 3 to 2 and then fly back to HK, he tried some different dates, different cruise lines, ect.  I took a different approach, why not do Boracay now, and tack Halong Bay to the end of New Zealand?  (Club Med in Malaysia was also thrown around my head)

So, without consulting JC, I called the Patty and Kevin and asked them if they wanted to meet up somewhere warm for Easter.  They were in.  Now the big question ... could we find a place to go, preferably in Boracay, but maybe someplace else that was warm.  K & P were coming from Shanghai, so their tickets and schedule would cost more and be a little more complicated than ours.  Again, we threw around Club Med, Malaysia, Boracay and warmer parts of China. 

We skyped on Sunday morning, narrowed down a hotel/apt/villa with a couple of rooms, got the confirmation on it and started to book our flights.  (Oh, how I love technology when it works!)  Things were falling into place!  Jonathan then got an email from the hotel, telling us, "sorry, but I forgot to close out the reservation system, and the rooms that you booked, and we confirmed, aren't actually available to you.

What the  .... (I'm sure you can fill in the blank if you know us at all!)  Jonathan sent another email back to the person letting her know that it really wasn't acceptable and that we booked flights based on the confirmation.  Well, that stirred up some creativity on their part.  We got the 2 bedroom (for K, P, and the boys) for the week then we will start with a 3, move to a 2 for 3 nights and then finally move back to a 3 bedroom for the last 4 - the addition of 20% off sealed the deal for us.  (It's always about the numbers!)  It looks like the trip is back on ... and moving forward.  Now the hard part ... waiting until April 2 to leave!

We are at T-14 weeks.  Holy crap, this is going to go by fast!