Easter Post 2011

First Happy Easter.  What a beautiful day in Hong Kong.  Sunny, upper 70s and no, yes, no humidity. It’s one of those rare days when the rain front has blown everything out.  We started the day with the arrival of the Easter bunny that came in the night to fill up Maggie and Nicholas’ baskets. Then a quick dress, Skype with the Ericksons’ and off to church.

We decided to continue to go to the Cathedral which is about 5-10 minutes away by cab. Cel, Katy, Maggie, Nicholas and I piled in a cab and we were off.  The mass was very nice. Katy found a restaurant Café Deco on the top of the Peak for an Easter brunch.  After mass, another cab to the Peak and off to brunch.  It was great. Parents take note:  they had a kids’ play area AND a magician AND an egg hunt around the restaurant while the waiters refilled your glass with sparkling wine.  I highly recommend.  

Afterwards, Maggie had the idea to take the Peak Tram down the mountain to the city.  We did and found a taxi back to Bamboo Grove.  A very pleasant day. Nicholas is asleep and we will have our ham dinner with carrot cake later.

Now a couple of behind the scenes stories about how we made Easter happen…….

I am sure that after some more time here we will figure out the small random stores that carry this, and we are told they do, but after 3 months, we still are working our way through the details of each holiday.

Maggie’s Easter Bonnet.  Somewhere we missed that on the week before Easter Maggie was to make and bring an Easter Bonnet to school for a parade and egg hunt. We found out the5 days before the event.  OK so generally we know to get a hat, and decorations: plastic flowers, ribbon, bows, you know.  For us that would mean a trip to Target and a trip to Michaels.  Here not so much. What’s a Carolina Tar heel to do?  Text the British nanny.  We texted Gail and she quickly said, yes, understood, and pointed us to 2 street markets one in Wan Chai and one in central.  Thank God for these Hong Kong street markets.  Basically if you can triangulate what you need with the right market, you are set.  Need a kids costume, you are set. Need toys, candy, fruit, chicken, baby turtles for pets, fish, gold fish, knock off purses, there is a stall in a market for you.

First stop Wan Chai.  Basically a walk away.  I find a nice pink hat. Check.  Then during lunch, I head over to a market in Central, which I kid you not, is like a Michaels and a fabric store exploded into a 2 block permanent street market.  SCORE.  Now it does appear rather odd and I kept repeating, “for my daughter,” to see a man in suit buying pink fabric flowers, pink ribbon and pink butterfly decorations, but I got everything to decorate a hat…and Maggie was happy.

Egg Dyeing.  In the States, white eggs are well everywhere.  Here not so much.  We have seen them. But when you are looking to buy them, they are nowhere to be found.  So we ended up with brown eyes.  Google says that will work. Google is WRONG.  What we found midway through the egg dyeing was that if you double up the dye tablets, it works fine.  So new note: want to use brown eggs, need to double up the tablets for each color.  Better Alternative: look harder for white eggs.

Chocolates.  Finding a nice middle “Target like” price range for Easter candy is dodgy (oops, I think I am turning British.)  A lot of high end candy and candy from somewhere in China, but alas no Target.  If you are curious the closest Target is in Sydney. So we ended up with some high end candy and local candy.

Easter Ham. This is more difficult than white eggs.  Katy looked all over. There was even a post of another person asking where to buy a ham in Hong Kong.  Apparently there are random super markets that might have them.   In the end we settled for a thick cut slice of ham for some astronomical amount.

Easter Baskets.  In another moment of brilliance, Katy brought the baskets. But then we realized no straw. Well we had resigned ourselves to it, when a box came from my Aunt (Teta) Jane. She sent Easter candy and it was packed in, you guessed it, Easter basket straw, enough for both kids.  Way to go Teta!

So in the end, the Easter Bunny came to Hong Kong.  Both Maggie and Nicholas were thrilled.

April 23, 2011: Nicholas turns 2 in Hong Kong

Our Nicholas turned 2 today. For his one year old birthday, it rained and you guessed it rained for his 2 year old birthday. But really only in the morning.  The thing about Nicholas’ birthday in Hong Kong is that this year it is right in the middle of a long holiday weekend. In Hong Kong, Good Friday and the Monday after Easter are holidays. So many people take a 4 or 5 day weekend. Unfortunately some of his and our friends were not around. We were fortunate to celebrate with Maggie’s friend Alex and our new friends his parents.

We had a very nice gathering and Nicholas enjoyed himself.

April 14, 2011 Cel Arrives

My mother in law Cel (Cecelia Jennewein) is our first visitor. Or as I say "A Minnesotan Gopher in Chairman Wen's Court." Everyone is very excited.

We hope to have more family and friends visit during our stay.

Hong Kong Allergies

You are told that the allergies here are bad.  A mix of pollen and I am sure pollution. But wow, until it hits, it is an abstraction.  For the past 2 days, it's been bad.  Katy and Nicholas just got over it. And now it's my turn. Lucky I had some recent prescription allergy meds from the States. It helped this afternoon. I took the night one just now.

I miss the green pollen mist of Charlotte.

3 Month Mark

It’s hard to believe we are at the 3 month mark.  We were told that it takes about 2 to 3 months to set everything up.  I would agree that seems to be right.

Our last big transition was that our new domestic helper Eva started with us last week. For those of you who do not know, Hong Kong has a large domestic helper workforce primarily coming from the Philippines and Indonesia.  They repatriate their income back to their families.  They live with you.  The apartments have a so called “helper room”” in the back off of the kitchen.  They have Sundays off and usually do a mix of nanny, maid, cook and a lot of other things.  While Hong Kong has a very strict immigration and visa policy for these workers, their treatment varies wildly from employer to employer and as far as I can tell, these women have little recourse for bad treatment.  Some treat them as well as a nanny, some as poor as a servant with all the Filipino and Indonesian racist connotations thrown in that you can image.

So after about 3 “sirs” from Eva, I said, “Ok, Eva I am too American to keep this up.  Please call me David, or Mister David if you have to.  We are a team here.” She smiled and seems to understand.  I hope so. I know that 2 weeks won’t undue any hesitancy she has.

So how did we find Eva?  Finding a domestic helper is as you can image hard. While there are many women looking for work, it is hard to find the good ones. We got a lot of great advice.  We were blessed to have Eva come to us from a recommendation of another interviewee. One of the women we interviewed passed us along to Eva.  She was looking to leave her current employer.  We met, interviewed and got along great.  She is older with a grown son in the Philippines.

Eva’s primary job is watching Nicholas. One of the main challenges here in Hong Kong is the absence of any pre-3 year old daycare facilities for a working family.  They don’t exist. The assumption here is that one parent, a nanny or a helper stays at home.   Even at 2, the only programs are 1 hour so called “play groups.” Then after 2 and a couple months, the preschool starts to have longer programs.

So Eva watches Nicholas during the day. Our job is to book structured things he can go and do.  We have his playgroup at Woodland on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning for about an hour ½. Then we are looking at a Kinder music class, a gym class and rugby tots on Saturday.  While this seems a lot, it is just an hour and ½ each day.  There are also classes here at our apartment complex.  We are looking into enrolling Nicholas there as well.  Our life still revolved around his nap.

As a working family, that is the one thing we miss that hits home very day: First United Methodist Child Development Center in Charlotte, or 5 star day care/preschool,  or Ms Janice and her team!

The Day your Daughter Knows Her Way Around the Subway

Our apartment is close to a subway (MTR it is called here) station called Wan Chai. We all set out to take the MTR to the local furniture store for some odds and ends on Sunday. Now it is pretty busy in the Causeway Bay district because most domestic helpers from Indonesia and the Phillipines have off Sundays. Causeway Bay is one of many meeting points.  The trains are crowded and the stations are packed.

Maggie heads off in front of us, elbowing her way through the crowd, proudly declaring, "I know the way" as she steps on the escalator down to the train platform level. As we enter the station and take several escalators down to the train level, Maggie continues to walk 5 to 10 feet in front of us with an air of confidence.

When we came back, Katy and I both know our station as "Wan Chai."  Maggie looks up and says to us, "It's the green station." As if she is taking tourists around.  And you know what, she is right. Wan Chai is the Green Station.

So my 4 1/2 year old daughter can navigate the Hong Kong Subway system.

Day 91: Charlotte Dreamin

I am told that one's view of an expat assignment is a series of ups and down when you really enjoy Hong Kong them really miss the US and Charlotte.  These past couple of days, I think we all were in the missing Charlotte phase.  So it's day 90. Day 90.  Miss our friends. Miss our family.  Miss our street. (By the way McDonald Ave rules!!, yeah it does!!!!) Miss Maggie and Nicholas school. And you wonder, how bad have I f-ked up my kids by ripping them away from their friends and what they know. You do this little stressful freakout inside your head. You wake up at 3am and wonder "what the f-k?"  and you fret and fret and fret.

Then everything starts to erck you.  I know up to this point I have made Hong Kong out to be a Shangre La. So it will no doubt come as a shock to you to learn that in fact it is not.  In fact it is just like any other big cities with its own idioscracies, its own irritants. Thus I will list some out:

1. No one says "excuse me." they simply bump into you, walk directly in front of you, cut you off, well, you get the idea.

2. It is common practice to herd at the opening of an elevator as if it is the last one down from a burning building. And yes, getting off an elevator means you actually have to fight your way through this crowd as at the same time they are trying to push their way in.

3. The City is in a hurry to go, well, I don't know.  But they are in a hurry.  Everyone is in a hurry. Everyone. All the time.  It's as if in Hong Kong at every minute the entire population is rushing across town to be there for the birth of their first child.

So I fret and get irritated.  And as I write, I notice that Maggie has led Nicholas to the green reading chair and helped him up.  They sit side by side and Maggie starts "reading" to Nicholas now and he is so attentive to her.  They both sit in the big green chair.  And Maggie looks at me with this, not sure why your're upset, but we are fine look.  And I sit here, write and think, yeah Maggie I think we will be fine.