Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Our big news is that we've officially signed a lease. Yes, we have a new home! It will probably take a few days for us to fully move in, but it's a big relief to end the apartment search. We ended up being pretty restricted because of our non-negotiables: 1) must allow dogs, 2) must have an oven, 3) must have a washing machine. The oven/dog combo was the most difficult, since ovens are pretty rare (our landlady lives in the same building and also has an oven, and confessed that she has never turned hers on in 13 years). Add that to the fact that we were only looking in the New Territories because we didn't want a huge commute for Joseph, and there wasn't an overwhelming number of options. We ended up taking the first place that we looked at; we had such a good feeling about it when we were first there that we debated even continuing to search, but we felt like we should do our due diligence. It was like one of those wedding dress things where the first dress you try on is the one you end up wearing.

We'll be living in Tai Wai, which is a fairly sizable community in the New Territories, over a small mountain range from Kowloon. There aren't a lot of non-Chinese people there, but I think that will give us a richer experience. It's three short stops on the same metro line as the University, and shouldn't take too terribly long to get into the heart of the city for entertainment purposes. Our apartment complex is literally against a leafy hillside, which we love. It has a gorgeous pool, a gym, and a playground that is already Evangeline-approved. Our landlady, Thanh, lives in the same building and is a native Vietnamese who spent a long time in Australia and then married a Hong Kong citizen. She wrote us an email on Saturday night giving us the top ten reasons why we should pick her apartment, which definitely helped to win us over. :)

We went to a very strange apartment complex on Saturday afternoon that I had high hopes for because of its bay and mountain views. It was enormous, first of all, with eight huge towers and thousands upon thousands of units. The only thing we could really compare it to is Las Vegas, with huge decorative pools and fountains everywhere, and all the common areas done up in marble to look like a European palace or some such thing. All the employees had those little earpieces like the Secret Service wears, and they were everywhere, opening doors for you, etc. I was sorely tempted by one of the units we saw that had its own private 680 square foot patio. Evangeline and Fred would have loved it, but we couldn't get over how fake the complex was. And we might not have been able to handle the fact that literally a thousand people could be watching us on our patio at any given moment. Kind of creepy!

Along those same lines, we have a Rear Window-esque view from our temporary apartment. The building across the street has a fitness studio on similar floors to ours, so at any given time when we look out the window we see at least three levels of classes. It seems to be mostly dance-based, which is very entertaining. Almost entirely women, but sometimes there is a lone man, and invariably he is extremely into the dance moves!

We're making forward progress on getting Evangeline adjusted to the new time zone. The first few nights were rough--she got up anywhere from 1am to 3am and didn't really go back to sleep. But the last two nights have been better, and this morning she didn't get up until 5:45, which is approaching what we would expect! She has been such a good sport, considering that we've been schlepping her all around the city. We've been trying to do something every day that she would consider to be fun, and I'll write more about some of those adventures soon. It's amazing how flexible kids are, though. Her life changed so drastically and she takes it all in stride. She loves escalators and is already really good at stepping on and stepping off. And she really enjoys the metro, especially holding on to the pole. Whenever the train slows down approaching a station, she shakes her head and me and says, "Not yet, Mommy!" But her true love is the minibus, which we took once from the Tai Wai metro station to our new apartment and back. It's basically an extra large van, with sixteen seats. I don't know if it's the fact that she gets to sit in her own seat with a big person seat belt, or the fact that it's really bumpy and the drivers go terrifyingly fast, but she adores it. Now whenever she sees the minibuses around, she perks right up and even shouts, "That's my bus!"

More to follow, and many more pictures!

Evangeline on the MTR with her pole