33

Joseph's birthday was on Thursday; he is now 33! Because it's his favorite cuisine, we went out to a "Mexican" restaurant in Kowloon. It turned out to be on a square right at the foot of the International Commerce Centre, the fifth tallest building in the world!

Since no one else was there, we had our pick of tables, and decided on one outside on the square...

...which was perfect for our squirrelly toddler, who was free to get up and run around whenever she wanted.

The food wouldn't have been anything exciting in the US, but since we hadn't had any tortilla chips since July, we thought it was great! It's amazing how your standards change after a few short months. :) I had a guava margarita:

Then we went home for birthday cake. I didn't have any trouble making Joseph's cake, although I had to bake the layers in shifts because our oven was too small for all three pans. It turned out great! Chocolate cake with peanut butter cream cheese frosting and a chocolate peanut butter glaze.

Very, very rich, but very good. It was more expensive to make here because all of the ingredients cost more, but hey, you only turn 33 once! Here's to another great year!

School Daze

If you told me a year ago that I'd be spending my October days and nights preoccupied with what schools we should have Evangeline apply to for next year, I would have fallen out of my chair laughing. The awful truth is that schools in Hong Kong are an incredibly big deal, even for preschoolers. At age three, children start going to school for three years of kindergarten before starting primary school at age six. All kindergartens in Hong Kong are technically privately run, but most are subsidized by the government. However, all "international" kindergartens are completely private and don't receive any government funding. Before we moved here, I thought we would definitely put Evangeline in a government-subsidized kindergarten so she could learn Cantonese. But almost all of the Westerners we meet are horrified by this concept and insist that we send her to an international kindergarten. The rationale is that it's fairly worthless to know Cantonese from an international perspective, people are worried about their children losing their English ability, and that generally, "local" schools are of lower quality and are designed to prepare students for the exam-heavy Hong Kong primary schools.

I've been researching schools and have narrowed the possibilities down considerably. First of all, we don't want to send her to a kindergarten that is far away because it's ridiculous for a three-year old to commute a long way every day to go to school for three hours. And we'd really like her to learn another language, either Cantonese or Mandarin. That weeded out quite a few of the international kindergartens in the area, since they just don't have enough Chinese to make it worthwhile. There is one international kindergarten that seems to have a good balance between English and Chinese, so we're going to go there this Saturday when their application period opens. They have a class that is in Mandarin and English, and then a class that is in Cantonese/Mandarin/English. The best "local" option so far seems to be a Lutheran kindergarten in our village. I went there last week for a tour, and on Saturday we went for their carnival and Evangeline's interview. They don't seem to have any Western students, but the principal said that they've had Asian students from other backgrounds that didn't speak any Cantonese and they have done fine and picked it up quickly through immersion. They do instruction in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, although realistically, I'm sure it's mostly Cantonese in their first year. I was a little worried about homework, since I have heard that many kindergartners have daily homework (at the request of the parents), but the principal assured me that they don't have homework until the final year of kindergarten.

Our interview was really weird. First of all, it's strange that they interview two-year-olds, although it's just the norm here. We sat at a little table with one of the teachers and she asked Evangeline some questions. She had Evangeline look at a book and name the parts on a doll's face. Evangeline wasn't really at her best, since we had been interacting with a lot of strangers already and it was right before her nap time. And there were some language barriers, since the teacher's English wasn't awesome and it's hard to understand a two-year-old no matter what language you're speaking. I felt funny walking out of the interview, finding myself wishing that we had prepped Evangeline better! I'm already getting caught up in the hype, I'm afraid.

Assuming Evangeline isn't restricted by the application process, we'll just have to decide what school will be best for her. As is so often the case with tough decisions, I almost wish we didn't have the luxury of options. Since all of the kids in the local kindergarten at least appear to be Chinese, it did occur to us that maybe she would feel isolated by being the only one who looks different. I've poked around on the internet and it seems like at least on the kindergarten level, that isn't a problem. The kids are mostly inclusive, and if there is any extra attention, it's almost always positive. If we were of another ethnicity, particularly a less desirable Asian ethnicity, that would be another story!

I will keep you posted as we learn more and go further through the process. Wish us luck!

Evangeline waits to do a craft at the kindergarten carnival

Getting a hand from one of the teachers

Po Lin Monastery

We were lucky enough to have a public holiday on Wednesday of this week. It was the Cheung Yeung festival, where natives go hiking and visit family graves. We decided to go to Lantau Island to visit the Po Lin Monastery and see the Tian Tan Big Buddha. It's one of the largest Chan (Zen) temples in Hong Kong, not to mention a major tourist attraction, and sits in the mountains at the base of Lantau Peak. After taking public transit as far as we could, we went the rest of the way via cable car. I hadn't been in a cable car since Garmisch, and it was Evangeline's first time! Of course, it would have been better if it had been clear, but I'm sure we'll be back.

Leaving civilization behind

Into the hills

Cable cars are fun!

First glimpse of the big Buddha

The cable car drops you off in a creepy, fake "village" of shops and restaurants. When we got on the car at the origin, someone took our picture, so we expected that they would be pushing the picture on us when we got off. What we weren't prepared for was to have a girl pounce on us as soon as we walked off, holding not only an 8x10 print but a keychain and a snowglobe with our likenesses on them! It's just amazing that they do that for every single group of people who get on the cable cars. Talk about a waste of resources and manpower!

Finally leaving the tourist trap behind and getting close to the monastery

The Buddha is cast in bronze and is 34 meters high

Statue of a general, one for every two hours of the day

Buddha looking over a statue's shoulder

268 steps to the top, and Evangeline went up most of them herself

Up close and personal

Smaller statues giving offerings to the Big Buddha

Joseph and Evangeline behind the Buddha

Both Hong Kong and China flags at the bottom

The longer we were there, the more crowded it got

Entrance to the Po Lin Monastery

The altar in the main hall, with three Buddhas representing the past, present and future

The hall is empty except for the altar

Amazing statue from the hall below - those are hands spread out like wings

After checking out the monastery, we had lunch at the dining hall, which was vegetarian, of course. Evangeline impressed everyone around her by putting away a truly enormous amount of food.

The dining hall in action

Then we took the cable car home, enjoying some more scenery on the way.

The hiking path to the monastery and a little waterfall

One thing we didn't enjoy was how much garbage there was in the water. And there were some guys in waders in the bay,obviously gathering some sort of seafood. I can't imagine wanting to go eat local fish after seeing how nasty the water is. Unfortunately you can't see any of the trash in this picture that we snapped from the cable car, but it wasn't a pretty sight.

No thanks!

It was a great expedition and a wonderful use of our holiday. Probably the next time we go out to Lantau, we'll take one of the ferries to a different part of the island.

Rule of Thumb

I'm around a small child for over twelve hours a day, so a lot of my opportunity to see cultural differences is through the prism of parenting. Perhaps not surprisingly, the first thing I noticed was a difference at the playground. With smaller children and babies, there is a lot of "helicopter parenting" going on, especially if the grandparents are the caretakers. They are always hovering right by the child, admonishing them not to bump their head or take a risky step. Needless to say, Joseph and I have been on the receiving end of more than a few dirty looks for our comparative neglect of Evangeline. Our playground attitude is typical of what we've seen from parents in the US - as long as she's within her limits, we don't interfere with her because we don't want to teach her to be afraid. Sure, if she's trying something new that might be a stretch for her abilities, I'll go over and spot her, but I generally let her make her own mistakes as long as she can't seriously hurt herself. So it's been weird for me to see these grandparents and parents and not feel judgmental. I believe in Evangeline's capabilities and her capacity to learn. If she bumps her head on a tunnel because she doesn't duck, she rubs it for a minute, but then the next time she goes through she ducks her head. It's hard to see this philosophy in action and not think that it's better, but I guess that's the point of us being here--growth!

The parenting difference that has been the most irritating so far here has to do with attitudes toward thumb sucking. It is really frowned upon, even for small babies. It's rare to see a Chinese baby with a pacifier. For those of you who have been around Evangeline a lot, you know that she's always sucked on her ring and middle fingers for comfort. She does it less and less as she gets older, and now she really only does it when she's tired or upset. I've done research on thumb sucking, and in her case, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it until her permanent teeth start coming in. Every single credible source will tell you that. Last week we were on an outing with my Chinese friend, Grace, and her little boy who is a year older than Evangeline. We were going home on the metro, and it was getting close to nap time, so Evangeline got on my lap and popped her fingers in. Grace was very surprised that I didn't mind, so we talked about it. She told me about the draconian methods she used to stop her older daughter from sucking her fingers as an infant, which was hard to listen to. And Grace said that their pediatrician was blaming the trouble her son was having with a certain consonant on the fact that he was sucking his thumb at night. She was frustrated, saying that she couldn't monitor him all night to make sure he doesn't suck his thumb. I never feel good about contradicting someone's doctor, so I just said that it probably wasn't anything to worry about until he's older. But it makes me sad to think of all those babies who are prevented from following their natural instinct to suck. And I wonder how much people here use the internet, even doctors. Of course, the internet has come too late for old ladies. The other day on the metro, an old lady actually pulled Evangeline's fingers out of her mouth when I was holding her. I was too surprised to react the first time, but when she tried to do it again, I told her in no uncertain terms to leave Evangeline alone!

I still can't get over how weird the "helper" thing is, too. Here's a picture of the kids from the mom's group that I'm in. One of the moms took it when the kids were having their snack. We just leave all the kids in the playroom while the helpers take care of them:

But it's not like everyone has a helper. Two of the moms who live in our apartment complex don't have helpers, so we're not alone with our lack of domestic assistance! :)

I'll have more pictures soon. Sorry for the lack of scenery, but the last few weeks we've been in a serious get-settled mode.

The King of Fruits?

We were so lucky to have my little brother, Dave, here for a week and a day. He was in town to speak at a WWF conference about the proposed third runway at Hong Kong airport, and stayed the rest of the week. Although I wish we'd been a little more knowledgeable about the city and local culture for his sake, our blind-leading-the-blind experience led to quite a few laughs.

Joseph and I have been trying local desserts every night, and as you'd expect, sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. One day, we brought home a pint of green tea ice cream to find that it tastes EXACTLY like green tea. Not sweetened or anything, just frozen green tea. The lack of sugar in some of these desserts has been a shock to our American palate - what's the point of dessert if it isn't going to be sweet? Anyway, we're almost to the Mid-Autumn Festival here, so there are lots of mooncakes around, both regular and an ice cream version. The ice cream ones were in our local grocery store in two-packs, so Joseph got a bunch for us to have to celebrate the end of Dave's conference. There's no English on the packaging, so we had no idea what flavors we were eating. The first night, we had two different kinds and they were delicious. The second night, it looked like we only had one kind left. Dave and I shared one two-pack, while Joseph had one from the last package. Dave and I were raving about the ones we were eating, which tasted just like frozen cheesecake. Joseph was strangely silent while eating, but cut the last remaining mooncake into thirds so we could all have a little more. As soon as we bit into it, we knew something was terribly wrong. It tasted disgusting; familiar, but we couldn't put our finger on it. After another cautious bite, we knew what it was - the mooncake tasted exactly like the wet market smells in our village. We didn't know what flavor it was, but it was definitely not good! Dave and I threw the rest of ours away, and laughed about how Joseph had been eating the awful one while we were eating the cheesecake versions and waxing rhapsodic about how delicious they were! We couldn't believe that he didn't say anything, and that he ate the whole mooncake.

A few nights later, we decided to get some ice cream cups in a new flavor we had never tried, durian. We didn't know what that was, but it was made by Kowloon Dairy, and we had had their mochi ice cream before and liked it. One taste, and the mystery was solved! The terrible flavor of the mooncakes was durian, which is a fruit that is well-loved in southeast Asia. Some call it the "king of fruits," but its smell is so pungent and offensive that it is banned in a lot of public places, such as subways and hotels. Our local store doesn't sell the actual fruit, for obvious reasons, but the wet market does, which is why it smells so bad in there. Maybe one day we'll try the fruit itself to see what all the fuss is about, but it will have to be out in the open. I don't want to have to de-durian our apartment!

Durian fruit

Warning sign in the Singapore metro

Dave and Evangeline on the Peak (not a clear day, unfortunately)

Dave drinks a yuan yang, a mix of coffee and milk tea. Surprisingly good!

Dave and Evangeline lounge at the pool

Little Victories

When you're starting from scratch in a somewhat bewildering place, it's best to focus on the positives. I try to view every acquisition or discovery as a victory. Finding things in the US is so easy by comparison. Need a beach towel? No problem, just go to Walmart and pick one out. Hong Kong is another story. After a week of searching, I finally found a beach towel (and it was Thomas the Tank Engine!) today and almost danced a jig on the spot. So in that vein, here are some of our little victories from the week.

My brother Dave is coming for a week tomorrow, and although we have an extra room, there's nowhere for him to sleep, unless he wants to share Evangeline's bunk bed. So we decided to get an air mattress. It turns out that air mattresses are not easy to come by in Hong Kong. I looked in all the expatriate forums and found this place that sells them, Outdoor Mart. They had a map on their website that was very clear as to their location; they were on the second floor of New City Centre, close to an MTR (metro) station. So on Wednesday, Evangeline and I trucked across the city to find Outdoor Mart. I assumed that New City Centre was a mall, of which there are many in Hong Kong. There's an area near where we live where there are like five different malls that all bleed into one another. It's amazing. And they're always incredibly easy to find. So I thought I'd be able to see the mall from the MTR. When we got off the train, I looked on the station map and had my first warning sign, because New City Centre was not indicated as being in the area. But I shrugged it off because I was so sure about where it was. We walked down the street, no mall to be found. There were restaurants, little shops, apartment buildings, and a big industrial complex. We passed a gas station and worriedly crossed a street. The next building turned out to be a courthouse, and I knew we had gone too far. Luckily a policeman was walking toward us, so I flagged him down and showed him where I was going on my phone. He frowned at the map, said he had never heard of New City Centre, and pulled up Google Earth on his phone. It said that it was the building next to the gas station, so we headed back. It looked just like an apartment building, with rows and rows of mailboxes in the open foyer. But there was a small sign inside saying that it was New City Centre! We went further into the building, and a security guard waved us through to some industrial elevators. By this time it seemed like we were in a parking garage, not an apartment building. But this was New City Centre, so it had to be here! When we got to the second floor and wandered around a little, we saw a sign for Outdoor Mart and made a beeline for it down the passageway. It was a tiny little store, no bigger than our living room in Urbana, completely packed wall to wall with camping gear. I had to leave the stroller outside because it wouldn't possibly fit. But there was our air mattress, and the owner was extremely friendly. He wanted to know if we found the store on the internet, and where we lived. But then a terrible realization - I didn't have enough money! I thought for sure that I had a $500 bill in my wallet, but I had been wrong and I was about $30 short. And of course, a small store like that doesn't take plastic. I told him that I would run to the MTR station and get some money from an ATM, but he said that his partner would walk with me to the station so I wouldn't have to make the extra trip. He tried calling the partner on the phone, but no answer. So he took the phone, closed up the shop, and insisted on taking me himself. I felt so bad, even though there weren't any other customers. But by the time we got to the "lobby," his partner ran up! We said goodbye to the owner, and the partner walked with us back to the station. She made sure to carry the bag, and I wondered if she was trying to be nice since I was already pushing the stroller, or did she think I would try to run off without paying? I had to chuckle at the thought of me making a break for it, trying to run down the crowded street with the bag and the stroller. I don't think we would have gotten very far! Not wanting to put the woman out any further that we already had, I picked up Evangeline's stroller with her inside and carried it up the huge flight of stairs. Once inside, we got the money and exchanged it for our bag with the mattress. And we went home victorious, more proud than anyone has a right to be for just buying an air mattress!

On a different note, I had some anxiety about a social excursion on Tuesday morning. Evangeline and I were invited to join a group of moms at a water play area. I had met only one of the moms before, so I was apprehensive about being in a whole group. I get nervous meeting new people, especially en masse. And we were going to be at a water park, so I would also have to keep an eagle eye on Evangeline, since she doesn't have much sense of her limitations in the water. And Evangeline would be around new toddlers in a new situation, and you always worry a little bit about how that is going to go. But the only way to become friends with people is to spend time with them, so I knew I'd just have to grit my teeth and do it. And of course, things went just fine. Evangeline had a great time, with only some sharing squabbles at the end when everyone was tired and hungry. The women I met were approachable and friendly. Walking back to our apartment in the punishing heat of midday, I declared the morning a victory.

Joseph bought a TV off of Craigslist this week, which went very smoothly. But they had it mounted on the wall, so the stand wasn't screwed on, and they didn't have the screws that came with it. We didn't want to deal with trying to wall-mount it this week, so we decided to try to find some screws. Easier said than done. Joseph had a terrible outing this afternoon where the shop owners either didn't have the screws or didn't want to sell them to Joseph. But finally he persevered, and now our "new" TV is in our living room on its stand. But the big victory from an otherwise unpleasant experience is that Joseph took this awesome picture by the store where he was finally sold the necessary screws. Um, I'm pretty sure Bill Clinton didn't authorize that endorsement, however true it might be:

I'm sure he hits up Guang Dong Barbecue EVERY TIME he's in Hong Kong...but this is perfect because it shows how little respect for intellectual property there is in China.

On an unrelated note, here are some pictures of Evangeline playing at the playground in our apartment complex:

This is in the "toddler" playground

"My mom is so awesome! She can buy an air mattress!"

Which Evangeline is the real thing?

Steering on the "big kid" playground

Monkey bar staredown

"Hey, she's not doing it right! It should be MY TURN!"

You can see the helpers off to the left, making phone calls (to home?). On the right are the elderly people who are wheeled there every day in the late afternoon to socialize and watch the kids play.

Settling In

Sorry for the lack of blog action in the last week! We have moved in to our new place and are trying to get settled. Luckily our apartment came partially furnished, which made things so much easier. But it still takes a lot of effort to figure out where we can buy things. It's not like the US where you can go to Target and buy everything you need in one place. And we're making forward progress, one day at a time. Evangeline feels very at home and loves to hide in various places around the house, which gave me a heart attack until I got used to it. The wardrobe in our room is one of her favorite spots:

On Joseph's last day "off" before he started work, we went down to the harbor and the Avenue of Stars. It's modeled on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but is much nicer! It's actually clean, for one thing. :) And the view can't be beat.

The obligatory cheesy picture

That's Hong Kong Island behind us

Scenic view of Hong Kong Island

Bruce Lee's star

Our fellow tourists

Evangeline burning off some energy running

Joseph is getting nicely settled in at the University. He got to pick out a Chinese name, which is really cool! They gave him some suggestions and he chose from the finalists. It's 鍾以施 and is pronounced something like Jones Yi Shi. Joseph lost the meaning of it already, but it has something to do with bestowing advice or knowledge. Lots and lots of paperwork and bureaucracy, but he is finding his way.

Also, we are now official Hong Kong residents as we picked up our official ID cards a few days ago. On the way home we decided to take the ferry instead of the metro, and it was beautiful!

I'm already "in" with a local mom's group, which is also really exciting. Joseph ran into an American family in our complex; the wife happened to be one of the organizers. They meet every week in one of the rooms in the clubhouse of our complex, although they're not officially getting started until September. I've already been to the pool with her and her two boys, and am looking forward to the companionship and local knowledge.

Speaking of the pool, Evangeline absolutely loves it. It's going to be great having this for us to do nearly every day. Here's a picture:

We'll just have to make sure that we don't fry to death in the unforgiving sun, but so far, so good!