House Tour

We've always been a little defensive about our decision to live in To Kwa Wan (it's local, it's got character, it's conveniently a 5 minute walk to the school). Well, you can't really argue with the last point, but other than that, we LOVE Tsing Yi, and it is about a billion times better than living in To Kwa Wan. No regrets.

We wake up to birds chirping instead of sirens blaring. Our place is so much bigger. Our view is so much better. We are conveniently on top of a mall and the MTR station. We can step outside onto a lovely promenade. There's grass. Parks. Trees. Playgrounds. Kids that speak English playing at the playground. Oh yeah, and waterslides. They're just not open yet. 

We wondered if living on top of a mall would be weird or annoying, but it's not- it's actually good. You barely step into it to get into the entrance of our building, so you don't have to walk through it if you don't want to. But there's a lot of convenience right there- our bank branch, a big grocery store, a couple of drug stores, Starbucks, McD's (and McCafe), KFC, a Thai restaurant, an Italian restaurant, a bunch of Chinese restaurants, a movie theatre, a furniture store, some electronics stores, lots of unfamiliar names, but other familiar names like the Body Shop, Zara, Clinique, etc. 

And as soon as you go up to our estate, there's a lovely podium that you walk through- but I don't have any pictures of that. 

 This is the "dining room". I scored that table from the lady I bought our bed frame from for free. It's about double the size of the old glass sparkly table, which the girls miss, but we don't. And my lovely Chinese antique cabinet that may or may not come back to Canada with us.

 And looking the other direction at the living room. We definitely feel that the room is longer and wider with a lot more space for the girls to play. We still want to get a cabinet with more storage to put next to the couch. And some curtains would be nice, but they aren't a big priority at the moment. 

 A kitchen with cabinets ON BOTH SIDES! It's amazing how much difference the extra counter space makes and the luxury of having room for all of our groceries. Maybe now I can actually get a slow cooker and a few other gadgets that I didn't have only because of lack of storage in our other kitchen. It isn't the nicest or newest, but it feels a lot better after scrubbing it down. I think there was a lot of deep-frying that occurred in it's previous life. 

 One of the two (!) bathrooms. Again, not the nicest or fanciest, but we realized that of the six dwellings that Mike and I have lived since we got married, this is the first time we've ever had an ensuite. Movin' up in the world! 

 The girls room, which is actually smaller than their last. Mostly just room for their bunk beds. At least they fit- they are smaller than standard size. Why they make rooms so tiny that a normal bed wouldn't fit in them just doesn't make any sense to us!

 Bedroom #3 which has a closet for the girls and at the moment just the playmobil. There is room to put a keyboard/piano in it, so I think we'll probably make that purchase sometime soon. 

 Our room with our new bed frame. Isn't that a cool design for the headboard (Ikea)? I don't know if I would have chosen that one if I hadn't been shopping second-hand, but i actually quite like it. 

 And our new-to-us bedroom furniture. Our last bedroom basically just had room for the bed, so this feels very spacious. It's hard to remember a time where our walk-in closet in Spruce Grove was the size of one of these bedrooms! 

 But the most exciting thing in our bedroom is the big windows and the view. We hadn't even noticed the park (the green on the right side) until we moved in and noticed that we could see a waterfall and people walking around it. 

It really is nice to wake up to this in the morning. And the night-time view is not too bad, either! That's the Tsing Yi Sports ground where we can see soccer games going on, and the waterslides in the public pool. Our clubhouse as a pool as well, but I don't think any of them open until April or May. 

 This is the park that we could see across the way. Very easy to get to... yeah... Sorry To Kwa Wan...but you've got nothing like this!

 (That's Tierra Verde through the trees.) 

This is just off of the promenade. A nice open space for the girls to skip and run around. 

So that's our news with our move. It feels good to be settled in, and it's fun to have new things close to us to explore. We had our second thoughts about it all (Rita heard lots of complaining and fretting and second-guessing from me while she was here!), but we honestly are really glad that it's all worked out!

And spring break is right around the corner and we have a new adventure coming up! We weren't planning on going anywhere, but when I heard that my friend Emily was traveling, I texted her to see where she was going, because she always goes interesting places. She responded with "we're taking an overnight train to Guilin, China. Wanna come?'

I hadn't even heard of Guilin before, but this immediately had me interested because:

1. I really like Emily and her family and it would be so fun to go on a trip with them. 

2. They are extremely adventurous and ambitious when it comes to traveling (ie. picture holding a baby in front of the pyramids in Egypt- they truly have been all over the world), so we could see more of China with people who actually know what they're doing!

3. Hello... overnight train?! I've always wanted to try traveling like that, but haven't had the opportunity till now. 

So I went home and told Mike about the conversation, and he google-imaged Guilin and this is what came up:

Needless to say, it didn't take much to convince him. Seeing the terraced rice fields would be a dream come true! It feels like we are planning this on the fly because you can't buy train tickets very far in advance, so Emily's husband is going to Shenzhen this weekend to buy them, while we are scrambling to get our Chinese visas in order. And we haven't even booked accommodations yet. But... I'm sure it will come together, right?! Stay tuned...