Mother's Day Tea and Gymnastics!

 I had a really nice Mother's Day on Sunday. But the best part of Mother's Day was actually on Thursday when I went to Annika's school for the Mother's Day tea. The reason it was so great is because Annika was sooooo excited for it. She was trying to keep everything a secret and was counting down the days, so her enthusiasm was very contagious. Each of the five grade 1 classes put on a little performance in the chapel, and her class did a play. Annika was assigned the part of "Girl", which meant that she had lots of lines to memorize. When she first brought the script home, she didn't think she could do it. But Mike worked on it with her all weekend, and by the time she returned to school, she pretty much had her lines AND all the other lines of the play memorized. She found it a bit frustrating that by Thursday, other kids (including "Boy" who is standing to her left) still needed their papers. And ended up using them for the play. Not Annika, though- she executed her part flawlessly.:)

 After the performances, the moms were escorted to their child's classrooms for some cookies and juice. 

Annika and her Grade 1 teacher

 Annika showed me her journal, and it was so fun to flip through it and see what she has worked on this year. I really liked these two entries. I think the beach one might actually be referring to last year, and she would have written it more at the beginning of the year. In the one about Leila, she told me that she drew Leila the way that Leila draws herself. 

 The girls have started taking gymnastics. Our clubhouse (like most clubhouses) offers lots of different classes. Even ones for adults such as cake-decorating and singing. The only thing is that they are typically in Cantonese, so I inquired about gymnastics and was told that it *probably* wouldn't be in English. I pressed the guy further (like is it? Or isn't it?), so he phoned up the instructor and got off the phone and told me "Good news! The instructor says that there are children from other countries in the class, so it is in English and Cantonese". Well, great! Sign us up!

 These are the "children from other countries" that the instructor must have been referring to. Funny how they do stick together! Annika and the older sister of this pair have hit it off and it turns out their school buses arrive at the same time, so they've been able to chat it up after school as we walk home together.

 So far, Leila only lasts for the beginning of the class and then runs to sit on our laps for the rest of it. I'm not sure what her problem is, but I'm hoping she'll participate soon, or I'm going to pull her out of the class. Annika, on the other hand, is having a blast! I think Leila would too if she'd give it a chance. Oh well... 

 She got to be demonstrator for each of the stations, which was pretty exciting. I am pleased that this instructor is very encouraging of all the kids- whether they are successful or not, he gives lots of praise and high 5's. There's always such an emphasis here on "results" and "performance" that extracurriculars aren't always very fun. But so far (for Annika), gymnastics is great fun, and we've already noticed that we recognize more kids in our complex, so that's another perk that we hadn't even considered!

Such balance!

A beach birthday

Well, as planned we decided to spend Hong Kong Labour Day/Sarah's birthday at the beach. The only problem was that all week long, the May 1 forecast was for cool and rainy weather. We decided that we could enjoy being at a beach regardless of the weather, and would carry on regardless.
Weather is weird. This year, January and February were much warmer than we remember last year being, but March and April have definitely been much cooler than last year. Hasn't that been the same in the prairies this year (mild winter/cold spring)? 
Anyway, I just dug up these pictures from Clearwater Bay a year ago, and it is obvious that 1. it was a much warmer day a year ago, and 2. the girls have definitely grown!

 So here we are this year at Silvermine beach and we are underdressed and cold. Annika still has her cold, and Leila is tired because Rachel slept over the night before, and the girls went to bed late and were up early. 

 The girls still had fun digging in the sand, but we didn't last too long because we were so cold so we packed up to have an early supper at a Turkish restaurant that we ate at the last time we visited this beach. Yum... I didn't take any pictures, but it was dee-licious! One thing we ordered was an appetizer platter with a variety of dips and feta-stuffed spring rolls and other delectable goodies and everything was soooo good! Their homemade pita bread was melt-in-your-mouth. 
While we were eating, I had a really great idea and suggested to Mike that roughly six years from now, we should celebrate our fortieth birthdays in a big way by going to Turkey. We could even start saving for it now. 
His response was "um... yeah... or we could just pretend we're in Turkey right now." Well, I guess it's a good thing I have six years to work on him!

We just had a recipe exchange at my mom's group on Tuesday where you bring a dish for everyone to try, and then email around the recipe. My friend Joanna had brought a no-bake cheesecake, and I realized that it would be a really great birthday present to myself to make it for my birthday! Of course these things are never that simple in Hong Kong... the recipe called for graham crumbs, which apparently you have hunt down at a specialty store. Luckily, I found a pre-made graham crust so I didn't have to travel across town. But the recipe also said to use a can of pie filling of your choice, but it turns out that blueberry pie filling at our grocery store costs $10 CDN/can! Now that's just crazy, so I found a recipe for homemade blueberry cheesecake sauce, and it was so quick and easy that I don't think it will be necessary to buy blueberry pie filling again!

 

(photo by Annie)
The cheesecake was yummy, and it was a nice, quiet birthday spent with the ones I love.

Ocean Park Pt.2

Ever since we went to Ocean Park last November, the girls have been asking to go back. I had considered that once our Disney passes expired, we could maybe buy Ocean Park passes for a year. But who would have known that we would end up moving really close to Disneyland and really far from Ocean Park. We should have done the reverse since there was a pretty easy bus to get to OP from our old place, and now it's a pretty long journey. Oh well... I think Mike and I got our fill of Ocean Park after yesterday anyway.:)

Mike had Parent/Teacher Interviews all day on Saturday, which means that the teachers get a day off in lieu on the Monday after. We figured that would be a good day to go when it would potentially be less busy, so we surprised the girls with the idea and they were so excited!

 This time we started with the aquarium since last time we ended with it and ended up rushing through. 

 A view of Ocean Park from the Ocean Park Tower.

 Annie spotted the Canadian flag as we entered the "Raging River" (log ride). We probably shouldn't have taken Leila on the log ride. Instead of getting braver as she gets older, she has gotten more fearful, and she ended up pretty traumatized from the experience. Sorry, Lulu.:( We won't do that to you again! Annie, on the other hand, still loved it, but this time once was enough for her. 

 My favorite part of the day was riding the cable car down from the top of the mountain where all the big rides are back to the bottom. 

 A new addition to Ocean Park since last year is the "Old Hong Kong street". 

 Annika had remembered the Frog Hopper as her favorite ride from last time, and it didn't disappoint this time either. Luckily, this part of the park which is meant for young children was not busy at all, so she could ride it again and again. And she did!

 Fortunately Leila realized that this ride was fun, not scary!

 This frog guy was really weird!

On a suspension bridge on the "Emerald Trail". 

Annika was having a great time all day, and I did notice that her nose was running a bit throughout the day, but seemed that on the trip home she suddenly came down with a vicious cold! How did it come on THAT quickly?! She was up a lot of night coughing, and I've never heard so many sneezes in a row and that frequent. Boo! At least she doesn't have school today. Mike is back for a PD day, and tomorrow, all of Hong Kong is taking the day off to celebrate my birthday! Well, that's not exactly true of course, but May 1 is a national holiday (labour day) here, so that's kind of fun! I was hoping for another BeachDayBirthday, but we'll see what the weather is like...

Oh, helpers...

I can't help it. We've been here almost two years, and I still haven't gotten used to the interesting phenomenon of domestic helpers in Hong Kong. 
Yesterday on the train, I couldn't help but notice a baby being carried in a wrap by a helper, while the mom played peek-a-boo. I don't know the circumstances or anything, but I just thought it interesting- I probably would prefer to have my baby in my own arms/carrier/wrap, but that's just me. Also, my babies might not have willingly gone in another carrier with another person with me standing right beside them, but that just goes to show the close relationship between the helper and the baby. 
A few other helper sightings that I have found curious:
- A mom shopping in Ikea with three young triplets and three helpers- one for each!
- An old man hobbling around a track with his walker, while a helper lounges in what must be his wheelchair, texting on her phone.
- Someone at church with their eyes closed and arms raised in worship while their helper stands beside them holding their baby.
- Okay, I didn't see this one myself, but my friend just had a baby, and said that in the nursing room of the hospital she saw a helper holding a breast pump to a new mom's chest and was manually expressing the milk for her employer. (!)

It's just such a common occurrence here in HK, and we're not immune to it either. Tomorrow night we are going on the first date night we've had since Rita was here, and we've asked a helper (well, I prefer to think of her as a friend who happens to be a helper) to watch the girls. She's employed full time, but likes to earn extra cash when she can. She's a very inspiring person and really is too skilled to be a babysitter or a helper. She told me this week that she's collecting books to one day bring back to the Philippines and start a library, since there is so little employment and people turn to drugs and alcohol for entertainment. She's waiting on God's timing, and I hope one day she can bring her dreams to life.

I was visiting with another helper who lives on our floor and seems to be on the same schedule of bringing kids to the school bus in the mornings because we seem to often be on the same elevator heading home. She confided that she is sacrificing now because her dream is to one day move to Canada. I hope that she too can realize her dream and that she won't freeze in Canada! 

Last night on the Podium...

Okay, I spend too much time perusing other (mostly the DIY-type) blogs and am way too lazy to keep up this one. Why haven't I posted about Guilin? Just laziness, and also such an overwhelming number of photos that I'm not really sure what to do with them all. FB is such an easy option in that regard. It was such an amazing trip, so I don't really know where to begin. 

I just personally appreciate the record of looking back at our past few months and see what we did, what the weather was like, how much the girls have changed and grown, etc. so even though it might just be the mundane, I'm going to try to post a little more often. 

 Anyway, continue to enjoy the extra space around Tsing Yi. The bugs have suddenly come out in full force and I got eaten alive when we were at Tsing Yi Park this week, so instead we've been opting to just head to the podium where the bugs don't bother us. 

 A peaceful evening...

 Hold on, Leila! This guy pushes fast!

 Kids in Hong Kong often have some kind of a towel tucked in the back of their shirt. We think it's to mop up their sweat. As depicted in the pictures above and below you can even get a variety of animal versions of the design. My friend's son recently asked if he, too, could have a towel tucked in the back of his shirt. Guess that's what it takes to fit in around here!:)

 Such concentration!

By the way, is "podium" a Hong Kong word, or were we just unaware of the various meanings the word can have? Because the definition that Mike and I both had in our head of what a "podium" was compared to what it is here are two different things. We had no idea what Mr. Yip was always talking about while apartment shopping during our first few days here. Basically it's the common outdoor area, usually on the third (sixth in our case) floor that links up all the towers of the estate. Our new estate has twelve towers (all 51 stories high!), so the podium is pretty big and has little garden paths and seating areas, a big and a small playground, and it's where you access the clubhouse. Farm Road didn't really have one because it was just a single story building, but bigger estates always do.  
Anyway, fun times on the podium!