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!

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...

Philippines Pt. 3- Imperial Palace

Wow, this already feels like so long ago. February is flying by!  Since getting back we did some apartment hunting, found a flat, set the move date for March 8, and had Rita visit for about 10 days. I almost forgot to post the last section of our pictures of the second half of our trip when we stayed at Imperial Palace. 

 This was our first lunch at one of the restaurants at the resort. We hadn't initially planned to stay here at all, but there was a mix-up in the booking at Plantation Bay where they were all booked up for one of the nights we were there, so we ended up splitting our time between this one and Plantation Bay. Even though we hadn't planned for that, I think that's a good way to go so that you can see more than one place- I may try and do that more in the future. 

 Checking out the new room. Very Best Western-ish.

 We were a little bummed we didn't have a view of the ocean, but actually it was neat to have a "local" view of Cebu from the 11th floor.

 Picture perfect weather!

 Even though Mike and I preferred the beauty of Plantation Bay, the girls were completely opposite. Imperial Palace had this water-park, water-slides and a lazy river. No competition in their minds! 

 These guys liked to get the Koreans (I hadn't mentioned yet, but Imperial Palace is owned by Koreans and I would imagine that 85% of the guests staying there were Korean. Random, eh?) to get some exercise and have some fun doing aerobics. Annika was eager to join in... it was so funny!

 There was a swim-up bar, and the girls thought it was the coolest thing ever to have lunch while swimming in the pool!

 We took advantage of the kids club and paid for the girls to spend a couple of hours there one afternoon. The girls were excited to play, and we enjoyed relaxing by the pool without any worries. It was lovely, but we were excited to pick them up when the time was up. Annika said it was the best day ever! 

 We also tried leaving the resort to see more of Cebu. It was pretty crazy with traffic and sights and sounds.

 We found a Korean restaurant across the street and had lunch there. It was so Korean! We really had no idea that there was such a Korean presence in Cebu. 

Good-bye, beautiful Cebu! Wish we could have seen even more, but thankful we were able to visit!