Salad dressing

I have been able to find most things I need at the local grocery store, even though some things are astronomically priced (a small 32 load bottle of Tide is $15 USD, I think I will give the generic a try-around $6).  I bought lettuce and other vegetables for a salad and as I was checking out I realized we didn't have any salad dressing.  That is something I always had on hand at home, so I almost forgot to buy it.  I finished checking out and went back to the right area and was amazed to have 3 choices: thousand island dressing, a dressing recommended for fruit, and a third, simply called "salad dressing".  There wasn't anything resembling a vinegarette.  I decided to try "salad dressing".

It was not great, kind of like sweet mayonnaise or like ranch with no seasonings.  I guess I will have to add salad dressing to the list of things to bring back in our suitcase at Christmas time.  Until then, I will have to make my own salad dressing.  

Dim Sum

One of our first days here, we were out shopping with Megan, our wonderful consultant from the relocation company.  The kids were getting bored and they were both complaining they were hungry (It was 1:30 and I was hungry as well.  They hadn't had lunch so I can't blame them.)  We decided we would get some Dim Sum.  Megan was going to show us the ropes.  

We found a little hole in the wall restaurant (she said to look for somewhere that was crowded with lots of people eating and lots of clanging dishes.)  She asked if they had an English menu, they said no.  We decided we would try it anyway.  First of all, we went in and all the tables were full.  There were 5 of us, and 2 men were sitting at a large table near the front.  I don't think the men were together.  The waitress moved one of the men to another table (with other people) and told the other man to scoot over and we would just join him and pull up chairs if needed.  (He quickly finished and left before we all sat down.)  Megan said this wasn't uncommon, although she said that as Westerners we would not be asked to move at a restaurant.  (I also don't think this would happen at a fancy restaurant).

Then Megan started to order.  The woman motioned us outside so we could look in the big steamer baskets to pick out our dishes by pointing (I guess that was easier than trying to understand Megan's Cantonese).  We picked out some pork dumplings (shaomai, I think) and some other dumplings that had meat as well as a hard boiled quail's egg in each one.  We also had chicken and rice and a steamed vegetable she said was kale, but it didn't look like the kale I am used to.  Everything was delicious.  The kids ate everything.  I was especially amazed because there were similar pork dumplings at the breakfast buffet at our hotel a few days earlier and they would barely try it and neither one finished one.  This time, they both went back for seconds and thirds.  I guess the key to getting them to try new things is to wait until they are really hungry.  :) 

Dim Sum literally means "touch the heart" and originated as a snack to have with tea.  It has evolved into more of a meal.  They served us tea with our meal, hot, in plastic drinking cups.  :)  The kids were excited they got their own tea.  When the bill came it was under $100 HK or around $12USD for 5 people!  (Most restaurants would be much more expensive, food in general is not super cheap, just the small, local restaurants).  I can't wait to have it again and try ordering on my own.  

Happy Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Establishment Day

July 1st is a public holiday in Hong Kong - this is the 17th celebration of the day that Britain handed Hong Kong over to China.  Tom was off work today.  They had different events and celebrations all over the city.  We went to the local town to watch a Lion and Kirin Dance Festival.  (They were handing out Hong Kong and China flags)

We watched for about 40 minutes (it was scheduled for 3 hours) and saw several different dance groups perform lion dances.  All the groups consisted of men, ranging from teenagers to older men probably in their 60s or 70s.  Several of the men would play music (drums, gongs, symbols) while a few (always the younger ones) danced in the lion costume.

As part of the dance, the lion would eat some lettuce with a red envelope attached.  The envelope usually contains money.  The lion spits out the lettuce (or other green vegetable) and keeps the envelope.  The money is a gift for the dance group.  This ritual is supposed to bring luck to the audience or area/business.

Shopping pictures

We went to Tai Po Market to do some more shopping today.  Tom took a few pictures to show what it is like. 

Here is the general shopping area with all the different shops.

Fruit stands

Jenneke buying some grapes.

Our house

Our new house

There are always new things to figure out when you move into a new home.  Moving to a new home in a new country is even more challenging.  Here are some of the different things about our house:

Of course the outlets are different.  They use 220V like the UK, so none of our appliances will work over here.  Also, the light switches are much smaller.

Light switch (with dimmer) and air conditioner remote

Instead of having central air, we have an air conditioner with a remote in each room.  I actually really like this feature.  It gets really hot here and it is nice during the day to be able to turn the air up and close the door in the living room when the kids and I are playing and not to have to cool the rest of the house.  The same thing at night, we can cool the bedrooms down without paying to cool the rest of the house we aren't using.  We saw this system in almost all of the houses/apartments we looked at when we came in November.  I am not sure if they do it this way because it is cheaper/easier than running duct work or if it is because it is considered more desirable.

Air conditioner unit

                                                           

There is a switch in our kitchen to turn the water heater on and off to our sink.  At first, I thought this was really strange.  We have a small, instantaneous hot water heater that works just for the kitchen sink (there are 2 others that are for the master bath and kids' bath).  We don't have a dishwasher, so we definitely need hot water to wash dishes.  When you turn on the hot water, you can hear the gas firing and the hot water heater starting up.  The switch is actually nice because you can turn it off when you are finished doing dishes and you don't have to waste gas when you turn on the sink to get a drink or wash your hands and the nozzle isn't all the way on cold.

Our kitchen is very small.  Our refrigerator is very small, less than half the size of my one at home.  It also, as well as the ones I saw at the appliance store, has a top freezer, middle refrigerator and bottom vegetable drawer.  A small fridge is another reason I will have to go to the grocery store so frequently.

Also, apparently most Chinese do not use an oven.  They cook everything on the stove top, mainly in a wok.  Therefore my oven is very low end.  My oven doesn't have any temperatures on it.  It has one knob that points to a bunch of different squiggly lines which I am assuming mean things like broil, bake, convect, although I don't have a manual and a lot of the symbols have rubbed off.  It has a second knob that is a timer and a third knob that regulates temperature.  It has a picture of a thermometer and that is it. There are no markings or numbers.  I thought the biggest challenge I would find with baking would be converting between Celsius and Fahrenheit, I never imagined my oven wouldn't tell me ANY temperatures.  I made some enchiladas the other night and I definitely didn't have the oven hot enough.  Luckily, they just needed to be heated and nothing really had to cook.  I don't know how I feel about cooking meat in the oven.  It will be interesting when I try to bake Charlotte's birthday cake later this summer.  I will have to find some sort of thermometer to put in the oven.

Oven knobs.  The middle one is the temperature.

                                          

They pick up our trash twice a day.  Yes, twice a DAY.  I thought for sure she meant week when she told me, but someone comes around in the morning and evening to pick up trash.  You just put it outside your gate.  This has been great because I never have to worry about the trash smelling and since they don't recycle in our neighborhood (I have seen a few recycling trash cans in the city, but it is not prevalent here), we actually have quite a bit of trash each day.

We had to buy our own blinds/curtains.  Even though many people have lived in our house before us, there are no coverings on any of the windows.  Apparently it is standard for each person to have to put up their own blinds or curtains.  We had our curtains installed today and I am really excited because there is a huge street light right outside our bedroom window and it has felt like I have been sleeping with a spotlight in my eyes each night.  It also gets light outside at 5:30 AM, so it will be nice to not have the sun wake me up quite so early. 

We also had to buy our own washing machine.  Apparently most Chinese would not want to use someone's old machine.  For hygienic reasons they get a new one each time.  Therefore, a landlord will not provide a washer.  We went to the appliance store and they had probably 20 or so washers and only 1 dryer.  Most people here, as well as many in Europe, do not use dryers,  They line dry everything.  They did have combination washer/dryers, but the dryer could only dry half as many clothes as the washer could wash, so when the wash cycle was finished you had to stop and get half the clothes out before you could dry them. I decided not to get that and to try just having a washer.  Our new washer got installed today and we had lots of dirty clothes, so I did 4 loads of laundry.  I had problems finding places to hang them all.  (My clothes drying rack and ALL of our hangers are in our shipment.  I tried to get another drying rack, but that was one of the things I haven't been able to find.)  Also, there is only 1 outlet out by the washer, so I have to unplug the hot water heaters for the bathrooms to be able to plug in the washer.  Hopefully, I don't forget to plug the hot water heaters back in before someone wants to take a shower.  :)

Washing machine with hot water heaters above.  You can see the 1 outlet they share on the wall.

                

There are some things that are not different here.  Our washer was scheduled to be delivered between 12 and 4 and they showed up around 4:30.  They also forgot one of our items.  :)

School visit

Today we went to see the kids' new school.  It was my first time visiting it.  Our appointment was at 8:30 and school starts at 8:15, so it was nice to see the end of dropoff.  There were a lot of moms standing around chatting after the kids had gone to class.  Everyone keeps commenting on how this school has a greater community feel than most of the other schools in Hong Kong, mainly because it is the only school in this area so everyone in the community goes to this school where most other areas have many schools so the neighbors would be spread out between multiple schools.  First off, we met our next door neighbor.  It was the first neighbor we have met.  She knew someone new was moving in and figured it was us when she saw us.  They are from the US (although they have been in HK for 2 years and London 6 years before that) and have 3 kids.  Their youngest is a 6 year old girl and will be in Tommy's class next year.  Her name is Chloe and Charlotte is already talking about her like she is her best friend even though we haven't even met her yet.  It was the first conversation I have had with someone since we have been here that is a native English speaker from the US.  Most other native English speakers are from England or Australia/New Zealand and have accents (to me).  :)

The principal showed us around the school.  She was very nice.  She said about half the kids would have Mandarin or Cantonese spoken at home, about half would have English spoken at home, and there might be a couple that have a completely different language.

Charlotte is going to be in Reception next year.  That is what they call kindergarten here.  I was concerned at first because Charlotte would have 1 or 2 more years of school in the US before she went to kindergarten and I didn't think she was ready, the principal she said there is a lot of pressure here to send the kids to kindergarten as early as possible, so they start at 4 and call it kindergarten (or reception), but the curriculum is appropriate for an (advanced) 4 year old program.  We met Charlotte's teacher, she was very nice.  We also saw her classroom as well as visited the classrooms of the nursery students who will be in her class next year.

                                                Charlotte's classroom for next year.

                                                Reception and Nursery outside area.
Tommy will be in Y2.  He is excited to "skip" 1st grade even though the Y1 is more on par with what he did in his kindergarten class and Y2 is the correct grade for 6 year olds.  He is excited to have Chinese class everyday where he will learn to speak, read, and write a little in Chinese as well as learn about Chinese culture.

                                                 Tommy's classroom for next year

                                            Classrooms for older students (Y1-Y6)

They were both excited to see their school has a library.  They will both have books at their reading level sent home by their teacher each week(picture books for Charlotte and a fiction, non-fiction, and Chinese book for Tommy), but they will also be able to check out whatever they want from the library.

                          The library.  They loved looking at the books and didn't want to leave.

We also saw the playgrounds.  The classrooms, especially the reception and younger students, go outside a lot.  They have hats with flaps on the back to cover their necks they have to wear anytime they are outside.  The school has an outdoor garden with a planting box for each class.  They also have a green field to play on.  Apparently it is the only school in all of Hong Kong to have a green field.  Grass is hard to grow here and land is really expensive.  They are very proud of their field.

                                    Outdoor basketball courts with green field in the background

The kids were a little reserved, but I think they will really like going to school here.  They both really liked their old school, but I think they will adjust fairly quickly.  Charlotte was ready to go to school this morning (the last day for the current students) and was asking when she could invite her new friends over.  Her only concern was she doesn't know any of their names yet.  Tommy is more than happy to wait 2 months before starting school.  :)

Unique Food of the Day

Mmm grape and aloe

I've been grabbing drinks that I don't recognize (and don't have English on it).  Today it was MinuteMaid grape something.  Turns out it's white grapes with chunks of aloe in it (unless "aloe" is poorly translated English, which I doubt).  

It's very sweet and actually quite good.  After taking a sip I figured out you're supposed to shake it as it's non carbonated and the aloe settles on the bottom.  The aloe is similar to the tapioca balls in bubble tea, but smaller and very soft.  I'd definitely buy this again; the only downside is it's sold in a small bottle.

Food item #2 was for the kids - Ritz crackers with Lemon filling.  This appears to be packaged and made in Indonesia and has nutrition information in Indonesian.  It was a big hit!