Hong Kong!!

Finally, I get a rainy day where I am "stuck" inside and am forced to work on my blog. :) So lazy, am I! Really, though, I have been surprisingly busy with friends having babies, play dates, school stuff, visitors. Such a life. ;)

The first week of October here is the Mid-Autumn Festival. Couldn't tell you what it's about but I can tell you the Chinese get a week off of work (so we do, too) and they eat mooncakes. What are mooncakes? They are small (maybe 2 bites), they have a poundcake-like outside with any variety of filling. Could be nuts or fruit or egg or beans or even meat. I bought a few from the store and we tried them out. Thankfully I had not bought the egg, bean or meat ones. I think they had nuts, but I'm not really sure. :) Anyway, they weren't very tasty so we didn't even finish them.

On Friday, Sept 28th, our family flew to Hong Kong, a Chinese city that is so NOT Chinese! A fairly short flight- less than 3 hours, however, we were delayed in the plane for almost 2 hours so it made for a longer journey than we had hoped. We went stright from the airport to Hong Kong Disney. Our reasoning for packing so much into one day was that Disney was really close to the airport and very far from the hotel and the city. Disney held our bags for us and off we went. It was really hot that day (prob almost 90) and very very sunny with little breeze. This Disney is the smallest one, I believe, but it was the perfect size for the one day we had to spend there!

Here's Soph going into Disney-

Just after the entrance, a huge Mickey made out of flowers. The building in the background is the train station that has a train that went all around the park.

Strolling down Disney Lane. I think Ben was just as happy to be here as Sophia was. :)

Approaching the Princesses Castle. Big moment!

One of the first things we did was go to meet some characters. The first was, of course, Winnie the Pooh, Soph's favorite! However, what surprised us was how much Cooper loved him! He looked up at Winnie and laughed and held his arms up for Pooh to hold him. He wanted to touch his nose and feel his fur. We had to pry him off!

From there we moved on to the Winnie the Pooh ride. A big hit with both kids (and the grownups)!

After that ride we headed for lunch at the only American restaurant we could find. We got a great seat by the window that overlooked the main road through Disney. What we didn't realize was that there was a huge parade starting with all the Disney characters! We watched from the window for a bit.

A tiny portion of the parade. It really was amazing!!

Sophie calling out to TinkerBell.

Moving on to the Space Mountain portion of the day. We didn't go on the actual ride- I think Soph would have totally freaked, so we decided to try out the Buzz LightYear ride instead.

Inside the Buzz LightYear ride. Coop did really really well and Soph loved it. I couldn't get Ben to stop shooting things and let Sophie win. :)

Soph with her Princess Minnie ears enjoying the Buzz ride.

From there we headed to Adventureland. This was where we found Tarzan, the Lion King and many more.

We saw a quick 30 minute Lion King musical. Really good!

We were very impressed with the dancing, singing and the props!

After the Lion King show we took a tiny boat ride across a lagoon to Tarzan's treehouse.

Inside Tarzan's house-

It gets dark fairly early here, around 630 or so. Ben got this great picture of the clouds and the castle.

Almost at the end of the night we decided to do "It's a Small World". Poor choice on our part. Poor Cooper had had enough and this simply put him over the edge.

Evidence of Cooper being "done". We got on the ride and he proceeded to thrash around and yell for the whooooollllee trip through the whhoooollllee small world. It's not nearly small enough when you're stuck with an over-tired toddler...  :(

A little shout-out to the Dutch heritage...

Soph and I, however, did enjoy the ride.

All day Sophie had been asking for cotton candy and we hadn't seen a single stand for it. Finally, after riding the teacups, we saw it. They used a glowstick as the wand. She was in heaven!!

SO much we've already done and we're only on day 2 of 5! We woke up the next morning to Sophie opening the shades, looking out of the hotel window and declaring, "It's Hong Kongish, VERY Hong Kongish"! Great view from our room! To the left you can see the channel that seperates Hong Kong Island (where we were) from Kowloon (mainland).

 

 

Another view of our room-

That second morning had a really rough start. Our intention was to find this American diner called The Flying Pan to have breakfast. However, the taxi dropped us off at the wrong place (we thought), there was this super drunk guy hanging out in this entryway, and everyone was hungry! We got a 2nd taxi that brought us to another wrong location and then things weren't looking so good. I remembered seeing this other restaurant down the street with Westerners in it and decided to try that out instead. Turned out to be a great place- Oo La La was the name. Several waffles later we were ready to head out to Ocean Park.

This was a great sight on our way to the restaurant. This 80-something year old lady dragging big boxes down the street to who knows where. Maybe this was her workout for the day. Amazing!

On to Ocean Park. Another big theme park with rides and games and an aquarium.

At the entrance to the park. Cooper just loved the water fountains!

Once inside the park, we first came across the big aquarium and decided to check it out.

A huge fishtank with random floating sharks (?)

We decided to take the cable car to another part of the park to check out some rides.

A view from the cable car-

It took us up and over a mountain to another area of the park.

It gave us a great view of the Bay. So pretty!

Cooper's favorite part of the day- the escalators! China as a nation is not, in any way, wheelchair or stroller accessible. Thankfully, strollers fit on the escalators and we use them all the time. SO different than in the U.S. where you'd get in serious trouble for doing this!

Sophie and Ben went on this arctic chill ride that was too fast for Coop so he and I went and explored the penguin exhibit. Inside there was this weird seal-thing that he thought was hilarious. Most of the kids were afraid of it but he thought it was funny!

The penguins.

Coop loved the exhibit, especially the see-through floors when the penguins swam by. It was also about 30 degrees in there so it was a great place to cool off from the heat!

After the one ride we discovered that most of this area of the park we were in was for much older kids. We headed back to the other side of the park to a great kids area. Unfortunately, this is where Cooper fell asleep in his stroller so while he rested Soph and I enjoyed an apple slushy.

After about 45 minutes Coop woke up and was hot and still tired and not happy. He didn't want to play so we decided it was time to head home.

On the way out Sophie got her gift to remember Ocean Park- a stuffed pink dolphin she named Coco.

 

 

That night we went to a restaurant at the advice of some friends who used to live in Hong Kong. It's called Dan Ryan and, yes, it's based after a Chicago eattery. It was wonderful!! Chili and hot dogs and mac and cheese and burgers. Home food that actually tasted like home. It was really really nice.

 

 

After dinner it was straight to bed after baths for the kids. Ben and I actually went to bed around 8 that night as well. So tired from 2 big days and still 3 full ones to go!

More Fun in September!

Ok, I'm back to finish out our fun September.

Sophia started her after school activities mid month and seems to be liking both of them.
On Mondays she has arts and crafts. My hope was that I would get more artwork sent home that I could post everywhere. So far, they have been working on making a pond and therefore, no artwork for me. :/ Who knows, we have until December!
On Thursdays she has gymnastics and she really loves it. She loves coming home and showing us how she can now do backbends and somersaults and other bendy things. It's cute to see her get excited about it.

Ok, on to the things I actually have pictures for. These last couple of things had a few more pictures so I wanted to give them their own space. :)
Sophia's school put on a Back-To-School BBQ in mid September to welcome everyone back from the summer break and boy, do they put on a party. There was a band, food, and good times for the kids.

Again, I felt like it was ridiculous how fancy these tickets were. Do you remember the tickets from the Queen's Jubilee? Such a waste of money. Honestly, they could have charged us half the price and just had us print out an email to get in or something. Ridiculous... :)

So the party was held on the front area of the school. It's a large open playground so we all could put down blankets and set up our picnics. Here we've got Liz, Laura, and another friend, Adam, with his daughter, Clara.

There was food we could buy but many also brought stuff from home and we all snacked and chatted while the kids just ran around ferrel. :)

Coop did surprisingly well for most of it. It was only when it was well past his bedtime and the band was getting loud that he decided he had had enough. He really is doing so well. My boy...

Although there were several drinks available for purchase that night, Ben and I chose to drink our beloved bottle of cherry wine from home, from Black Star Farms Winery, where we'd stayed overnight to celebrate our 10th anniversary. It was gooood. :)

 The band. They were pretty good, too!

A side view of Sophia's teacher, Mr. Jones, who was there that night. Does he not look 12??? :)

As the evening progressed, Sophie got more and more wild but was having so much fun dancing around with her Dutch friends, Jenna and Floortje.

Cute girls, all in a row. :)

 Ben with Isaac and Patrick with Quentin, dancing around.

The band started playing Maroon 5's "Moves like Jagger" and it was all over. Liz loved it!

Cooper having some fun with mama.

On Spetember 25th, Laura, Patrick, Sally, Matt, Ben's coworker John and his wife, Robyn, Ben and I all headed out to the Maroon 5 concert. We were all very excited for a bit of home this concert was bringing. However, I believe Laura, Robyn and I were most excited to see us a little Adam Levine. :)

This is Ben and I outside of the Mercedes-Benz Arena. It was originally made for the World Expo back in 2010 and now they use it for concerts. Looks like a space ship. :)

Our seats in the arena. I do believe this shows the only time we sat the whole concert. :)

Ben and I in the arena with the stage in the background.

Right off the bat, he's at a payphone, trying to call home, but all of his change he spent on me. :) For those of you who are not Maroon 5 fans, these are lyrics to one of their most popular songs right now. Really, that was just geared towards parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents. Everyone else should already know this. ;)

Ben was the photographer for the night as he (and the other husbands) weren't acting the crazy fans that the women were. When he took this picture, Laura and I actaully squealed like we were 13.

The previous picture was followed by Ben taking this picture of us- yes, Laura is trying to look as crazy as possible. We were all convinced by the end of the night... :)

Next to Ben were some locals who thought Minnie ears that blinked and glowed would be a great addition to a Maroon 5 concert. Ok...

Ah yes, good times had by all. It was, like I said, a lot of fun to go do something that felt so much like home and reminded us that the world is actually a pretty small place.

So, that concludes September.
Oh, wait. I forgot. Cooper got Star of the Week at his school this month. He has been improving his use of PECs a lot in this last month so they actually threw him a little party with a cake and gave him this certificate.

For those who don't know what PECs is, it is when Cooper uses pictures to help him communicate with us because he doesn't speak yet. For example, if he wants some M&Ms, he goes and gets the picture of M&Ms and brings it to the teacher, handing it to her. She then gives him the candy. Eventually this can lead to him being able to fully communicate anything using this system.
The hope is still that he will one day learn to speak, that using this system will actually be more work than just saying the words. Time will tell. Ben and I are truely looking forward to the day that he is able to communicate with us in any form!

Prayer Requests:
-I have some people very close to my heart that are going through the beginning stages of filing for divorce after being married for more than 10 yrs. They have children and my heart is breaking for the whole family. Please pray for this family that I know. God knows, when you pray this, who you are speaking of, and that's all that matters.

-Please pray that Cooper's night terrors end. They have been increasing in number over the last few months and are hard on all of us. They seem to be related to poor sleep and changes in routine but there are times these things cannot be avoided. He acts the way he did on the plane coming here and it breaks our hearts. He's so scared and his mind seems so full of terror and agony. It's really hard to watch, especially since nothing we do seems to help. We just try and keep him from hurting himself until it passes. Poor buddy. :(

-Finally, please pray for our Sophia as we are noticing an increase in her inability to focus and be calm in school and at home. It is affecting her schoolwork and her homelife and we are beginning to worry that this could be leading to ADD, which runs in my family. I'm trying not to prematurely diagnose her, and yet I also want her to get help, and not delay it, if she needs it. It's such a balance and we could really use God's guidance on where to go with this.

Ok, 2 blogs in one night! Look at me! :)
The next one I'll try and get out soon. It's our trip to Hong Kong and we really did have so much fun there!
May God give you all his peace and may you feel his touch in your every day activities (he's there, you just have to be willing to see him :)

Busy September (Augh- I'm getting behind!!)

Slacker, slacker. I was so determined to keep up better with the blog when we got back from summer. Oh well. So, here I'm going to smush all of September into one blog.
Well, now looking at all the stuff to write about, I may do it in 2...we'll see.

Anywho, the kids are all happy and settled back into routines and Ben at work and me and my tai-tai life. :) After struggling A LOT before the summer with not working, or cleaning my house, or having my kids around, I wanted to make my life much busier this year. After all, there are only so many times one can go to coffee before you just start twitching from the caffeine intake. :)

I have found an amazing Bible Study for this year- a group of mostly western women in this one that I can relate to and pour my heart out to. In this group I can be me, whether that's inspired, grumpy, happy, broken or whatever else. With this group I can say that I'm struggling with God about some things and still feel accepted and loved. I didn't have that last year and it's what I had missed the most out of my amazing Coffee Break group at home. God provides, my friends, sometimes when you least expect it.

I've also volunteered to be class mum (yes "mUm", not "mOm"- hey, they're Brits...) for Sophia's class this year. This is turning out to be very interesting. So much drama already. :) It's fun, though, and I like to be as involved with her and the school as I can, while I can.

I've also started training for a triathlon that I will participate in next summer when back in Michigan. I'm lacking my spectacular training partner from my half marathon, but I do have a friend that's swimming with me and then the running and biking I muddle through with Lady Gaga, Adelle and Muse. :)

So, I'm keeping busy this fall and feeling much more settled. I think it helps knowing that we are going to be heading home next summer and have many visitors from the States between now and then. Well, actually, now that I type that, that's not the total truth. I really do feel settled here and am happy for the moment being here. Not that I want to stay longer (that's for Ben if he reads this... :).

Ok, on to a few things that we've been up to. So much to see, limited time and all...
There was a Saturday early in September that we decided to head out to downtown and explore a bit. Always a bit scary with not knowing how the various cab rides and subways and locals will go with the kids, but, I'm trying to be a bit more adventerous so, off we went.

We started off with a shuttle bus ride to a Starbucks downtown (priorities, people). This lovely fountain was right outside and Soph liked the statue. Coop just wanted to go for a swim, though, so we had to move on. :)

We hopped into a cab that took us to the Nanjing Pedestrian Street. This was a place that Ben had heard was interesting so we thought we'd start there.
Here's the massive billboard with the gorgeous model...

And this beauty is the walking street (enter "wha wha wha wha whaaaaa" here). There were these neat little trolley things that brought people from one end to the other, but beside that, it was a bit of a dud. We thought it was going to be full of Western stores but they were pretty much all Chinese. I think we were supposed to go there at night when it's all lit up and then we would have been "wow"ed. :)

At the end we went inside this mall-looking thing to plan the next stop. Soph found a venue to perform so while we talked, she danced.

Cooper was beyond mesmerized by the fact that the building was open all the way to the 10th floor.

We then found a Metro (subway) and headed to People's Park, which is a part of the famous People's Square. It's a big park in the middle of the city and we found it pretty interesting.
There were these HUGE lilypad-looking plants in the water. I bet a cat could have stood on one and it wouldn't have sunk. What I should have followed this picture with is a picture of the crowd that quickly was gathering to also get Soph's picture here. We're just so fascinating, you see (riiiight).

At this same pond was a man fishing for lunch. The scene just looked so "China".

This part of People's Park was really fascinating. There were rows and rows and ROWS of people with pieces of paper or billboards or signs. On each was a face and, as far as we could tell, information about them- age, height, etc. We weren't sure if these were missing people or people they were selling or what. They were all younger- maybe in their 20's or 30's.
Come to find out (we asked our language teachers) this is a common dating scene here. The parents go there, post info about their kid and also go looking for a suitable person for their child. They can then meet the other's parents and set up a meeting for their children. And there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of people posted. So odd.

We ended our little adventure with a trip to Pizza Hut. Here, Pizza Hut is a fancy sit down restaurant that has really nice proper food, and pizza, of course.  I can only imagine if a Chinese person walked into a Pizza Hut back home. They'd be so disappointed!! :)

On September 16 several friends and I decided to go out for tea and throw Liz a bit of a baby shower. They apparently don't do baby showers in England (really, they don't do much with pregnancy in general there), so we wanted to give her a few gifts to show her we're excited for this little one to come!
We went to The Peace Hotel downtown by the Bund (right in the heart of downtown on the river). It was quite the "tea" really. I totally should not have had lunch beforehand!

Here we are entering the hotel. Liz is on the right. 9 months pregnant and you can't even tell from behind!

A bit of the savories we enjoyed- samosas, spring rolls, quiches, egg tarts, sausage rolls and more.

Since it is "tea" we all got tea. This fancy man walked around to every table and refilled anyone's hot water. He'd do this little dance whipping that pot around and then would end with pouring it into each person's teapot, never spilling a drop. Hilarious!

Oh yes, and he'd end by standing in this ridiculous stance every time. If I had to do that my thighs would be burning... :)

Laura, Edmee and Leslie enjoying the goods...

Part of my gift to Liz, from Sally and I. These are split pants. Worn by every Chinese child from a very young age until they are potty-trained. The idea is no diapers+split pants= when you gotta go you can just squat and go. Yup. And they do. Everywhere and anywhere (like the grocery aisle). Please know these were a gag gift and we do not intend for her to actually use them. :)

Other baby bits- clothes and blankets and bath things and toys.

Then it was on to the sweets. Oh, the sweets. Chocolates and madelines and brownies and tarts, oh my. I was waddling out.

Our fantastic crew- Leslie, me, Edmee, Liz, Sally and Laura.

A few days later Ben took a day off work and we explored another part of the city together. This was actually fun, even though where we went wasn't that great. Because it was just the 2 of us, we were able to take more time with things and relax.
So we went to this place called the Cool Docks. It's downtown, on the south Bund. It's catered towards westerners but I feel like they kinda missed the mark. It was probably cool to see at night all lit up and full of people as well.

This was the center of the restaurant part of the Cool Docks. There was a large square of various kinds of eateries with this big pond in the middle.

Unfortunately, the coolest looking building in the square turned out to be this Chinese Restaurant. Good thing the coolest looking girl got a pic of it. :)

After walking around a bit we found this fake beach. Someone had brought in a bunch of sand, set up this little area on the dirty, nasty Huang Pu River, and decided to charge people to come sunbath here. So disturbing. So fake. So China. :)

We did come across a few old alleys throughout the Cool Docks area. These were obviously redone to look newer and hip, but they still had the feel of an older time.

There were these random statues set up around the area that we had a bit of fun with. :)

We ended the afternoon by buying some wine from a store owned by the boyfriend of Cooper's teacher. Good prices and good wine. Overall a great day.

Ok, I'm calling this one for now. I have more to write but will leave it for another day.
Thanks for keeping up with us. I'll post some more tomorrow.
God's peace, love and blessings to you all!!