The Harbour School

Hello Nonna! This one is for you!

Off we go to school! The school bus comes to pick us up at 8:10 sharp so we can get to school by 8:30. We line up with all the other children from the apartment complex who also ride buses to school, but we're the only ones from our complex who go to Harbour School.

Most of the kids go to the Kennedy School - their uniforms are lavender and white gingham - - ours are a simple white shirt with a navy blue skort (or shorts or pants). We wear white socks and black shoes. In the photo below, Jessica is wearing her P.E. shirt that has some stripes on it.

The school is located in a very quaint and sweet part of Hong Kong called Kennedy Town. It is about 15-20 minutes from our home. Mom and Dad judge everything by the price of a taxi ride because we have no car - - it is $5 USD (or $40 HKD) by taxi. Our bus has about 10 kids on it, and one "bus mother" who helps us get buckled into our seats properly.

We arrive at school by 8:30 - we bring our backpacks and our lunch, a water bottle, and a snack (no nuts are allowed at our school - - not the ones that grow on trees, anyhow). There's no cafeteria at our school. Our school has three house teams -- the Dragon house, Phoenix house and Lion house. Both Jessica and Christina are in the Dragon house. We can earn points for our house by being good! At the end of each week, we have a school assembly where the points are tallied up and we announce the points to the school. The classes take turns "going up" and telling things to the school about what they've been doing. The first week, Dragons were in the lead, but now Phoenix is in the lead!

We also have some class competitions - Christina's class collects bananas in George's tummy, and if they get 5 or more bananas in George's tummy by the end of the week, they get to watch a movie!

Jessica is in P4 with Ms. Amy and Ms. Meredith (and 7 other students), and Christina is in P1 with Ms. Mu and Ms. Chloe (with 7 other students). Mommy really really really LOVES our small class size and that we have a lead teacher as well as an assistant teacher.

Everyday the class schedule changes slightly, although we have Math, Literacy and Mandarin each day. Some days we have Art, some days we have "Cooking and Social Skills," 2 days a week we have PE and get to go for swimming lessons at the community center, some days we have Music, some Library, etc etc. We also have after-school programs that we can join if we want. Both Jessica and Christina are taking Handicrafts and Drama. We'll get to put on a play for the school and the parents at the end of the term! Jessica loves the after-school programs the best!

We also have reading and math homework.

Also, we can sing several songs in Mandarin that really impresses our parents!!! We can sing Happy Birthday, a counting song, a good-morning song, and a good-bye song. AND we know LOTS of words in Mandarin. We try to teach Mom and Dad some words and songs but they seem to say everything wrong. In China there are hundreds of dialects of "Chinese." The two most widely used are Mandarin and Cantonese. In Hong Kong, everyone speaks Cantonese. However, the government of China made a declaration that everyone had to be taught Mandarin as it would be the official language of China. Mandarin is a terrific language to know, but we would probably be able to learn Cantonese faster as that is what all the locals speak. But last night our taxi driver knew Mandarin and so we spoke to him and sang to him. He really enjoyed it! :-)

We have the MOST rocking Music teacher EVER. Her name is Ms. Leslie. She's from Canada and she teaches us folks songs. She is very kind and really wonderful. She came to Harbour School from the Canadian International school. She's been in Hong Kong for a long time. We went to her son's birthday party. It was NUTS. There must have been 30 kids there! Christina's favorite part of school is Music.

On Moon Festival, we had a special party and Dad got to come to school, so he took photos. We got to wear our Chinese outfits (from Texas - ha ha!) that day.
Above is a photo of one of the classrooms.

And another...

At the end of the day we ride the bus home, except on the days where we have after-school programs. We get dropped off 3rd but not last.

We like school!

OH - and our school is moving! On Thursday October 2, we'll be in the new school building! It is very close to our old school and still in Kennedy Town, but it will be very lovely, bright and updated. We'll get a photo of it tomorrow and post it soon.

We promise to write more to you about our school later, Nonna. Please pet Peanut Butter for us, we miss him!

Love you Nonna, Jessica and Christina

(Note from Mom...THERE IS NO FUNDRAISING AT THE SCHOOL!!!! :-) I'm so delighted to take a year or so off from the blasted fund raising!! The school does require tuition, but they also do require additional funding. Rather than sending the children out to sell things (which I think is an abominable practice), they have a big gala for the parents and other school supporters, with auction items, etc. I'm sure we'll be expected to open our checkbook at that time, but hey, the way I view it, I'll get a night out, no wrapping paper that I don't need, and I won't have to deal with my kids wanting to win the silly fund-raising competitions. For all these wonderful gifts, I will gladly write them the biggest check I am able to!!!)

Hong Kong Engineering

"Hong Kong" is both an island, made primarily of stone, plus some land to the north that connects with mainland China. It is a mountainous, rocky terrain, but it has a natural deep-water harbour that makes it a very efficient and practical place for doing marine business.

Hong Kong Island is small, but it houses many people. For some reason, the government has actually taken control of the public transportation system here, and they in themselves make sure that everyone can get to work! (Totally unheard of in the U.S.!). There are subways, buses, trams (cable-cars), and taxis galore, but the most interesting public transportation in my mind is...the escalators!










This is my favorite engineering feat...The Mid-Levels Escalators. This is just so much fun! It is a public escalator that goes down in the morning, until about 10:00 AM or such, so that all the people who live in the mid-levels (half way up the giant rock that is Hong Kong Island) can get to work. But, after 10 or 10:30 ish, it reverses direction around (it is really steep!!! - although there is a stair-case that runs along side the escalator - I promise you this, you will only want to go DOWN those stairs!).

One very interesting thing to me is that, given the terrain, if they decided to run a bus or other transport in that area, the people would have had to zig-zag down the mountain for ages.

It is a very interesting concept - - public escalators! I hope you can see from the 2nd shot - every covered area is covering sections of the escalator line. We didn't start at the bottom, but one time going up, we counted 14 escalators! I wonder how many there are total. Some are really long!

Love,
E.J.

We like the food here...

Here's fun place to eat - Heaven on Earth. Yummy!

A lovely Turner Painting?

JWM Turner?


Nope. Shenzhen Haze. (Ian I know you miss this!!!)

See http://www.abcgallery.com/T/turner/turner19.html "Yacht Approaching the Coast" for comparison purposes.

E.J.

Full Moon Festival

From http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/heritage/festivals/he_fest_mida.jhtml

"The festival commemorates a 14th Century uprising against the Mongols. In a cunning plan, the rebels wrote the call to revolt on pieces of paper and embedded them in cakes that they smuggled to compatriots.

Today, during the festival, people eat special sweet cakes known as "Moon Cakes" made of ground lotus and sesame seed paste, egg-yolk and other ingredients. Along with the cakes, shops sell coloured Chinese paper lanterns in the shapes of animals, and more recently, in the shapes of aeroplanes and space ships. On this family occasion, parents allow children to stay up late and take them to high vantage points such as The Peak to light their lanterns and watch the huge autumn moon rise while eating their moon cakes. Public parks are ablaze with many thousands of lanterns in all colours, sizes and shapes."

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Our apartment complex had a nice full moon festival party last night! They had cute games for the kids...

...this was the lantern riddle game. Each lantern has a riddle on it. If you guess the answer to the riddle correctly, you win a "chop," or an official stamp on your scorecard. "I start green, I open red, and you spit my black. What am I?" Give up? A watermelon!

Jessica tossing chips on the rainbow game!
Jessica showing her scorecard full of chops.

After you collect enough chops, you can claim a prize!

Christina and her friend Valeria showing off their prizes...glow-in-the-dark bracelets and mini-lanterns.

It is really a special experience to learn the local customs.

BTW - the mooncakes are everywhere. I've tried almost all of them, and they all taste the same. Not for me. More below...


From http://www.regit.com/hongkong/festival/mooncake.htm

Moon Cake Festival: A Mid-Autumn Festival (Chung Chiu), the third major festival of the Chinese calendar, is celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month. This festival corresponds to harvest festival s observed by Western cultures (in Hong Kong, it is held in conjunction with the annual Lantern Festival).

Contrary to what most people believe, this festival probably has less to do with harvest festivities than with the philosophically minded chinese of old. The union of man's spirit with nature in order to achieve perfect harmony was the fundamental canon of Taoism, so much so that contemplation of nature was a way of life.


This festival is also known as the Moon Cake Festival because a special kind of sweet cake (yueh ping) prepared in the shape of the moon and filled with sesame seeds, ground lotus seeds and duck eggs is served as a traditional Chung Chiu delicacy. Nobody actually knows when the custom of eating moon cake of celebrate the Moon Festival began, but one relief traces its origin to the 14th century. At the time, China was in revolt against the Mongols. Chu Yuen-chang, and his senior deputy, Liu Po-wen, discussed battle plan and developes a secret moon cake strategy to take a certain walled city held by the Mongol enemy. Liu dressed up as a Taoist priest and entered the besieged city bearing moon cake. He distributed these to the city's populace. When the time for the year's Chung Chiu festival arrived, people opened their cakes and found hidden messages advising them to coordinate their uprising with the troops outside. Thus, the emperor-to-be ingeniously took the city and his throne. Moon cake of course, became even more famous. Whether this sweet Chinese version of ancient Europe's "Trojan Horse" story is true, no one really known.

Who's coming to Hong Kong?

Who's coming to visit us, and when???

We're ready for visitors! xoxox

Work Permit - Macau Trip

I'm now legal to work in HK! Yippee! We had to exit the country as "visitors" and re-enter as "work-permit residents," so we took the opportunity to go to Macau, a little island one hour away by "Turbo-Jet" ferry.


Macau has an interesting history - is has a great deal of Portugese influence (has many centuries of being ruled by Portugal), it was briefly a protectorate of Japan (WWII), and was not handed over to China until until 1999, although there have always been Chinese on the island. Like Hong Kong, Macau is not completely "interested" in being called "China;" it holds on to its heritage as being independent from China in many ways. Under China's theme of "One country two systems," Macau (and Hong Kong) maintain their own simplified passport control offices, so it is easy to get in and out.

Anyhow, Macau was the quickest / easiest way for us to get into and out of HK for the appropriate passport stamps. It is not exactly a great fun place for kids - - it is the gambling mecca of the region (MGM Grand, Sands, Venetian - - all the big names are here). So we spent the day introducing the kids to 21 and Cubalibres (ha ha ha ha JUST KIDDING!!). But Macau does have a nice little town center which was getting geared up for the Mid-Autumn Festival - which will be held the night of September 14 (full moon). Everyone celebrates by hanging lanterns and eating moon cakes.
The town center has these wavy stone patterns - kinda cool although a little "vertigo-ish" at first.

Portugese influence can be seen in the local architecture - - unlike Hong Kong, Macau is trying to preserve some of the older buildings and keep so many skyscrapers from popping up.

Although my Spanish language skills are NOT good, it was nice to see writing in a Latin alphabet, and I could make out most words on the menus. Some of the traditional food looked great, but they had no plain rice or chicken nuggets. So...we ended up at this very silly sushi bar -

...in the center of the long table, you'll see all these covered sushi items on different colored plates. This thing rotates and you grab the one you want. The pricing is according to the color of your plate. (We ordered tempura and plain rice - Jessica was the only one brave enough to try the sushi - shrimp on rice but I think the shrimp was boiled.)

All in all, a fun little adventure!

Shopping in Stanley Market is pretty fun...

First say a little prayer...light some incense, respect your elders, etc...
Then eat some ice-cream while preparing for the Moon Festival (shop for lanterns)...then...
VOILA! Goooooood Girl Jessie! You found the PEARLS!!!! :-)

That's mommy's daughter!