3Q (Thank you)- a China blog

So for the week after Mid-Autumn festival theres National day ( the founding day of the PRC) and then golden week, so the kids were off for school!   We mostly stayed home because it's hot. BUT We took a couple of day trips out, one to Hong Kong to visit a museum and the other to an Amusement park called Window of the World, which had a bunch of replicas of famous monuments and street preformances, and a splash pad area.  In Hong Kong we ate at a little place literally a minute's walk from our bus stop at Wan Chai station, and i think it was called boat noodle, but it was really good. A set meal cost between 68-88hkd, which came with the plate of food and a drink. I got a tasty vwggie noodle dish, ollie got hainan chicken, Nolan got a spicy pork curry, and keith got a pork noodle dish but his had blood in it. The servers at the noodle shop were impressed with nolans spice tolerance, though he did have to steal some of Oliver's rice to cool his mouth a little. A delicious m...

 Summer really got away from me! We got back from vacation in Japan (I still have those posts in drafts) and I literally fell off.  Now that we're charging into October (holy shite) I do feel the need to get back on top of these posts.  The boys started school the first week of September and have really been enjoying it so far. The work load is much different than what they were used to at home (optional if any homework, etc) but with some regularity and adjustments (myself included) we're able to get the work done in a reasonable amount of time.  lunchtime We decided to enroll Nolan at the third grade level due to his academic standing in America, which was not a decision made lightly because it does make him the oldest kid in third grade, though its not a difference any of the other kids notice yet, as far as I am aware. Nolan has made incredible improvements in his adult-led activity tolerance, both at school and during homework time, but he is still very vocal ab...

 yo! So Osaka was a pretty cool deal. Our itinerary was pretty loosely structured, I had a few things in mind that I wanted to take the kids to and number one on that list was Universal. This trip was originally going to be in August but we ended up changing the dates around to make use of some flight credits that Keith's job was offering, so I had originally planned for us to be at Universal on Ollie's birthday. While we have a much quieter evening planned out now, Ollie and Nolan had a blast! Ollie wasn't really into it when we got there, but as soon as we were on the first ride he was into it As for the second day, the kids and I went to this great place called Kids Palace! Its kind of like a Please Touch Museum! They had a ton of fun. There were a few school trips that were there with us, and they found a friend to play with while they were there! We met up with Keith for lunch and walked to a cool indian/nepalese place for lunch, where I had a Nepalese beer (not bad). ...

 Been a while!  Way back in January before Keith left, we had started spitballing ideas of where our summer trip should be! A few ideas were thrown around, but eventually we settled on Japan. In June we bought our tickets, made reservations, and I was tasked with the itinerary.  Originally, we had planned on flying into Tokyo and then flying out of KIX/Osaka, but it ended up being cheaper to go the other way around so we started in Osaka, spent an afternoon in Nara, and a couple days in Kyoto before taking an overnight bus to Tokyo. We did talk a lot about rules of international travel to the kids, and one of those rules was "no toys outside of the hotel." We did this because we knew at some point we'd lose something. This I knew would be especially hard for Nolan, but there was one incident in Hong Kong that we had to talk about in depth and then mostly just a little grumbling for the rest of the trip, so I say everyone had some personal growth! yay! Anyway, the first st...

So me and the kids finally got our passports and residence permits back, so of COURSE the first opportunity had we checked out Hong Kong. Guys. You really should go! Our bus was scheduled to leave at 1245pm, so we left the house about a little after 11 (maybe 1130), took a didi (uber) over to the bus station, and it was PACKED. Keith had gone to hong kong the week before to see a movie, so we were going off his expectations on how long it was going to take to get on the bus but we cut it REALLY close.  Before you can head to the bus terminal itself, you have to go through customs both for mainland China and "special administration region" Hong Kong (I was very clear about this distinction with the children). Of course, it being Dragon Boat festival weekend, there were way more people than we were expecting, and it took about an hour to get through customs/immigration. We made it through at 1240 and booked it toward the terminal. When we get there, the bus was mostly loaded an...