The End of the Year

Usually I love the cycle of my job. I love the new beginnings and fresh starts. I love sending the kids on prepared for the next year. But I hate the endings.

I am one who has a hard time at New Years and at my birthday every year when I deal with the question of what I've accomplished in the past year. I agonize over new resolutions and over whether I accomplished the ones from before. So the end of the school year is also rough.

This year I'm not moving to a different school, so I'm not leaving everyone I know. But it's also hard not having the end of year ceremony of saying good-bye. There are people leaving this school, but I'm not friends with any of them. Here am I at the end of a whole year without any close friends at all.

So it's reflection and resolution time. I have at least one more year commuting to Hong Kong. I haven't done so very well this year, though I have survived. I wonder what I can do to make it work next year. I have a summer to think about it - another reason I love my job.

"Birthday Parties" or "Slow Descent into Hell"

While I was typing this blog's description for the seventh time yesterday trying to deal with Blogger's changing of the template, I realized that I haven't talked about life in the suburbs for a while. What's more quintessentially the role of a suburban mom than having a birthday party?

These are the birthday parties Kestrel has been to this year:
Science Magic (with entertainer and experiments)
Bowling (at an exclusive club)
Beads Galore (jewelry making at an Italian restaurant)
Adventure Zone (indoor play area with pizza)
Great Adventure Race (four hours all over the mountains ending at a Mexican restaurant)

So when Kestrel's birthday was coming up and she wanted to invite the whole class, I approached it with a bit of trepidation. It didn't help that she's been talking about it for six months. First we decided on something manageable - a beach party. Then I persuaded her that ten kids would be a lot more fun. But there are only two tables at the beach - if they're full we'd be serving food with kids kicking sand all over it. And more worryingly, it had rained for eight days straight - ten kids in our tiny apartment was, frankly, unimaginable.

But we had luck. It didn't rain in spite of the forecast. No one else was crazy enough to have a beach party, so we had the tables to ourselves. Kestrel and I picked up the kids and more adults at the ferry and then off to the beach where Granite was guarding the table and being eaten alive by little black gnats. Only two of the accompanying adults didn't come to the party. We had helpers or parents, or helpers and parents for almost every kid. The crowds stood around taking pictures and videos while the kids decorated wooden paddle boats with felt sails (our answer to a clown and pony show) and while they ate and fooled around. It was weird and awkward not knowing who was who and feeling like I needed to entertain them as well as the kids.

But the kids had fun. They ran around and played ball tag on the play equipment. Then they made boats and went swimming since the boats didn't sail too well. We had to drag them out for the Subway sandwiches, fruit and cake. Well, except for one kid who wouldn't stop digging in the sand for anything. And another kid who came an hour late, who hadn't RSVP'ed, who wouldn't speak to anyone for the first hour she was there, and who stayed an hour after the party was supposed to be over. Actually having the entire school class at our house in Turkey was a lot easier than this Hong Kong party. The kids in Turkey got along so much better and were much better at social interaction - unless Kestrel just invited some odd kids this year.

It turned out to be a pretty successful party. Glitter got all over the known world. One boy squirted mango juice all over another while they were at the table, but I didn't yell and it didn't get on anything but the other kid. And it didn't rain until Kestrel and I were walking home after that funny little girl and her mom finally left. After fifteen kids' birthday parties, you'd think it'd get easier and more fun. I wonder how many more I have to go?This picture is from the next day when the birthday girl got to learn to ride her first two-wheeler. That was the best part of the birthday, I thought.

Squatters' Village

Sitting here on my window seat I can see Disneyland when I look to the right. Space Mountain shows among the trees; the fast ferries pass on their way from Central Hong Kong to this perfectly groomed area that I live in.

But when I look to my left, I see the old ferries that go out to other outlying islands and a cement walkway leading to Nim Shue Wan. I suppose since there is a name for the place, it isn't only squatters living in the ramshackle cobbled-together buildings. But I know a lot of the places aren't titled. The first time I walked the path, it was pretty creepy. The path leads between houses with glass cemented into the top of the walls, around the awning cooking areas that have karaoke set up on Sunday, and in some places actually through people's houses.

In two places, people have a house on the right side of the path, then on the left they have a table and cooking area. The area is joined by a corrugated fiberglass roof, and the designated, cemented pathway to the Trappist Monastery (the kind of hike that is in Lonely Planet) goes right through. There are always two or three dogs lying in that shady area and no way to go around, so the only thing to do is just go on. I always think I should say "Afiyet olsun" or "Bon appetit" or something when the families are sitting eating dinner, but I don't know what to say in Cantonese. I've never taken a picture of the inside of the house because I feel weird enough walking through. Some time that no one is home, maybe I can, but I've never been by when it was deserted.

There are garden plots growing bok choi protected from the birds by CD's dangling from red cords. There are big banana groves. I saw a huge black snake on the path once there. The dogs that live in the houses sometimes follow us along as we leave their house and then go off exploring in the bananas. There's a Tin Hau temple and several shrines along the way towards the monastery.

All along the path there are also government signs. They say, "The areas in the vicinity of this sign are subject to landslip risk. Some squatter huts have been recommended for clearance. Locations of the affected squatter huts are available from the Geotechnical Engineering Office at 2760 5715. Please stay away from slopes and stream courses during Landslip Warning Signal, Typhoon Signal No. 8 or heavy rains. For location of temporary shelters, you may call..." I always thought it was kind of benevolent of the government to put up the signs, but this winter, the government did more. Along one section of this "village" the hillside climbs steeply up. So the government built retaining walls behind a bunch of the "huts." It was an elaborate project that took several months and required the boating in and landing of generators, corrugated iron fences, concrete mixers, etc. None of the homes were destroyed either: the workers just went around them. I don't know many governments that would do that for squatters.

Part of the village has been taken over by Filipino workers who don't live-in with their employers, or maybe workers that aren't under contract and so have a more tenuous existence. On Sunday morning (their only day off) great pots of food are started cooking in the open kitchens, and big TV screens with karaoke screens are getting readied for big afternoon parties. I can hear the music some nights from my room. From this sign it looks like lots of services are offered in that warren of buildings. On Sundays also there is an unofficial flea market on the way to Nim Shue Wan where some helpers sell clothes and shoes that have somehow come down to them from their employers'.

This little area to my left is a very different kind of life from the view to the right. Sometimes at the flea market, a helper has her little charge with her while she's shopping. I always wonder if the mom knows where her child has been and the different perspective the child has seen.

This American Life

When I listen to re-runs of "This American Life" I experience the strange disconnect of a jetlag. You know the feeling, when your body doesn't know where you are and is confused, but not necessarily miserable about it. I don't mean I feel jet-lagged because I'm listening to this American thing in another country, though I haven't heard the program in the States for years. Except once last summer I was listening while driving up and down Pacific Coast Highway looking for a Supercuts (which is in itself a slightly surreal experience.)

I feel the jetlag because each program for me has been overwritten by the landscape that surrounds it. I don't know if overwritten is the right word. Remember when, if you taped a cassette tape too many times, you could hear the words you taped before? It's like that for me - there are story echoes of the landscape mixed with each episode.

If you don't know the radio show, "This American Life" you'll have to check it out at http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Archive.aspx. Each week they have an hour-long show around a certain theme. Some of the chapters are essays, others are interviews or fiction stories. The archives go far back. Some of my recent favourites are: Nobody's Family is Going to Change, Valentines Day 2008 and a horror story for teachers, Human Resources.As I listened to the podcast on my nano and ran through the hills in Turkey, the paths and stories became connected. I didn't know how tightly the stories had been attached to the setting until last week when I was climbing the stairs up to the ridge above Discovery Bay here in Hong Kong and listening to a last-year story. Stride by stride I could see sandy hills with thorn bushes and simultaneously jasmine vines with butterflies. It was like how a camera can focus on a reflection and a scene at the same time, but the eye's focus moves back and forth. I kept expecting tortoises around the next corner and just saw dragonflies. I took turns that were not there and slipped on moss I never would have expected. I'm going to have to watch out for re-runs, or else watch my step.

Mother's Day High Tea

The Peninsula Hotel has been here for a while. On the third floor, on December 25, 1941, the Hong Kong Governor Sir Mark Aitchison Young surrendered the colony to the Japanese. It was the Japanese headquarters at the time. When my mom and I went to high tea, the wartime atmosphere had dissipated.

Going for tea is one of those things people still do in Hong Kong. There are nice high teas in various hotels, nice restaurants, even the Godiva shop. Little local restaurants advertise "tea sets" for the afternoon where you can get your tea or coffee and a dessert or a bowl of noodles cheaper than lunch or dinner time. But the quintessential, archetypal high tea is at the Peninsula, or at least that's what I'd read. It turned out to be as lovely as predicted. The lobby was elegant and quiet, but full of activity. The actual tea was lovely and so was the food.
There were finger sandwiches, little quiche, cakes, sweets, tiramisu with ground pistachios and other delights displayed on a three-tiered plate rack. It didn't look like that much, but with cups of tea, civilized talk and dainty bites, it was plenty. After, we wandered around and explored. The only thing we missed was the hotel shop. Apparently, it has all kinds of goods like a Harrod's store.

But the most fun was going out together. Last time we had high tea together was in London in 1990. That was fun, but we didn't have as much to talk about and I wasn't grown enough to enjoy the experience as much. Too bad my mom's not here today to celebrate on the day, but better early than never. Happy Mother's Day, Mommy!