After almost 25 years living in Europe, we recently made the jump to Asia and have set up our homestead in Hong Kong. This is the second of a 3-part series on our initial reflections on Hong Kong.
Oh Happy Day – we have found a home in Hong Kong!
We started our search about two weeks ago by looking at about two thousand shoe boxes in the sky, all with perfectly lovely community pools, gyms, and play rooms for the children – though sometimes you had to cross a high-way to get to them. We had resigned ourselves to some serious downsizing and living in the renowned Hong Kong smog.
view from the Peak
Indeed our serviced apartment is a phenomenal 10-minute walk to Andrew’s office in the main business section of town called Central. (Would you believe it – for the past 20+ years, Andrew has enjoyed a 10-15 minute walk to work, first in Madrid, then in Rome, and now in HK). He’s about to pay his dues now, but more on that in a minute.
We’re on Macdonnell road, an apartment-hotel that provides the comforts of a hotel (changing sheets/ towels every few days) but with a bit more independence and privacy (our own kitchenette, etc.) I’ve loved that we can put all our laundry in a bag, send it to housekeeping, and a day later it comes back clean and folded. The view from the kids room displays the magnificent sky-scrapers HK is so famous for, complete with lightshow display in the evenings and – if you can focus your eyes way down to the ground – Tai Chi practitioners in the early morn.
The kids have two single beds squished into one room, with no walking space other than a narrow pathway to the bathroom. They seem fine with it, though, and we’ve all somewhat gotten into a routine with work, kids camp, preparing for the start of kids school, and house search.
Next week that will all change! Our stuff – which has literally been on a slow boat to China since we moved out of our place in Italy end of June – has now arrived and is in a storage facility somewhere in the depths of HK. Our serviced apartment expires Aug 20th, so we’ve felt a certain urgency to decide on a place to move into. Plus the kids school starts up Sept. 9th, and we really hoped to be somewhat settled by then.
We realized that if we lived further out in the burbs, Andrew gets shafted with a commute – up to an hour each way. But as we started to look at property out that way… both down in the very south of Hong Kong Island around Repulse Bay/ Stanley and on the mainland out by Clearwater Bay/ Sai Kung… we could get a whole lot more space, green garden areas, cleaner air, and stunning ocean views for our Hong Kong dollar.
So, we’ve opted for livin’ in the burbs. And we’ll be living in a HOUSE! First time in decades I’ll be living in a house, and I’m thrilled!
We found a beautiful 3-story house with a wrap-around out-door terrace, balcony off the 2nd floor, and a full roof-top terrace with views of the ocean. It’s in an area of the Eastern-most part of the New Territories, with lots of little islands surrounding it that enter into the South China Sea.
There’s a dining/ living room area on the first floor with a decent-sized kitchen (for HK living, anyway) that opens up onto the terrace; then a second floor with 2 kids rooms, shared bathroom and a nice-sized family room area; a top floor with en-suite master bedroom and another en-suite room with will serve as my office/ guest bedroom. Then the roof top terrace has magnificent views of the water and scattered islands on one side, and these gorgeous rolling green hills on the other.
The neighborhood has loads of children and has very much a community feel, with children playing in the neighbors gardens, grown-ups dropping in for a glass of wine, and the little complex apparently comes alive during holidays with trick-or-treating for Halloween and all the festivities of our western holidays – as well as the local celebrations such as Chinese New Years.
It’s a 15-minute walk to Sai Kung Town where there’s harbor with access to boats to explore the surrounding islands; a bunch of local shops and restaurants; and a swimming beach.
We have found our home.
The other really big news is Hunter’s first full-week sleep-away camp. He didn’t’ want to go at first and we were actually surprised when he agreed to it during what was surely a brief moment of letting his guard down. He tried to back-track – after we paid for the not-so-cheap sojourn of course – but we insisted that he had to stick to it. And if he hated it, we’d discuss afterwards.
Turns out he ADORED it.
He learned all kinds of cool academic tools to increase his success at school – reading skills to increase speed and comprehension, note-taking tips, memorization tricks that really work! Then he “learned” a series of life skills. Buzz expressions like “speak with good purpose” , “failure leads to success” and “Live above the line” were sprinkled into silly skits with Slim Shady and the latest rock music where they all danced and sang and competed with the other teams that had been created. A lot about relying on the trust of your peers but in the end the responsibility lies within. Much “sieze the day”, “your choices have consequences”…..
I put “learned” in parentheses because I have spent 10 years striving to instill these values and one week of these amazing young, goofy American counselors and it seems now to have stuck. I like to think I laid the groundwork? Well, whatever works (and what a healthy reminder that not taking ourselves too seriously, keeping it light and real, can be the key)!
Sweet Giada starts sobbing the morning after Hunter returned from camp at the breakfast table. “I don’t want to go to camp without you because I want to be with you, you make me laugh. Even when I’m annoyed with you, you still make me laugh”. Hunter comes over hugging her, “it’s ok Giada, it will all be ok. I love you”.
Our temporary shoe-box in the sky is oozing with love these days. We’re thrilled to soon be re-locating that love to a spacious Hong Kong suburbian villa!
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The loveliest thing about your home is the love that fills it!