Day 6– School Farewell & Family Time

Ka Hei’s school is on the edge of his estate grounds and looks toward Lion Rock.

Ka Hei said goodbye to friends and teachers today.  We came to the school at the very end of the party and were given a tour of the school by Ka Hei and several of his teachers.  His teachers were so kind and clearly cared about Ka Hei.

 

I teared up several times watching him interact with his best friend (who even waited for us after our tour to ask if he and his mother could come to the airport to say goodbye to Ka Hei) and with his teachers and thinking about all the relationships he will be leaving behind. 

In so many ways, it is so unfair. 

Yes, I know he has no family that can take care of him (and money/poverty is not the reason) and the HK government decided to only allow him to be internationally adopted.  And yes, I know that we can provide the family stability and love that he needs.  But right now, looking at everything that he is leaving…it's painful.  One of his teachers gave him a teddy bear wearing a Hong Kong tshirt.  She told us that she told him, “When you first go to America, you might be lonely…you can hug this teddy bear and remember us.” And considering how hard a time I am having processing all of this…at some point all of his loss will surely overwhelm him.  I pray God gives me grace and wisdom to help him get through to the other side.

Now that I’ve drug you near the depths of my thoughts, I’ll pull you back to the shallow end so we can finish the rest of our day.

After we finished the school tour, he went to his apartment so he could get changed and we could sign some paperwork.  The adoption representative from ISS (the primary child welfare agency in HK) was with us for a time at the school and went back with us to the apartment.  We learned more about Ka Hei’s story from her…I would have enjoyed spending more time with her.  She clearly has a tenderness for Ka Hei and she was able to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge.

While we were talking, Lucas, Ka Hei and Timothy played international checkers, which T&L had to teach to KH first, but he picked it up very quickly!  Then we went out for supper.  Ka Hei chose a Chinese restaurant that was nearby (~ 20 min walk).  Our younger kids were a bit excited to see fish in tanks at the restaurant until we told them that those would be our supper :).

Actually, we only ate 1 of those fish :).  Steamed…and it was good :).  We also had beef and chicken.

Yes, those are heads, my friends!  Don’t worry – all the organs had been removed :).

Tonight I also felt we had a little breakthrough in relationship building.  As we walked to the restaurant, Timothy and Ka Hei laughed with each other as they played with the umbrella they were sharing.  As waited for the restaurant to open for supper (6 pm), TKL&A taught KH how to play Stix (the finger adding game…again he learned very quickly) and there was a lot of laughter as they beat each other and got a bit silly with the game.  Then on the way home from the restaurant, as I stood at the back of my brood (my favorite position so I can make sure we don’t lose anyone in the crowds) I heard a lot of laughter and saw a lot of this…

What a beautiful thing!  I’m lovin’it!!!

 

ps.  Just moments before I snapped the picture, Lucas’ arm was around Ka Hei as well…10 yr old boys just don’t stay still for long :).

Hong Kong Day 5 - Tuesday–Sept 2nd

 

Warning – Guest Blogger (Andrew)

On Tuesday, we went to pick up Ka Hei at 12:30 for an outing with just us (the family).  We took the subway to a mall that had an ice skating rink embedded in the mall.   Ice skating went very well, Ka Hei’s first time.  He learned very quickly and enjoyed himself.  I was very happy to slowly circle the ice rink as I prefer to move from place to place with shoes not skates.  Sandy was an excellent encourager to Ka Hei and also found time to sneak ahead to take pictures.  As we would come around the rink towards where Sandy was taking pictures, I would lean over and tell Ka Hei that Mom’s up ahead to take a picture (he seemed to appreciate hearing Sandy called Mom).  Overall, communication was effective (without a translator) which is good for his confidence and made for a great trip.  As we dropped Ka Hei off back at his place, he was all smiles and gave Dad a hug (since he is a 10 year old boy, touch has been slow as expected).  Earlier, I had asked if he wanted to hold my hand while we walked to the subway and he looked at me like….I’m a 10 year old boy, are you nuts?

On Tuesday night, we walked about 15-20 minutes North into the Mong Kok shopping area.  This is a more upscale shopping area with lots of people.  ‘'’The city that never sleeps’’ is a term used for many big cities.  Hong Kong is not an exception.  There was a break in the people here, so Sandy felt comfortable stepping aside to take pictures. 

Looking out the window from our bedroom, I have not yet looked and not seen someone walking on the street (even waking up in the middle of the night, 3am, 5am, etc.).  Someone is always going somewhere.  Even in the pouring rain.  These picture are from this morning. 

It has been raining hard this morning so I decided to look up what >30mm/hr equates to.  It is 1+ inches an hour.  I then wondered how much rain we have experienced since last Friday.  5 days, about 6 inches.  It is supposed to dry out coming into the weekend, we will see.  So far we have been able to navigate around the rain pretty well.

Today we will go visit Ka Hei’s school.

Hong Kong Day 4– Playing with Ka Hei and Dim Sum

This morning we met Gladys at the MTR station and journeyed to Ka Hei’s home.  It definitely felt different today than just a few days ago.  I didn’t have the same anxiousness/concerns as I did about how the first meeting would go.  Instead I was more joyful and excited for the opportunities the day would bring.  We spent the first hour of the morning talking with the woman who has cared for Ka Hei for the last 2 years.  She has a very kind disposition and was eager to tell us anything she could in order to help us know Ka Hei better.  I really appreciated the time she spent with us.  She even told us that Ka Hei had confided in her that he thinks he likes us!  HUGE PRAISE!! 
At 11:15, she asked us if we would like to go get Ka Hei at school, of course we said yes!  We headed outside and across the very large common area of his apartment group (estate), right up to the doors of his school…his school is a Baptist school.  Amazing, right?  God is so amazing.  For the last 2 years, God placed our son in a Baptist school with an active Child Evangelism Fellowship team so Ka Hei could begin to learn about who He is.  And now we get to water those seeds of faith and build on that foundation!  I love how God works :). 
We walked back to Ka Hei’s apartment and then he led Gladys and us to a nearby Dim Sum restaurant.  Gladys asked him to go to the counter and choose some dishes for us to try.  He was so sweet, wanting to pick out good things, joking with the cooks behind the counter, trying to explain a couple things to us in English and finally going to get Gladys to make the final choices.  When we sat down, Gladys started telling our kids what the foods were, but when she got to one of the dishes, I quickly stepped in and said, “You just need to try it,” knowing that if they knew exactly what was sitting in front of them, they might chicken out (pun intended).

Have you guessed what the dish on the right is?  Chicken’s foot!  And yes, I tried it.  Not my favorite.  But because I was determined to try everything, I found several things I did like :). Of course, I expected to like this:
  The sweet and sour pork went over quite well :).  As did the rice, some very yummy bread balls with a tapioca-like filling and some other things that I truly can’t spell or explain very well.  Timothy, who kindly refused the chicken’s foot, even found a very hot sauce that he enjoyed drizzling over his rice, much to Gladys’ surprise.

Gladys is truly a gift.  As Ka Hei’s social worker, she isn’t just getting her job done, she cares deeply about what is best for Ka Hei and it shows in everything she does.  Today she brought a surprise to the table.  Chinese Chess :).
 
She purchased a travel board for Ka Hei to take with him to our home :).  So, for quite some time, Timothy and Andrew relied on Ka Hei to show them how they could and couldn’t move their pieces.  It was obvious Ka Hei enjoyed it and so did we!  If for no other reason than because he went back and forth between deep concentration and huge smile…and his smile is just contagious!
Next stop, the playground on the estate where all 5 of our kids did monkey bars, teeter totters, played tag and basically made us adults hot just watching them :).

As we were walking back to the apartment, with Lucas, Ka Hei and Aylssa running just ahead of us, Gladys described what a busy weekend Ka Hei had.  He spent one day with a school case worker and one day with his previous social worker (she recently moved on to a different job).  She turned to me and said, “So many people love Ka Hei.”   We can see why…and we’re only beginning to scratch the surface.

Hong Kong Day 3 - Symphony of Lights

After a good rest in the afternoon, we left the apartment in search of supper and fun.  Andrew’s navigational skills simply amaze me.  I’m pretty sure he has a map of Hong Kong’s MTR in his head at this point because he swiftly led us through stations and then out to the street at Tsim Sha Tsui before he whipped out his smartphone to guide us to our restaurant.  We decided to ease our kids into a full Chinese meal with a popular Chinese fast food restaurant the D&J Witzig’s and D&W Moore’s recommended to us…Café de Coral.  The meal went over well (Alyssa was happy to eat off our extra rice and green beans)…hooray! The area we were in was absolutely crawling with people, so we listened to a couple singers/guitar players and milled around for a bit just people watching. 

We had originally planned on taking the Star Ferry across the bay, taking the tram up to the top of Victoria Peak and watching the lights of Kowloon come on, but a couple things were not in our favor – 1) it was cloudy and we weren’t sure what kind of visibility we would have and 2) I forgot to bring the Dramamine.  Timothy, Kayla and I can all get pretty motion sick & frankly just watching the ferries bob up and down in the water was making me a little queasy.  We hopped into a Watsons (Walgreens or CVS-like) but the pharmacist had just gone on break.  So, instead of hopping on a ferry, we walked over to the Promenade to find some seats to watch the lights of Hong Kong Island come on and wait more than an hour before the Symphony of lights began (the Promenade has built in benches). It was while we were waiting that 4 women absolutely became enamored with Alyssa.  First they asked if they could take her picture, then if they could take a picture with her and finally if their boyfriends could be in the pictures too.  It was quite the hoot!  And Alyssa was enjoying herself :).  While the Symphony of lights wasn’t a HUGE wow….it was fun, and we all agreed that it was neat to see the city light up.  These pictures don’t do the view justice, because the white is too overpowering…the colors were much more brilliant in person.  We’ll have to see what I can do with photoshop when I get home, but for now, they’re the best I’ve got.

Hong Kong Day 3 – Hiking

After being completely urban yesterday, we decided to spend this Sunday enjoying some of the natural beauty God has given Hong Kong.  Off we headed to Lion’s Rock.  Lion’s Rock is not a hike for wimps.  It is well kept and neatly marked, but it is also uphill…steeply uphill…we hiked for more than an hour and a half uphill at a decent clip.

  

After about an hour, Alyssa looked at me and said, “My legs just can’t do this anymore.” I felt her pain and wondered if we had decided to bite off more than we could really chew.  And then, we saw this:

Monkeys!  It is amazing how the sight of monkeys in the wild can rejuvenate a person :).  (I have tried to upload a video of the monkeys we saw, but to no avail…sorry Marcus!)

For quite a while as we hiked on, we saw monkeys on railings, in trees, one at a time, or entire families.  It was so cool!  And then we saw this:

Incredible!  The mountains all around, the water and then the zillions of skyscrapers…all in one place.  Before we came here, I told people I thought it could be my dream place…like throwing New York City, Colorado Springs & Ft Myers all in one place & in many ways it is.

We headed back to our apartment, drenched to the bone with sweat – you just can’t imagine how hot humid, tropical heat is until you have experienced it.  We washed down, ate lunch (which included a Hong Kong version of pigs in a blanket which my kids loved and egg tarts – very yummy.  And then we listened to Wed night church online.  Thanks so much for praying for us!!!  Then rested for a couple hours before we headed out for our next adventure, which will have to wait until tomorrow because I’m wiped out and need to head to bed :).  Goodnight!

Hong Kong Day 2–Amazing City

First I have to say that I am so thankful I got Windows Live Writer on this laptop before we left home.  I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to make web pages show up completely in English.  Example – when I open up this blog online, my words are in English, but the “sign in,” etc type stuff that is at the top of the blogspot screen is in putonghua…not so helpful.  I have tried several tricks to see the stuff in English, but to no avail.  Just another part of the experience :).

Today is Saturday.  We had a “day off” so we decided to head to downtown Kowloon.  First stop, Tsim, Sha Tsui and the East Promenade where we were treated to a beautiful view of Hong Kong Island. 

Hong Kong is known as the Pearl of the Orient (as the statue in the background symbolizes).  Yes, the weather is foggy…it has been raining every day…we head out with out umbrellas up and it is still very humid all day. Thankfully the rain has let up 10-11 each morning.  I love the picture below – I feel it accurately captures the old world/new world that I have witnessed in Hong Kong.

  And of course, while we were there we had to get some pics at the Avenue of the stars.

Our kids were excited to see a name they knew on the avenue.  However, I’m not sure Jackie Chan would be impressed to know that they only know him as the voice of Monkey in Kung Fu Panda :).

Next we headed to the HK Museum of History.  By this time it was 11:30 and we were hoping the museum would have a restaurant inside, as so many American museums do.  We were disappointed to discover that they do not, but the rest of the museum made up for it!  We really enjoyed this view into HK’s past as well as its many traditions.

 

About 2 hours later we emerged.  Starving.  We started heading “home” to our apartment with quickly wilting kids (humid heat+hunger definitely = wilting).  As we were walking, we were keeping our eye out for a place to eat, but that’s a bit more difficult than it sounds.  Even Ka Hei’s case worker has given us some mild cautions about where we eat, and with our kids in tow, it makes me a little nervous to just hop into a restaurant.  And then we saw an oasis ahead…

   In all seriousness, I’m not much of a McD fan.  I’m happy with their salads, but since I’m the only one of my crew who will order a salad, I’d usually rather find somewhere else to eat.  But today, McD was a truly welcome sight.  It’s nice to have something familiar after you have been surrounded with everything that is UNfamiliar. Like the streets we had been walking.

I felt like we walked Times Square times a bunch today and with all the new smells and sounds and language it can get a bit overwhelming.  We headed back to spend the rest of the afternoon (3 pm on) resting and relaxing at our apartment which worked out perfectly because it stormed a bunch of that time.  Don’t get me wrong, we are truly enjoying our time here, we just need more down time than normal to process everything & recover from jet lag.  And I know this experience is helping me have a greater appreciation for what Ka Hei will go through as he transitions into our life in the US.

Hong Kong Day 1–It’s all about expectations

Since I’m a planner, I don’t tend to do well with plan disruptions, but I went into this trip with the mindset of…things will be messed up and crazy and that is ok.  See, I was planning for disruptions.  Stuff like not getting our luggage for nearly 1 1/2 hours.

I was totally good with it.  And congratulating myself for my "just go with the flow” attitude.

Then everything flew out the window.

Last night as we were getting kids into bed (around midnight here…so 11 am Morton time), Andrew said I should hurry because there was a message from Gladys (Ka Hei’s case worker).  She had an itinerary for us.  We would start meeting with Ka Hei tomorrow.  Good news right?  He is the whole reason we are here!  Well, between the fact that I was severely sleep deprived, working with a little culture shock and the fact that we had been told for MONTHS that if we wanted to see Hong Kong we should do so before we met with Ka Hei because we would meet Ka Hei a couple times, then he would be in our custody and then we should leave the country….like seriously, don’t stick around...just fly home.  I was in shock.  What about the language barrier between us?  What if he just plain wanted to go home (not with us)…he would be so close and yet not able to be there because he would have to be in an apartment with people he hardly knows?  And we’re not flying home for 2 weeks!!  It took some gracious calming from my husband and a good night’s sleep before I could shake the panic.  Sad, but true.

Fortunately this morning as I prayed, God reminded me that I had put this trip into His Hands and now was not the time to try to take it back. 

So, we headed out of the apartment to get the “lay of the land.”  I’m so thankful Andrew is directionally amazing, because it didn’t take me long to get completely lost.  It was raining, but not hard.  It definitely did not affect the number of people out and about.  We saw lots of fun stuff.

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I just love all the bamboo scaffolding :).  The lovelies below were in a restaurant window.  And of course, our kids were pleased to see these familiar arches.  By the way, most of these pics are courtesy of Kayla, my resident photog.

 

We bought a few grocery items (we found pb&j! True comfort food :) ), returned to the apartment we’re staying at and waited for Gladys to come.  About 11:30 she arrived with an itinerary of our time here in Hong Kong.  Because Ka Hei is older (10), she wants to give him plenty of time to warm up to us.  So, she told us, he will meet us for a few hours today, then have a weekend to process.  Then meet us for a few hours each day until the evening of the 10th when he will move into the apartment with us.  We fly home on the 13th.   I’m so thankful!  I want him to want to come home with us at the end of our time here, not feel like he is forced to.  Gladys is going to do everything in her power to help this transition be as smooth as possible.  Praise the Lord!

Gladys led us to Ka Hei’s home (he is in a foster/small group home) via walking, MTR (subway) and more walking.  1/2 hr later, we were there!

 

And he is a typical, nervous, goofy, cautious, smiling, 10 year old boy who creamed us in Rummikub and Clue :).  Trust me, it was not because of some language barrier…even if Lucas tries to convince you otherwise.  And what did he request for lunch?  Pizza Hut!

We headed back to our apartment after a bit more game playing and then experienced something we have never experienced before…

 

  Our kids BEGGING to go to bed!

  Tomorrow and Sunday we have “free days.” So, Andrew and I had better figure out what we are going to do :).  Goodnight!