End of October

Almost to Halloween, followed by Thanksgiving... which I haven't had a proper one in years, turkeys are just so expensive here. Also, it's not a Hong Kong holiday, so I'll try for a Roast Chicken... or Duck. Then we have Christmas, but most importantly for me is Xinyi's birthday the week before. I've already told her she can have a new smaller Hello Kitty kitchen. The old kitchen will go as we are possibly moving, and the new place won't have a lot of space, and really I'm a bit over the Ikea kitchen now. It's fun in theory, but it's just more to clean, and the kids sometimes use it, but overall they don't.

Next week we have test time at school, I'm trying to lower my expectations on the topic of education. They start them off so early here, and my daughter is actually a bit younger than some of her peers. It's basically 1st grade, she's five, and some of her classmates are 7. In Hong Kong, they are required to start school by age 6, but they start K1 at age 3. She's so much smarter than I was at that age, and she speaks English and Chinese (mainly mandarin, but she knows a little Cantonese). I don't remember doing much of anything in Kindergarten, maybe some macaroni letters, and First grade was just a mess. The teacher had too high an expectation. Also, her school is set up with class periods, so a different teacher for each subject. I'm working on expanding my site, I've added a Illustration/Design page as a bit of a portfolio. I'm getting a bit more time to work on things, I just have to do it.