Sunday, June 18, 2017

Quick Immersion


I ended my last blog post with an image of me eating my America food store-bought Fritos while smearing the grease all over my phone. (I know, pretty sexy, right?)  My other recent food behaviors include lots of bagels and cream cheese, excessive amounts of pizza, eating 5 breakfasts but no dinner, and thinking up all the insane things I would do for a chick-fil-a "meal number one," which is calling to me from thousands of miles away.  Also, I'm getting a little fat.

Although I feel it is somewhat justified as I'm 14 weeks pregnant!  I'm due in December and we were pretty stoked to have perfectly executed an Aussie summertime baby!  That quickly changed, however, when the Hong Kong plan began and it occurred to me that Hong Kong is in the opposite hemisphere. Oops!  Winter baby, it is.

So, rewind a few weeks and we were on our house hunting trip in Hong Kong.  I've only been there twice in my life so far. The first time, I was 7 weeks pregnant with Isla, trying my hardest not to puke the entire time.  And this time, I was 7 weeks pregnant with Macklemore (as I am referring to him/her at the moment) and trying to not puke while looking at apartments. Needless to say, I am pretty pumped to move to Hong Kong and explore it without carrying around a plastic bag, just in case I can't keep my lunch down.

Before we went for our recent visit, I gave myself an internet crash course in the public and private health systems in Hong Kong.  The first thing I learned was that getting into a private hospital with a delivery booking is a pretty competitive process given that the city is 1/3 ex-pats.  I saw an OB while there and had my first ultrasound.  Then, as expected based on my research, I was asked to fill out the booking forms for the hospital I had selected to deliver.  This part definitely threw me for a loop.  I couldn't help but laugh as I scanned over this form.  It looked exactly like the Expedia screen looks when you are selecting which room you want at a given hotel - you select what type of room you want, then how many nights you'd like to stay, if you want a meal option for your spouse, and then the kicker, whether you'd like to have a C-section or not.  Huh. "Why, yes, I'd like to book a quick C-section followed by a 5 night private room stay with a balcony.  And please just hand me my baby upon check out.  Cheers!" 

Needless to say, our Hong Kong adventure is already off to a pretty interesting start! We also signed a lease for an apartment in the Midlevels area of Hong Kong island and got Isla all set for pre-school there.  Our visas are approved and the movers arrive in 2 days.  Now all we need is an awesome line-up of visitors. (Hint, hint!)

Other than international baby prep, we've all been wrapping up things here as much as possible. I took the train last week a couple times just to ensure both my metro cards ran into the negative. I didn't really need to ride the train, but it just seemed like a clever thing to do. We sold lots of stuff, donated lots of stuff, organized lots of stuff, and today I had two important tasks:  I did my last run along the beach near our house in Elwood, and next, I plan to eat all the food left in our refrigerator and pantry.  This is somewhat of a gross task, but it will be rewarded tomorrow when my planned activity with a friend is to go out to eat at a couple of our favorite places (which of course I will have to do once  there's nothing to eat in the house.) I haven't told Isla this plan for tomorrow, but I can only imagine the look on her face when I tell her we need to go out for muffins and babychinos for most of the day!

Our last beach ice cream down at the pier

View of Melbourne from my run today