Holidays Abroad

Nothing makes me feel quite as homesick as the US Fall and Winter holidays.  Last year, I was pretty preoccupied with being pregnant and having Monroe in December.  This year, I am on top of my holiday game!  However, even with lots of advanced planning, celebrating the holidays in the way we've been accustomed to in America has it's very comical challenges.

Halloween

By mid-October, I am typically a sucker for a cozy sweater and a pumpkin spice latte.  Except in Hong Kong, where even the thought of putting anything over top of my tank top makes me start sweating!  So, I've settled into the cozy October activity of eating a Milk Tea & Cookies McFlurry (yep, that's a real thing!) while in my swimsuit.  The heat has also been a hilarious concern when helping the kids select Halloween costumes. I was relieved when Isla picked the sparkly "Ariel" mermaid dress but then had a heck of a time trying to find Monroe a fish outfit that wasn't 5 layers of fur with a hood.  I ended up just having them go as mermaid sisters.  Monroe's baby mermaid outfit was $11 on Amazon + $8 shipping to Hong Kong which I decided actually a was a crazy good deal.  Sold!  Costumes that weigh all of 0.3 pounds are definitely what I'll continue to aim for in the future.

We try to keep up as many traditions as possible and expose the kids to them early.  We settled for "shopping for a pumpkin" since the closest actual pumpkin patch is probably a 10 hour plane ride away.  Timing your pumpkin shopping here is a delicate balance as we want the kids to enjoy the pumpkin for a while, but given that they are all grown in the US and then shipped overseas, the pumpkins' life expectancy once here is pretty grim!  We went three days before Halloween, with great excitement, down to the store we knew would have them and were told after wandering the whole store that they sold out. I asked if they were getting more and the store manager just laughed and said he didn't know.  We tried a second store...no dice.  Luckily, the third store had a good number left.  We carved it, put a candle inside, and enjoyed our family jack-o-lantern, for the 2 days it lasted.  The evening before Halloween I went to move the pumpkin over to find that as I placed my hands on the outside of the pumpkin and lifted, the insides all just...fell out. The fallen insides looked like the "the upside down" from Stranger Things - all covered in gray and white mold and cob-webby.  Oh, and the smell!  Anyway, we are grateful for the 48 hours of a pumpkin in our apartment and sincerely hope our Christmas Tree can survive a bit longer!

I never lived in a big city or apartment building as a kid, so watching how trick-or-treating went down in a massive apartment complex last year was quite fascinating. And slightly horrifying.  In this city in particular, building cannot be done horizontally. It's all about going UP.  Our building is 3 towers, 32 floors, but only 2 apartments on each floor of each tower.  Imagine tons of kids trying to use the elevators to trick-or-treat when each floor only has 2 apartments!  We, like all residents, spent most of the evening waiting for the elevator.  I think we made it to 4 apartments in an hour and Isla was just sobbing asking to go back home. This year, I rallied lots of the other parents together and ended up leading the "Halloween Improvement Committee."  It's was really no different than what I used to do at work - things like ensuring patients flow efficiently through a GI suit for colonoscopies, for example. So, six of us went to work on a new Halloween plan and I'm so pleased that this year went a lot smoother!  Kids were ecstatic, including mine. I think Isla ended up enjoying giving out candy more than receiving it.  Every time the doorbell rang, she would scream and run as fast as she could to the door, and when there was a lag between trick-or-treaters, she would make one of us go outside the door to ring the bell and "pretend" to be trick-or-treating.  We all had a nice evening!

Thanksgiving

This is probably the oddest-feeling holiday abroad because, while Halloween and Christmas are still celebrated by many people, Thanksgiving is really just the Americans (and a handful of Canadians, but they just celebrate in October, sort of).  On Thanksgiving day, everyone still goes to work and the Americans you run into here and there wish each other a nice holiday, but we decided to just wait until Saturday to make THE MEAL.  Our besties in Hong Kong, Nick and Meg, are also US expats, and they came over bright and early so we could do all the turkey and other preparations together while trying to stream two day-old football games on the TV. (I mean, you've got to set the right environment for Thanksgiving day!)  I got my frozen 12-pound Butterball turkey four weeks before Thanksgiving. Much like the Halloween pumpkins, sometimes the stores just get one shipment, then call it a day.  I broke 2 drawers in my freezer trying to fit the turkey in there, but it was totally worth it.

We had a feast for 4 adults, but I'm pretty sure the amount of food could have fed 20.  We just didn't want to miss out on any dishes!  Prior to our celebration, Meg and I texted furiously for weeks, scouring all the stores in Hong Kong for all the "American ingredients."  IF you can find these ingredients, it will still cost you an arm and a leg and make you briefly ask yourself, "Wait, do I really need to have apple pie and creamed corn?"  I'll save you the suspense...YES, I MUST HAVE THESE THINGS!  Luckily, Meg and I are very much on the same page on this issue. We collectively spent about $50 US on butter as of Friday afternoon when I picked up the yams for sweet potato surprise. Then I remembered, duh, I also needed butter for the yams...okay, up to $55.  With all that scrumptious imported New Zealand butter though, our meal was super creamy and super delicious!

Despite the jaw-dropping price tag of western food, we actually had a great time preparing for Thanksgiving!  If there's anything more hilarious than scampering all over the city trying to find things like poultry seasoning, it has got to be this country's interpretation of Black Friday.  I'm not sure if its actually not understood or if it is understood and very little attention is paid to the execution of it, but it clearly isn't just one day and really isn't tied to Thanksgiving the day prior.  Mostly, around Central Hong Kong, there are just signs everywhere that have an array of Chinese charters and the English words, "Black Friday."  If you inquire as to what this means in the store, the sales associates generally tell you that there is, in fact, a sale, it has already started and no one knows when it ends, and then they typically point to the selection of sweaters that are a very special "Black Friday price" of 10% off.  It's a little anti-climactic.  It's probably for the best though since I already blew our entire monthly budget on butter.

Christmas

Without Thanksgiving to officially ring in the Christmas season, Hong Kong goes from Halloween straight to Christmas decorations with lightning speed. The decorations and music kicked off on November 1st all around the city!  Nate and I are pretty big fans of Christmas, so this doesn't bother us at all, but we are now realizing how painful this must be for our 3.5 year old who doesn't understand why it STILL isn't Christmas yet. Much like the Thanksgiving turkey, I ordered our 6-7 foot tall US Douglas Fir quite early (Oct 28th) from the florist in town. It will be delivered in early December. When I was arranging the tree removal just after Christmas, I stared at the calendar and then looked up and asked the florist, "Four to five weeks of having this tree in the house seems like a long time after being cut down and shipped. Is it going to be completely dead and dropping needles everywhere?"  She smiled and replied, "Oh, yes ma'am. It will be very bad...very messy. All over the floor actually."  I laughed, then she stared at me a while until I arrived back at the exact same date in January I originally eyed up for pick up.  I'll just have to keep Monroe's pine needle consumption to a minimum once they are covering the house, I suppose.

If there's one thing Thanksgiving taught me, it's that I must start my meal planning and purchasing early!  I reckon the process will very much resemble Thanksgiving.  It is nice to know that if I reach a breaking point, most things are open on Christmas and I can just have Pho delivered to the house for dinner though.  By far, the most challenging thing to acquire last Christmas was egg nog. And I LOVE egg nog! I like it plain, I like it with bourbon, I like it on cereal. That stuff is good.  So, imagine my anxiety when I circled one of the better grocery stores for 20 minutes last December and didn't see it. I asked to please speak with the store manager and the conversation went like this:
  Me: Good Morning! I'm trying to find egg nog. Do you have it in stock?
  Manager: Oh yes, we have the eggs! He walks me over to the eggs.
  Me: Oh, no, not eggs. Egg NOG. For Christmas!  You drink it, like milk...
  Manager:  Of course!  He walks me over to milk
  Me: Oopsies, this isn't the "CHRISTMAS MILK" I'm really after.
  Manager: Walks me over to the Christmas decorations and says, there you go!

A week later, I found the small 1-liter size cartens of egg nog. They were $10 US each...but I had found it!! I bought 3 and had a very Merry Christmas!  We are very much looking forward to a joyful holiday season with 2 crazy kids, 3 cartens of egg nog (fingers crossed!), and a Douglas Fir...Although a partridge in a pear tree would probably make less of a mess!