No Fly Zone

We have officially entered the three-ish month period we are referring to in our family as the “no fly zone.” Specifically, the period between me being 36 weeks pregnant and the eight or so weeks past the baby being born when we expect to have the important international immunizations completed and a passport obtained for the little guy or gal. As every flight is international from Hong Kong, (a funny thought that hadn’t occurred to me until recently) the airlines get a little anxious at check-in as soon as your belly looks big.  On our last trip, the woman checking us in looked at me and whispered, “Excuse me ma’am. I need to ask you a personal question. Are you pregnant?” I quickly made a shocked face and replied, “no” but could only keep a straight face for about 5 seconds.  She only found this moderately amusing.  It was funny though as my belly was huge already. 

So, being grounded on an island is definitely a change of pace for us!  I’d say Isla is taking it the hardest though - the kid freaking loves flying.  So, we are improvising!  Nate recently “borrowed” a Boeing 777 Cathay laminated safely card from his latest flight to Singapore  and we build an airplane nearly every morning in our living room for Isla, me or Nate, and a few select stuffed animals to board and take off in.  We rotate who is the pilot, flight attendant, and passenger.  Yesterday, Isla gave a beautiful and almost flawless safety briefing to me, ensured my seat belt was fastened, and then gently touched me on the shoulder and informed me, “Mom, we are now on our way to ‘Gapan.'  I need to know if you’d like the beef, chicken, wine or blueberries?”  I love this girl.  I figure imaginary wine is better than no wine, so I ordered a nice Shiraz and then it was Minnie Mouse's and the kangaroo’s turn to order food.  Overall, we are embracing and enjoying this nice family time in Hong Kong and I’m quite sure Isla won’t be scarred for life only pretend flying!  

It is American Thanksgiving today. We’ll be having seafood lasagna since that’s what the pilgrims and Native Americans...wait, no.... okay, my huge pregnant ass just wanted something cheesy and fatty and it has nothing to do with Thanksgiving at all, but it should be tasty!  Hong Kong doesn’t really have any form of official Thanksgiving, but this city does have a huge appetite for shopping, so there are a hilarious number of advertisements for stores having “Black Friday” for whatever random date range they choose.  It doesn’t exactly make sense, but we’ve been having a lot of fun accumulating Christmas gifts for Isla and even ordering our REAL Douglas Fir Christmas tree from the US to be delivered in two weeks' time. Given the journey by boat and other logistical challenges, this feels like a little Christmas miracle that you can purchase!  Our apartment has shockingly high ceilings so I had to talk Nate down from dipping into our daughter’s college fund to pay for the 15 foot Christmas tree.  The argument that finally got to him agree had nothing to do with money or practicality, but simply, “Babe, you know we don’t have a ladder here as it’s it Mom and Dad’s basement. We wouldn’t be able to decorate the whole thing.”  And so, a 7 foot tree has been ordered and hopefully will be handled with care all the way to our living room.  We are stoked for a magical holiday season full of pretend Black Friday sales, a new baby, and imaginary flights to Gapan! 

Wishing all our amazing family and friends a very Happy Thanksgiving a legitimate Black Friday!!  We love you.

Just a Touch of Money Laundering

It's been a crazy couple of months settling into a new country (or "Special Administrative Region," to be precise).  As of early November, the weather has turned from deathly hot and humid to something that resembles more of a normal summer, which we are very grateful for.  The local perspective on this weather shift is quite mind boggling to me though.  As I walk the streets in normal summer apparel like shorts and a tank top, many people have busted out their fluffy UGG boots and sweaters.  It's still a solid 80-85 degrees Fahrenheit at least each day though! It might just be that I'm 8 months pregnant, but I can't even look at these overdressed crazies without feeling hot and uncomfortable.  We'll see what December and January bring, but I'm thinking it might be a few years before my sweaters see the light of day.  Other transition developments include: Knowing where to go to buy yogurt for less than $4 USD per individual yogurt, finding a way to walk to Isla’s school with only about 15 stairs, which officially makes it “stroller friendly,” and learning to cook with lemongrass!  I’d say we’re pretty much nailing it. 

While ex-pat life is never exactly normal, we have definitely found our routine and figured many of the important things out.  So, I've used this bit of slight extra time on my hands to try out a new hobby of some international money laundering. I just get such a thrill out of hiding money in my savings account from fake business ventures while Isla naps!  

...Or so that's what our bank would have you believe!  When we first moved abroad, we selected a large international bank for our all primary accounts as we knew there would be some odd transfers and the need for lots of various currency cash withdrawals, and, not to call anyone out, but we are currently less than thrilled with this bank that starts with "H" and ends with "SBC!"

Sure, we’ve had inflows to our account like US rental income, the insurance claim settlement for damaged items in the move from a Hong Kong company, and health insurance claim money from an Australian obstetrician's office, to name a few. And these transactions have been coupled with daily maximum cash withdrawals in Hong Kong dollars - you know, to pay our electric and water bills at 7-Eleven, of course!  The sheer volume of odd transactions apparently hit some unacceptable threshold with the bank.  However, instead of calling us, HSBC apparently thought it best to shut down all of our accounts and restrict all access to cash last week.  Aaaaahhhh!  This isn’t the first time a bank or credit card blocked our access or suspected fraud (in fact, this is a pretty regular occurrence), but it was certainly the most severe!  Many phone calls and escalation to bank management later, this has now mostly been resolved.  It’s a tricky thing though as we’ve entered a vicious cycle that goes like this:

- We try to open a Hong Kong bank account so we can transfer money in HKD to pay our bills. Every time we try, they say there is some piece of information we haven’t demonstrated fully. We say screw it and go out for a good Thai lunch instead.

- We have to pay all our bills in HK cash without an account, so we take cash out of the ATM daily.

- The bank sees the above as suspicious and shuts down our accounts.

- We fix the issue and go back to the bank. Last time, we had a bill in my name but not in Nate’s. This time we have both, but realise Nate’s HR team has my passport for 2 weeks because I am in need of a China visa (which we need to do now because I’ll need it back by the time the baby’s born in a few weeks in order to apply for US citizenship and a passport for him/her.)

- Back to the ATM!

Okay, so maybe we are only partially nailing it.  We figure, by the time our finances, passports and visas are in order, it will probably be time to move again!

Happy belated Halloween from
Princess Elsa (and my prince!)

Black Market Electronics and a Little Feng Shui

We just hit the one month mark of living here and I'm glad to say things are going quite well...and thrilled to say there's only a few more weeks until Fall as my pregnant body is about done with heat indexes of 120 degrees!  After living abroad for a while, we've definitely gotten to a point where very little surprises us and we just go with the flow, fix what we can, pay what it takes to make things work, and with whatever disposable income is left, book flights somewhere awesome for our next vaca.  I think otherwise we'd be pretty stressed out pretty often.  So, here are a few of the less than perfect, but go-with-the-flow moments across our first month:

Moving Day

Of the six movers who arrived at our apartment, five spoke no English and one spoke about as much English as I speak of other languages. (In case you haven't witnessed this, my foreign language abilities are very minimal, mostly incorrect, and with a lot of grand hand movements to get my point across.)  So...this made a few things tricky, like trying to get them to differentiate between Isla's room and the "baby's" room. I accepted this as a lost cause after about an hour and just moved everything later.

The lead mover, using his big hand gestures, was able to make clear to me multiple times that he disapproved of how many boxes of clothes we had.  He had me come in the master bedroom while he counted multiple times and then threw his hands in the air, which mostly just made me laugh and clearly frustrated him. Since he didn't understand what I was saying anyway, every time he counted the boxes, I just started saying random things back like, "Yup, we are Americans. We need stuff!" or "Well, what was I supposed to do with all my sweaters?!" or the one that cracked myself up the most, "I don't even go to work anymore, but look at all these shoes! Could you really get rid of these shoes?"  He just stared and threw his hands up a few more times, so I nicely reminded him that the moving company gets paid by kilogram of stuff moved, so really I was doing them a favor.  I think he kind of picked up on that comment and we shared a laugh. Although I wouldn't be surprised if he urinated in my dresser drawers later on.

The highlight of the day, other than them refusing to move anything they thought was "big" (i.e. nearly all our US furniture) up the stairs, had to be the quick lesson on furniture placement I was given.  I had placed post-its on the wall where I wanted the master bed and nightstands on either side.  The lead mover motioned for me to come in and through pointing and broken English told me he would be putting these items on the opposite wall.  I asked him why as I had measured and was showing him that I thought they would fit.  He shot back while pointing, "No, no ma'am. THIS WALL!  FENG SHUI!"  And that settled it.  I'm not sure our 10 boxes of clothes fit his definition of feng shui, but he was adamant about this bed placement.  This jerk better have put my bed in the corner that brings me good fortune, good health and sleeping children!  So far, all is well so maybe he was right, after all.

Black Market Electronics

We were lucky enough to rent a place in Australia that had TVs in it and we didn't spend much time watching it, so we never bothered getting a DVD player. However, now that Isla's seen enough movies on airplanes that she understands and likes them (and since we have all our DVDs with us anyway), we decided to buy a TV and DVD player.  We figured since all these electronic items are made in Asia, they can't be more money than in the US, right?  Wrong.  They are so much more money! The electronics store here that would be like an Asian Best Buy had basic DVD players staring at like $250 US dollars.  I told Nate about a teeny, weird electronics store I found that was about the size of a closet, but sold me some universal outlet converters (OMG, the number of outlet converters in our house is insane) and suggested maybe they have other stuff.  This store has ended up being our electronics jackpot.  We got a well-priced DVD player, which Nate negotiated for, as well as our internet router. Our understanding of stores like this are that the products are technically imported illegally so you don't get the official warranty or anything, but they are the real deal (LG, Samsung, etc). What a find though! We have ended up here at least weekly, negotiating our next electronic / conversion / new voltage needs. Now, if only they sold breast pumps, I'd be set!  The only downside is that our DVD player and remote is actually all in Chinese characters, but I'm not a complex girl when it comes to DVDs. I got "play" and "stop" so all is right with the world. 

Carrying Huge Wads of Cash

According to, well, everyone, opening a Hong Kong bank account is an awful and lengthy process. So, we are trying to see how long we can get by without one.  For any major bills that are due, like our massive air conditioning bill, or water, you generally have 3 options: 1. Pay with a HK bank account (no thanks)  2. Go to a designated store and pay in cash or 3. At that same designated store, pay with your Octopus card, which is actually your mass public transit card, like a DC SmarTrip.

So, we ventured down to our nearest 7-11 store with a huge wad of cash and paid our first set of bills.  The conversion ratio of Hong Kong dollars to US dollars is 7.8, so basically imagine always carrying around 8 times the amount of cash you would normally need to pay all your bills!  I feel like a baller carrying around six $100 bills until I remember that is only $77 US dollars. "Okay, fine, I guess I'll pay my water bill AND get a pack of gum today."

Checking out Hong Kong Park

Loving the markets! Right after I took this pic, she shoved her hands into the bowl of

bean sprouts in water.  We'll keep practicing proper market etiquette.

We can hike to the Peak from our apartment, but it's one heck of a hike! 

We discovered the best strategy is taking a taxi up, and hiking down.

Very thankful Hong Kong also believes in babychinos for children.

Isla would have been devastated!

Hong Kong Week 1

Greetings from Hong Kong, where 100 degrees is the norm, there are at least 30 fruits I don't know the names of, and the number, 4, is considered bad luck.  It's been a wild week already with only a few mishaps. Here's a quick overview:

- I think I actually nailed the air shipment this time! (You may recall that with our move down under, I didn't put anything that was actually useful it in and we had to get to IKEA in a hurry.) This time, the essentials are covered and we're good to go until our sea shipment arrives next week. In fact, we're not even all sharing ONE towel! Craziness.

- We picked an apartment in a very mountainous area of the city (although it is all pretty mountainous) and after getting our apartment keys, we tried to go to a celebratory lunch. I was particularly having trouble adjusting to the heat along with jet lag.  After walking just 10 min through the winding hills, we essentially gave up and ended up eating at the Hard Rock Cafe. #lunchfail!

- Nate started work after one day here so I have been exploring all around with Isla and the number of tasty treats on the street are mind blowing. I am aiming to strike a delicate balance between, "OMG, everything looks amazing! Yes I'll get one of each of those purple-looking things!" and "Hey, remember you are pregnant, idiot. Maybe take some steps to ensure you aren't eating dog on a stick!" Life can be so tricky sometimes.

- While this city does have most items you could want, finding them is quite a challenge, even with the internet, as many stores are unmarked and housed on the 15th floor of an office building, for example.  Yesterday, my mission was to go buy an air mattress as we won't have a bed for a while longer. I found an expat forum that mostly has posts from people complaining about how impossible it is to find an air mattress in this city, but then finally I found 2 sources that stated a store called Outdoor Mart does carry them.

Isla and I found our way down to the MTR (metro) and trained out to a station near the store.  From the metro, I was then given directions from three different people who all turned out to be incorrect.  After 20 minutes or so, I finally stumbled upon a small sign that read "New City Center," which is the building it was supposed to be in.  From here, the photos tell the story best:

Creepy long deserted hallway...

Followed by a super creepy deserted elevator bank...

Then down a long hall to reach success!  A tiny store the size of an average walk in closet that sold about 20 random "outdoor" items.  I got a hand written receipt for my  air mattress purchase.

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

Proud to be an American?

Don't worry, I'm not about to get political. I may be about to get fat based on my adventure this afternoon, however.

Scattered around Melbourne, there are a few small grocery stores called "USA Foods" and they carry just that - US foods that are not sold or used in this country and most Aussies haven't even heard of.  According to my friend, Hannah, the stores get their food from US military ships that dock in Australia and unload their extra food stocks.

I have managed to avoid going to one of these stores for 18 months, but broke that streak today.  Our playgroup is having a joint 2 year old birthday celebration for all the kids (so, lots of bubbly for the adults) this weekend and I had a vision of impressing the hell out of them with my buffalo chicken dip (When I say "my," I am more specifically referring the recipe on the back of the Frank's Buffalo Sauce bottle, of course!). Buffalo sauce is not really a thing in Australia, so I decided it would be fun to make this dish.

I walked into USA Foods and 2 overwhelming feelings struck me - one of nostalgia and longing...and one of total disgust. The combination made me giggle awkwardly as I wondered through the place. This is a store of total junk food.  I love a hostess cupcake as much as the next guy, but, my oh my, there's a lot of unhealthy stuff in there!  There's basically an aisle for 800 kinds of pickles, an aisle for cereal (only the chocolate and lucky charm varieties), an aisle for cheese covered stuff like Cheetos, cheese puffs and cheese balls, an aisle for sauces, and finally, one for frozen items like Ben and Jerry's.

Oh, and as far as I can tell, there is a permanent display in one corner for Thanksgiving items, which may have been my favorite part.

In truth, all of these foods felt like I'd found absolute treasure and had to get them because who knows when I would see them again?!  The outrageous prices kept me contained however.  I got the buffalo sauce (Ever paid $9 for Frank's?). Then I decided we would do something crazy for Nate's birthday this weekend so I got Bisquick pancake mix and log cabin syrup - only the finest in my house!  Then, just as I was rounding the corner to the register, I spotted something beautiful out of the corner of my eye - FRITOS!  Couldn't stop myself. I'm eating them right now while rubbing the grease on my phone screen and I don't even care because they taste so good!

Eating the Frog and Toad

It was November of 2015 when we officially started "Hitting the Frog and Toad!"  So, we have lived in Australia for nearly a year and a half, and we've gotten pretty good at it, I think. My blog posts now have much fewer "oh crap" moments and way fewer stories of hilarious inappropriate conversions to kilograms, meters and celsius that get me into trouble.  We learned the culture (drink more, drive on the left when not drinking, and just be direct in your statements). We've mostly even navigated the health system here, as both Nate and I battled a nasty GI bug across the last two weeks.  We've gotten very comfortable in our day to day routine here at this point. And anyone who knows us well knows this is when Nate and I get a little bored of routine and itch for a new experience...

This time, however,  we did not seek out a new experience.  This time, it fell in our laps and made us dry heave a little from nerves and the sheer magnitude of the change. Let me back up to a Monday morning last month:

As I was getting Isla dressed, I saw I had a missed call from Nate at 8am.  He never calls, so I quickly rang him back, fearing he crashed his bike on the way to work.  He quickly answered and said, "Two things. One - I left my laptop on the counter. Could you please bring it to me at lunchtime? And two - let's go to lunch when you come and I need to know if you want to move to Hong Kong."  Aaaahh!  Fast forward about 4 hours and Nate had his laptop and we were moving to Hong Kong!

We'll be moving around August.  This is an incredible career step for Nate and I'm pretty stoked to explore more of the world (Hong Kong and surrounding countries) with our little lady.  I always envision myself cruising into some remote and exotic Asian port looking quite fashionable like James Bond would. However, in reality, I think I generally end up rolling into new locations half asleep looking like a disaster with no make up, struggling to carry Isla's toy bag and her while her hand is pulling down my shirt to put her toy koala in "mama's pocket" (aka - my cleavage).  So, I'll keep working on actualizing this James Bond image in the coming months. It's good to have goals.

We have very little figured out about the move at this point, but as an ex-pat friend assured me, "Once you make all the mistakes in your first international move, you'll be totally on the ball for the next one."  Who knows, I might even remember to pack sheets and towels in our air shipment this time!  I'm sure the blog posts will only get better as we try to navigate another language, very different housing and exotic foods (hence, the unofficial new blog name, "Eating the Frog and Toad!")

So, if you've ever wanted to visit us in Melbourne, book your tickets fast! Guests are very welcome!!  More updates to come soon on our Asian adventures!