Back to the grind--B left for a 10 day trip this morning. 10 days. Ugh. After him being in training for the last 6 months and gone way too much, 10 days is not so bad. But from here where I sit on day 1 it seems like an eternity.

It is a sunny and gorgeous day here in Hong Kong today. It's not sunny very often I'm beginning to learn. Lots of pollution makes it always look kind of gray and overcast most of the time.

G rode the bus to school today for the first time. She kind of had the big eyes when the bus pulled to a stop right in front of us. But she's a big girl and I'm sure she is feeling super cool about it now. It was SO nice to not have to walk her up hill both ways to school. The walk isn't long. It can't be a half mile. But the hills are brutal! She is having school pictures taken today too. I am really kind of excited we made it for her to be in the class photos. I can't wait to see them. She wanted to wear a pink headband with flowers, a purple barrette with dangly boingy strings on it AND a pony tail holder with pink jewel hearts on it. She really wants to look good for these photos. Too bad she hasn't had a bath in days. She fell and skinned her knee a few days ago so she is very anti bath time lately.

After she got picked up, D and I headed to the plaza to get a coffee and a cookie since I didn't get my morning coffee today. We shipped over a metric ton of coffee beans with our junk and the joke is totally on us because we cannot find a grinder to buy anywhere. There is a chain store called Wing On. The closest thing I can compare it to is Kohl's. They carry one brand of grinder that is for drip or espresso. We use a french press. And I annoy myself but I am so picky about my coffee. It's a curse. Anyway we bought this grinder hoping it would work and we were eating coffee grounds because it was grinding way too fine. And as luck would have it the grinder didn't really work anyway so we didn't feel too guilty returning it. So here we are with 40 pounds of beans and no way to grind them. This is tea country, you know. Coffee is not the thing around here. B is headed to Saigon this week and he has been told that it's THE place to buy coffee. I told him if he came home with coffee he'd be on my list. But if he came home with a grinder... now that would be something!

When he went to return this coffee grinder to the Wing On he said it took about 20 minutes for 4 employees to decide what to do. And thankfully it really didn't work correctly so there was real reason (other than our personal preference) for returning it. Returning things isn't really in the culture here. I don't know enough about it to explain why... and they did take it back... but it's not something a consumer is expected to do. So we have a paper in-store credit slip to use at the store now. And even though Wing On is a huge chain with countless stores around Hong Kong, we can only use it at the location right here by our house. Which of course is the smallest Wing On I've ever seen.

We got our cable tv hooked up yesterday. Haven't watched anything except some Disney channel yet. It's not in English. Well the shows aren't. The theme songs are in English and the shorts between shows are but the shows themselves are dubbed in Cantonese. The kids are not phased. They really seem to be fascinated by it. And for anyone who has spent time in a non English speaking environment for a few days, you will know what I mean when I say that when it is actually in English I don't even realize I understand it at first. We have basic cable with some sports, some news, and I don't even really know what else. Cable comes in a bundle package with internet. It's dirt cheap to get basic cable and then you just pay for the other channels you want. Genius. So we are paying for Disney. (Because we thought it would be in English, but I am starting to think it's better that it's not.) The rest is basically free, included in our internet bundle. We have European, Australian and Asian news channels in all languages and, perhaps most interesting, is Al Jazeera English. I am really curious to watch that and see what it's all about.