School

When the movers came to pack up our house in Oregon my salad spinner was in the fridge with salad in it so it didn't get packed. I was annoyed about this at the time since it took up tons of room in my suitcase but that salad spinner has been a life saver this week! For spinning salad, of course, but also the inside bowl works as a colander and the bowl itself has been doing duty as a mixing bowl. What a godsend!

I know you guys are curious about G's school and the school system in general here in HK. That was probably the most complicated thing for us to try to learn about. I think I have a pretty good handle on it at this point but I hope I can explain it to you clearly.

First, a little general info.
Kids are put into grades according to the calendar year of their birth. My kids are born 2006 and 2007 so they will be in back to back grades here. In the USA their birthdays fall so that they would have had a school year between them. I have no idea what this will do to D once we return to The US... He is an October birthday and the cutoff in Oregon is September so he is close enough to the cutoff that whatever happens will not cause me too much stress. Not worried about it at this point. Kids start school in the calendar year they turn 3. D will be 3 in October, he starts school as a 2yr old in August.

Kids do 2 years of Kindergarten here, called K1 for 3 yr olds and K2 for 4 year olds.
Primary grades are P1 for 5 year olds through P6. Primary school is called College.
After that I have no idea what it's called. Does not pertain to me right now. No room in my brain!

Hong Kong is loaded with people from all over the world. Therefore there are international schools of every variety. American, German, Swiss, French, Japanese... you name it. International schools here are outrageously expensive. Outrageous. Think college tuition for a private college. Or more.
There are, of course, local schools. Local schools do not cater to kids who don't speak Cantonese. There are families who go this route but I understand that the kids have to spend tons of time with a tutor and most of them may have one speaking parent.
The major "school system" for English speaking expats is the ESF (English School Foundation). ESF schools use a British curriculum. They can be difficult to get into because they are priced so much more reasonably than the International schools.
There are other schools like montessori and religious affiliated schools and even day care style preschools like we have in the US...

Now a word about G's school (and it will be D's school in the fall too):
It's a Kindergarten that also has a P1 section available for kids who don't get a spot in the primary school (college) of their choice. It's like a backup plan just in case. So ideally, kids will go to this school for K1 and K2 then get accepted into a primary school (college). But if they don't get a spot they have another year to hope for an opening on the wait list of their first choice school or they can apply and be wait listed elsewhere. Make sense? At this point I can't even tell you what our first choice primary school would be. We've got a year to figure it out.

This Kindergarten has two sections. The International section is for kids who are intending to go to International Colleges (primary school). The bilingual section is for local kids who are in to learn the English and for English speaking kids who may end up trying a local school or a bilingual school. We are hoping to do a bilingual school IF we are even here that long. We can't afford International schools and we want to expose the kids to the language. And we don't think we will be here for too many years for it to matter too much. For us it was an easy choice to choose the bilingual program.

For K1 and K2 the kids attend either a morning or afternoon session just like in the USA. P1 is a full day of school.

In the bilingual section my kids will have 2 teachers, one Mandarin speaking and one English speaking. They will hear everything both ways 50/50. They will also learn to read and write Chinese characters. Kids in the International section have dedicated lessons of Mandarin during school, like our high school foreign language classes. They do not learn to read or write characters, they only learn to speak and listen.

The school uses a British curriculum and Jollyphonics if any of you teachers have ever heard of it. ??? We were warned there would be phonics and grammar (English) homework. Fine by me. I am a grammar and spelling nazi anyway.

Now did you catch that I mentioned the local school are Cantonese but my kids will be learning Mandarin??? This is the craziest part. People from Hong Kong speak Cantonese (and at least a bit of English). The cashiers working at the grocery, taxi drivers, people with stalls in the markets, waiters/waitresses. Everybody speaks Cantonese. These people, for the most part, do not speak Mandarin. But Cantonese is a dying language, a dialect of Chinese spoken only in southern China. But if you go into an office building in downtown on Hong Kong Island all the business people will be working speaking Mandarin and English.

Here's some facts: Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken dialect of Chinese. It's actually the most widely spoken language in THE WORLD. 1.1 billion people speak Mandarin. For comparison, 330 million people speak English and 300 million speak Spanish and 70 million speak Cantonese.

So Mandarin seems like it will be the most useful for my kids to learn. It will also be possible for them to easily continue with the Mandarin once we go back to the USA if we decide to pursue that. There are a hand full of schools in Portland with Mandarin programs. Not so for Cantonese.

It's a can of worms isn't it? Information overload!

I love taking requests for things to write about! If you have more questions about school that I didn't cover feel free to ask.

As for the healthcare, I need to learn more about that before I try to tell you guys about it. Back when we were ready to move to Paris I learned all about French healthcare. I could tell you more about healthcare in France than I can tell you about Hong Kong. I will make it a point to learn about it and to learn if our insurance and coverage is the norm for expats and I'll see what the local people have access to as far as their medical care.