Did you know that if you are at a restaurant here in Hong Kong and order "nachos" you will get pretty much what you expect. Except they use generic Doritos as the chips. Isn't that weird? At first I thought it was a one time deal but we have confirmed with several other people that the standard base for nachos in Hong Kong is generic nacho cheese flavored Doritos.

Last night we went out to dinner with a few friends. The waitress (who was not Chinese) spoke with a sort of Indian British accent. She was reciting the specials to us and mentioned "pan fried groupa fish bla bla bla" and I was like oh grouper--that sounds good, man this girl is kind of hard to understand. I got the fish. It was delicious. As we were eating I noticed the specials were written on a chalk board. It said "pan fried groupa". Groupa? Is that the same as grouper? Who knows. It seemed about the same. I mentioned it to the people we were with and they confirmed that they had seen this "groupa" before and wondered if it was the phonetic spelling of how a British person would say grouper. I think it is. I googled groupa and couldn't find anything. It just asked me if I meant grouper.

Recently a new library opened close to our house. B and I went to check it out last week while the kids were at school. The public libraries here pretty much look exactly like a library in the USA. I am kind of a library junkie so I like to pop in and check them out because I am curious. I get the impression that it's about a 60/40 split with 60% Chinese books and 40% English. The Chinese books are arranged separately from the English books but they are still shelved Dewey decimal style. But it's a little different here because libraries are NOT kid friendly.

At the old library location where we went to apply for our library cards there was no separate kids area and while I was dealing with the beaurocracy filling out the paperwork, B took the kids back to the kids corner to read them a story. When he began to read out loud he was immediately shushed. Um, our kids are 2 and 4, lady, they can't read to themselves. We're just trying to keep them quiet and contained in the "kid's corner". Way to make it seem like they aren't welcome here. Thanks for scaring them into thinking the library sucks.

I digress.

This new library is really beautiful. It's in a much better location for us too. We were delighted to see a huge separate colorful children's area right by the entrance on the ground floor. Yay! So we immediately headed in there to check it out and see if they had story time in English and what was in there for the kids to do. No English story time. Only Cantonese. I am considering begging them to let me spearhead an English story time. There were internet gaming stations and art on the walls and cute colorful benches and little kid tables. It was adorable.

Then we took notice of the built in signs hanging everywhere. The signs said things like "No playing." and "No talking out loud." It was a totally separate area! Why the harsh phrasing? Somewhere the whole purpose of a library has been lost in translation I think. Everything is always SO literal around here. Learning is serious business I guess. I can't wait to take my kids and see if we get shushed in a room that looks like it should be so much fun. My kids are going to be so confused. It should be entertaining if I can refrain from being annoyed.