Met up with a friend of mine for a quick afternoon of looking around in the garment district or fashion district of Hong Kong. It is so interesting and really overwhelming! I am not a crafty person AT ALL and I get inspired and want to make shit when I walk around there. I cannot imagine how it must be for someone who is into crafting, sewing, jewelry making or whatever. Like my friend. She was really working hard trying to control her ADD and attempt to focus on what she went there for.

Whole stores with nothing but buttons. Entire stores with nothing but zippers. Whole stores with nothing but ribbon. Whole stores with nothing but beads. There are actually streets of the beads stores. Street after street of reams of every type of fabric imaginable. There was a store today with aisles full of different types of elastic. Aisles and aisles of lace. Stores with the materials and hardware for jewelry making. And one of my favorites are the stores with the costume type stuff like endless rolls of feather boa in every color and beaded/crystal patches (for prom dresses?) up to the size of a dinner plate.

I love Sham Shui Po.

And I love that I can get my kids ready for school, drop my kids off at their bus, go catch a bus of my own and then be home in time for dinner and all the while M has cleaned up the lunch mayhem that we left behind and started yet another load of laundry. And she's here to pick up the kids from the bus and keep an eye on them so I can have an extra hour out.

It takes roughly 50 minutes to get to your destination around here, no matter where you're going. Or if you time the bus/ferry wrong call it 70 minutes. And that is for anywhere normal that you'd need to go. If you are really branching out to see something, say on the other side of any given island, you can count on 2 hours in transit.

So that 3 hours my kids are in school is all well and good if I am staying local around my neighborhood here. But if I need (or want) to go to the city I would not have time to accomplish much before having to turn around and head back to meet the bus. I am very thankful for M!

My kids have their first day of soccer tomorrow. Oops I mean football. They both are way excited which makes me excited. Thankfully they are in different lessons (or on different teams--I am not sure of the terminology at this point but they don't have games for the little kids, just practices...). And thankfully their practices/lessons are at the same place during pretty much the same time footprint. Very convenient! If we don't melt or have a heat stroke it should be fun times.