Rewind back to a few years ago.

Back to when we were very first considering making this move to Hong Kong. One of the main reasons we decided to go for it was so that our kids could be exposed to different cultures and languages.

Pretty obvious reason, right?
And in a city as cosmopolitan as Hong Kong it should be simple and straight forward to obtain a bilingual (or even multi lingual) education, right?
WRONG.
Here's what we've learned:

We were lucky enough to arrive to Hong Kong at a really opportune time to drop our kids into the Hong Kong school system. G had just turned 4. D was 2.
Opportune time? Well, sort of. People would argue that. I mean if you actually give birth to a baby over here you get them on a list for school as soon as they get their passport. I am not kidding in the least. 6 week old babies on the wait list for primary school 5 years later. Say what!?!? I personally know one family who moved here when their son was 8 months old. At the urging of their relocation lady, they put their baby on the list for "the" school. This year was his intake year. He BARELY got a spot in Kindergarten. Not even in the morning class.

Just as it is in the USA, kids are not legally required to attend school until the year they turn 6, Primary One (P1). Which is equivalent to First Grade. But I'm not sure who is really waiting that long. Because everybody I've met here is quick to put their kids into some sort of school/play school usually starting at 18 months or so.

There are 3 years of Kindergarten. K1 (the year kids turn 3), K2 (the year kids turn 4), K3 (the year kids turn 5). Intake is based on the calendar year of birth. Like all of G's class was born in 2006. All of D's class was born in 2007.
K1 and K2 are half day (3 hours) and K3 is full day (5hours).
So G was dropped into K1 (she had turned 3 in the year the school year began) and D was put into a play group 5x a week (2 hours).

We were fortunate to enter into an awesome kindergarten that offers a bilingual program (English and Mandarin Chinese) and the kids are now in the midst of 3 years of Chinese and English learning. Perfect.

So we breathed a sigh of relief and started nosing around for Primary schools. I had quickly picked up on the fact that we were behind the times and we NEEDED to get our butts on some lists!

We live on Lantau Island. It's like the suburbs of Hong Kong. There are not too many options on Lantau as far as primary schools go.

There's the International School which seems to be "the" school. For no other reason than it's close? I can't figure out why it's so great. The facilities look dingy. The kids learn Chinese the same amount kids in the USA learn Spanish: only just enough to appear smarter than the help. It's really taboo to talk about it around here. But for real: it costs too much money and I don't see the bang for the buck. I did not move half way around the world to send my kids to school with a bunch of rich white kids. I could have done that for much cheaper and with not nearly as much stress at home. Right? And aside from that it's the school with newborns on the wait list. Next to impossible to get a place if you move to Hong Kong with "older" kids. Unless your company buys you a spot... but that's another story.

There's the English (British) school which is a gorgeous facility. But in a style sort of similar to bussing kids from the city to the "better" schools in the burbs like they do in the USA sometimes, they engage in the use of a lottery for places. So needless to say--it's a total lottery and the wait list for the younger kids has hundreds of kids on it. And many of the places are given to kids who are bussed in from all over Hong Kong. And again--minimal Chinese language. No one is getting fluency in Chinese by going to school there. Just as with all schools it is possible to buy a spot there. It only costs about $50,000usd. !!

There's the rural International school. It's interesting. The facility is very indoor-outdoor. It actually has a very good reputation as far as the curriculum and school spirit goes. But again, no Chinese language (or very little). I visited once. It didn't do it for me. Although I know plenty of families with kids there who love it.

And that's it.

All the other schools are in the city which either takes about an hour by bus or by a ferry plus a bus ride. Once you get outside Lantau your options increase tenfold. Every country you can think of operates and International School here. But any school with the word "International" in the name is most likely out of our budget. I'm talking nearly $20,000usd a year. And the wait lists are outrageous!

Of course there are local schools. The curriculum in local schools in entirely Cantonese Chinese which is what is spoken in Hong Kong. It's a whole different dialect than Mandarin Chinese. And though B and I feel that any foreign language is more useful than no foreign language at all, the curriculum is strict local style. Memorizing and rote learning with no room for creativity and not much assistance provided for non-Chinese speaking kids. We COULD send G to a local school (we actually applied to one) but we didn't think it would be socially in her best interest. And I was afraid her English grammar (written) would suffer.

So then we stumbled on what they call DSS schools. These local schools are given a "direct subsidy" from the government but they have a lot of freedom to tweak the curriculum and make it more western. They attempt to take the good in the local schools and combine it with the good in Western schools. It is like what we would call a charter school in the USA. And as an added bonus, a hand full of these schools use English as their medium of instruction. Sounds perfect! So that is what we focused on. Some of the DSS schools are just as expensive as an international school. Some of them are still operating as very local style schools with zero English on their websites. Some are way too far away. It was still proving to be not too wide a selection. But we found 2 we really really liked. That we can afford. That aren't too far away. That focus on language skills and the arts (and of course math because after all we are in Asia!) So we put all of our eggs into these 2 baskets.

And it's a level playing field: no way to buy your kid in and no wait list. They interview the kids. They interview the parents. The want letters of recommendation from their kindergarten teachers and they want to see their report cards from kindergarten. In the interviews the kids are asked to read English. Identify Chinese characters. Spell words. Write their names. Draw a picture based on a story that is read to them. They make them play games or do tasks in a group to assess how they interact with the other kids and how well they listen to what the teacher has told them to do. And I don't know this because I was informed as to what would happen--I know what G has told me. Parents are not a part of the interview process they do with the kids. These schools are hand picking who they want. And lucky for us not too many white people seem to apply to these schools so maybe we are a sought after demographic? Who knows. All I know is that for both of the schools we pursued, over 5,000 kids applied. Both schools offer about 150 places. Odds are not good for these kids!

The school G has already been accepted into is called PLK Camoes Tan Siu Lin. You can google it. They have a beautiful website. The even have an iPhone app for their school. As a non native Chinese speaker we applied for the English and French stream. So G will learn English and French language and grammar in the same intensity. She will attain fluency in French. Mandarin Chinese will be her third language and they say by P6 the kids can speak like a third grader. I consider third graders to be fluent... So I am hopeful she will have an excellent grasp and useful knowledge of reading and writing Chinese. The people I've had contact with at this school have been lovely. Very welcoming and friendly and G has enjoyed her time there too. It's all good.

The other school is St. Margaret's. We should hear back from them in the next two weeks and if she is offered a spot there I think we'll end up taking it. At St. Margaret's, G will learn English and Mandarin in the same intensity. In P1 and P2 she'll have multi lingual exposure in French, German, Japanese, and Spanish and in P3 she will have the opportunity to choose 2 more foreign languages from those to study intensely for the remainder of her time there. This school engages in a big foreign exchange program so there are constantly kids from all over the world (in the older classes) and if we stay here then G will have the opportunity to study abroad at a pretty young age. Very cool. The other thing we like is that each student must learn to play an instrument. In P1 and P2 they are taught a little of all the instruments and then in P3 they choose the one they want to really pursue. The school also has a fantastic dance team and G LOVES to dance so we know that would be great for her as well. This school has been just friendly enough but it's been all business dealing with them. Not as much of a warm fuzzy but they are a very highly esteemed school around here. They don't have to be warm and fuzzy to be desirable with all they offer! This kids are always smiling and seem happy when we've been at the school so I am confident it's not a bad learning environment once you're on the inside.

Over all we can relax--she's got a spot! But it will be interesting to see if she makes the cut at St. Margaret's. And really it will be interesting to just see how the whole things shakes out.