I am official! Picked up my Hong Kong ID today at Immigration. I didn't even have to wait in line. On the way out of the building I had a guy with a clipboard stop me to ask if I was a Permanent Resident. (They are all about interviewing and surveying us non Asians around here.) He totally killed my mojo because I was stoked to have a shiny new card to prove I was any kind of resident. It takes 7 years to achieve "Permanent Resident" status. I am not even sure what that means or what it does for you though...

I started my morning off with a cooking class. There are tons of places to go to cooking classes around here. I eased in today with a cheap one (it cost about $10 usd for a 2 hour class) that was just a watch and see class. I didn't actually cook anything. It was just a small classroom with stadium seating where we watched the teacher prepare the dishes and then we got to taste a sample of the recipes he prepared.

Today's topic was Vietnamese food. We learned two recipes. Lemongrass pork chops and shrimp on a sugar cane stick. I came home and made the pork chops tonight and B liked them. The kids? Not so much... as I expected. At least they both actually tried it. And really I think G even liked it but she can't tell us that! Heaven forbid she like something that's not pasta or a chicken nuggets. Ugh.

I am really looking forward to getting into these cooking classes once we get a bit more settled and I can shop around and see where I feel the most comfortable to dive into the actual hands on cooking classes. There are a group of girls over here that go pretty regularly and there are classes at the place we went to today every day of the week. I went with two girls today. I am really excited about the whole thing!

After the class we stopped into the nearby market to shop for some of the ingredients. I actually bought a bundle of sugar cane. That was a first. The people at this market spoke very little English but they were so friendly and wanted to interact so it's wasn't a big deal. Lots of finger counting to discuss prices and lots of smiles. We even had a local woman who happened to be standing there offer to help us translate. We thanked her kindly but said we thought we were doing ok. It was fun. I put my pointer finger on a bundle of sugar cane and asked "how much?" The woman said "sixteen" ($2 usd). We had seen bundles at a different stall that didn't look quite as fresh and were told they were $28 ($3.50 usd). So I nodded and initiated the transaction to buy them and I got out $16 in change and held it out to her. She picked and pecked at the money in my hand and took $6 hkd (.75 cents us). Not 16. Dang! I hate when I misunderstand but my friends were standing there too--we all heard 16. So we laughed later--what had the woman actually said when we thought she said $28 at the other stall?

We had a little lunch at an Indian restaurant and then hit the street markets in Wan Chai. I had not been marketing in Wan Chai before. It was impressive just like it is everywhere else around here. There were some pretty good toy vendors and toy shops around there so that was good to find out. And we had the pleasure of seeing an entire not yet butchered whole dead pig on the floor in a meat vendor/butcher shop. Wow. No words can describe that one. And one of the girls I was with mentioned that she and her husband had been witness to the beheading of tons of live chickens on that very block earlier this year. At least we know it's fresh. Right?

B went to the park with the kids this morning and then took them to McDonald's for lunch. He said that during lunch there was a song playing over the speakers and all of the sudden G shot to attention and asked if he heard the song. The singers were singing "wo ai ni" which means I love you in Mandarin. She heard the song in Chinese and understood it. So cool. B said she seemed pretty proud of herself. And she should! It's awesome!