Summer School

didi attended three weeks of summer school at Kid's Gallery. I signed him up for Story Smart for the first and third week. At the end of each week, he brought home a piece of creative artwork which are beyond our expectation!



On the first week, they did a story called "The rescue party".The story is about a rabbit got trapped in a well and then the kids created a well and a rabbit based on that story.



Peter and the wolf was the book they read this week and didi brought home this lovely master piece today! On our way out after class today, I talked to the teacher briefly and she told me that didi is a talented little boy who managed to do all of the artwork by himself! I am one proud mom today!

Second week was the Musical Movement week, but he attended only three classed and we missed the performance on Friday because of the typhoon, what a pity.

Chocoboy

This summer, the swimming pool in our building was open for the residents and that means didi get his fair share of pool dips. daDi is a true believer in sun bathing, so there you go, didi has got that from his dad and has enjoyed sun bathing this summer.

Drama Workshop for Kids

I came across a guy who was distributing flyers for Faust International Youth Theater. It is an organization which puts together workshops for kids between the age of 4 to 16. This is their 10th year in HK and for me it is so inspirational.

For anyone whose kids are already 4 and is interested, there is a trial workshop at Island School and Beacon Hill School.

Log onto www.faustworld.com and check it out.

Visited the new school today

We were greeted by the teachers at the front gate when we visited the new school this afternoon. I gave the invitation to didi and told him that his name was on the letter and he was there to play with new friends and teachers. He went up to the teacher and when she asked what his name was he told her his name. I was so proud because he was the only kid who did it while other parents just did it for the kids!

Then, didi and AJJ stayed upstairs to meet the new class teachers while I went downstairs for a talk given by the deputy principal. I was happy to see that didi was able to recognize his own name by picking up the correct card with his name printed on it. He then approached one of the teachers with his invitation and told her what his name is. The teacher offered him to put the invitation away for him in his backpack and he totally understood her and reached his bag straight away.

I rejoined them after the talk and found out from AJJ that didi was actually pretty friendly and he was the one who got pushed by another boy during an incident where they fight over the trains. He was so much in love with the train he didn't even want to leave. In fact, he was the last to leave the room. He cried and said he wanted to stay there. Another teacher then came over to talk to him by telling him that he will be going to school everyday and can get to play with the toys then.

Overall, I am pretty happy with his new school. All the teachers all look genuinely caring to all kids. I have a good feeling that we have made the right decision by switching him to this school. I am actually looking for it!
We did not take any photo at school today as everyone was busy. This one was taken in the shopping mall near school. We had problem getting didi to school because there were so many coin-operated rides along the way! To get him to move towards to school, I had to trick him by saying that it was broken and we need to find some uncle to fix it and we would get on it for a ride after school.

He got two rides alright. First one on the car we saw on the way to school. When we saw this Mickey Mouse ride, it was simply too hard to resist. We had to let him get on this one! There went my 5 dollars, yeah HKD$5/ride.

Addicted to Mickey Mouse Play House

didi is computer literate. *-:)He can use a mouse or a track point (this works better for him, his little finger can get a pretty good grib of the track point of an IBM computer).

Now, he glues himself to Mickey Mouse Club House web site and would throw a fit if I ask him to leave and do something else. Discipline...is really a tough practice for kids his age...he only listens when he wants to.:(

Anyways, I bought a kitchen timer and let him know how much time he has left playing with computer. Let's hope it works.

What did we do in Hokkaido? (Day 5)

Date: 30 June 2008

This was the last day of our short trip. Our flight departed at around 5pm in the afternoon, so we decided to go to Sapporo and visit the Chocolate Factory we skipped on day 2.:)


Everyone enjoyed the hot spring the night before. daDi managed to get a second soaking in the morning. We took the photo right before we checked out the onsen hotel.

Silly maMi did something really stupid the night before. She thought she left didi's medication in Furano and really panicked. One of the hotel staff was really nice, he left the front desk and drove us to the local drug store to see if we could find the same medicine.

I actually searched high and low in the car on the previous night. I had no luck in locating the bag of medicine. On the way to Sapporo the next morning, guess where maMi found didi's medication?

In the front pocket of the back passenger seats.I guess the only place I missed was the pocket.



After having a wonderful breakfast at the Onsen hotel, we headed for the Chocolate Factory where didi was not in the mood for sigh-seeing again. He was more in the mood for a nap in the car than anything else. During our two hours in the Chocolate Factory, didi was spend 80% of the time doing this , that explains why maMi had a long face in the picture because she felt like this .

Before we head for the airport, we went to a ramen shop nearby and had our first bowl of ramen of the trip.

And how does daDi like his Mitsubishi Delica D:5 for the past five days? It was brand new rental car which had only around 1,000km on it when we got it. We are more than happy with the car. We both agree that driving in Hokkaido is relatively easy with the assistance of GPS and we recommend it to anyone who have little kigs travelling with them.

What did we do in Hokkaido? (Day 4)

Date: 29 June 2008

We started our day by visiting Furano Wine Factory located right across the pension we stayed at. The kids enjoyced some "juice tasting" as you can see above. Yummy yum yum. No one got drunk this time, so we moved on to the second flower field of this trip "四季彩の丘" .


We love this flower field more than the one we visted the day before as it has more colours and variety. didi enjoyed walking around the field to admire the flowers too.


Then we moved onto another from where there is a restaurant for Biei beef and a petting zoo for kids. Look at didi, a picture is worth a thousand word, he had a really good time there. Looks like this little boy is an animal lover.



That night, we went to Josenkei (定山溪)Sapporo and checked into an Onsen hotel 鹿之湯. The place is around 1 hour drive south of Sapporo and is well known for its red leaves in the winters.

didi loved the tatami and bedding so much. It mush has felt loke cloud to him.

What did we do in Hokkaido? (Day 3)

Date: 28 June 2008

We drove to Furano on the morning of day 3. It took us just under 3 hours to get there. Thanks to GPS, we did not get lost and the journey was quite enjoyable, despite the winding roads in the mountain area made didi throw up once.



Farm Tomita was the first flower field we visited. Since it was still early for the season, the lavenders were just started to bloom. We enjoyed our lavender ice cream there but everything went down hill from there.


didi wants his second helping of ice cream, but since he was still coughing quite badly, I said no. Then, our drama king got all worked up and thew a fit in the middle of the flowers fields. As you can see in the photo above, he refused to pose with daddy.

After the drama in the flower field, everyone got quite exhausted so we decided to get to the pension and check in. The name of the pension I booked was ペンション星に願いをlocated on top of a hill with great view of Furano.

This was when we got lost. We entered the phone number of the pension into the GPS system, it took us to a residential area which looks nothing like that photo I saw on the Internet. So, we call the pension owner and he gave us a post code, which didn't quite help either. Luckily I printed out a map before we went to Japan. So, you cannot solely rely on the phone numbers when it comes to GPS system of Japan.


We decided to go to town for lunch after snooping around the pension where we stayed for the night. Last time when daDi and I visited Japan, we liked yakiniku and one of the lunch options on my list is yakiniku. So, we headed to Yamadori for some hot sizzling BBQ. We ordered some grape "juice" which we think the kids would love it. When didi's cousin Yan Yan had her first sip, the waitress ran over to us and told us that it was no juice. Yes, it was some very sweet wine and we all laughed. Did Yan Yan get drunk? We are not quite sure because she was still her energetic-self and it was really hard to tell.

So, who finally gulped down those fine wine of Japan? Well, Auntie Joyce and Uncle Alun had the honor and became light headed. They had to take a nap in the car/too drunk to get up for the next attraction.


So, it was daDi, maMi, didi and Yan Yan who toured the lovely forest and cottages at Prince Hotel Furano. We had coffee and cakes and inhaled some second hand smoke in that lovely coffee house located in the woods, where air is supposed to be clean and fresh. C'est la vie, I guess.

After everyone woke up, we drove back to the pension and enjoyed the lovely 成吉斯汗BBQ. I also learned one thing from this trip. Young kids really aren't quite ready for private Japanese home style type of accommodations, they just make too much noise. I had to consistently remind them to be gentle and stay quiet because there were other guests too. Too tiring for me.

What did we do in Hokkaido? (Day 2)

Date: 27 June 2008

Next day we went to Otaru first thing in the morning. Managed to get lost a bit and after getting on and off interchanges twice, we were in Otaru within two hours. We stayed at Hotel Authent Otaru , which is the best hotel of the trip. It looks very upmarket and rooms are spacious and new. We were very impressed and it was one of the cheaper hotel of this trip too! Very highly recommended if you plan a trip to Otaru.



After that, we took didi to the nearest hospital as instructed by the front desk staff. We made a run for it hopping to made it before lunch hour. To our surprise, they don't have a pediatrics department department, therefore could not take our case. We were referred to a pediatrician on the other se of the town but he was closed till 2:30pm.

We took a taxi to the pediatrician and the photo on top right was taken at his office (つだ小児科). It took us sometime to communicate with Dr. Tsuda (津田哲哉), but he was very helpful. Didi even took an x-ray there and everything was so children-friendly, didi did not shed a tear there. The clinic was reviewed by many fellow moms in Japan, curious about what they have to say? Click here. I really admire the way the Japanese professions do their jobs and it makes me feel that being a child in Japan is a wonderful thing.

This is the magical patch which stopped didi's coughing. You just need to open the package, stick the patch on to the kid's chest or back and it works for 24 hours! Name of this drug is ホクナリンテープ, worth noting down, isn't it?

Apparently, there are three types, one for kids under three, this one for kids over three and one for adults. More information is found on this Japanese website.






We managed to do a bit of sight-seeing after doctor's appointment since we have the right medication to stop didi's nasty cough. Photo on top right was taken outside the local Japanese restaurant 魚真，and at night we went on a cable car ride up to 天狗山。



We returned to our hotel room after it got dark and all the kids and ladies went back to the hotel rooms to sleep while the gents went out for a city tour after dark. daDi brought me a yummy MOS burger, that really made me remember that night because I was woke up to eat it, haha.

What did we do in Hokkaido? (Day 1)

I finally re-sized all the photos that were taken using dadi's camera. Here is a very brief recap on what we did in Hokkaido late June based on the photos we have taken. If I don't do this now, I will never be able to remember it later, so... here we go.

Date: 26 June 2008


didi was saying, "it's Hokkaido!" Yes, Hokkaido, here we come.


Touched down! The whole family was now in Hokkaido. Everyone waited for maMi and Auntie Joyce to get the SIM cards for the mobile phones. Too bad that Auntie Joyce's phone was not compatible with the SIM card, so we ended up renting just one card.


Still in the airport. Grandpa, grand daughter and grand son the trio were waiting for the shuttle bus, which took us to the rental car outlet to pick up our Delica D:5. It was wonderful and we had a great time with it during our five days on the island.


By this time we were in the car already. The sun was setting and we were on our way from the airport to Sapporo. How could we miss our crab dinner? No, of course not. The three had a great time during dinner. Two little monkeys got so excited, they kept playing with the sliding door and one of the door eventually fell on top of didi. That was scary but funny at the same time. Luckily no one got hurt.


Kani kani, we love you so~~~These ones were taken during and after dinner while everyone was putting shoes back on.



Oh, how we had to take a shot of the gigantic crab, of course.


Walking back to the hotel after dinner. This is where we stayed. Hotel Sunrote New Sapporo. The hotel is very close to 狸小路 . It was around 11pm when we made our way back, so all shops were closed and we did not do any shopping.

Later that night, didi started to cough up and it went on for the rest of the night. His breathing became very short and rapid. I was pretty worried and could not sleep at all. We asked the front desk where about was the nearest hospital but then decided to go to Otaru the next day since we booked our hotel room in Otaru.

More on the trip later.