Wee Care

Joshua and I are working in the Wee Care section of Mother's Choice, and we're doing childcare and staff education. 

There are 13 children in the Wee Care division of the Baby Care portion of Mother's Choice, dedicated to the care of babies and children with special needs. Most of the children have a varying degree of Down's Syndrome, but some of them appear to have other special needs as well. The younger ones, about 1 year old, are somewhat easier to care for, because they're more like very young infants. The older ones, up to 6 years old, are sometimes challenging because you find yourself expecting them to do more. It seems that even those who are close to 6 act more like 3 year olds. 

Childcare has been exactly like it sounds. During the day shifts, we arrive at 7:30 in time to start waking up the children. We change them and then feed them. Then there is an hour of random play -- the length depends somewhat on how long it takes to wake up the other children. Then there is some group singing and story telling. Then lunch. Then more play. Some of the play involves completing "homework boxes" that are assigned to each child. The occupational therapist and speech therapist assign specific skills training to the children, and the caretakers work through the tasks and mark them off. In the States, this type of play is akin to completing an IEP or individualized education plan. Josh really gets into the IEP play. It's interesting to see how certain activities, like threading a shoelace through a thick dot-to-dot picture or completing a puzzle, fulfill specific skills training. 

The staff have very high expectations for the children, particularly in behavior, and it's impressive to watch them interact with the children. One child, Joel, tends to tantrum and potentially harm himself or those closest to him, and specific staff have been assigned to him to help manage him. He's a sweet boy who likes to sing, but when he gets frustrated, he gets really loud. He will try to hit himself to get the staff to pay attention to him. Joel really likes Josh and will call him "gou gou" or big brother. When we were taking a lunch break, Joel actually dragged the other staff member around looking for gou gou. He's a very friendly and very precocious child. 

Some of the children were born into the local hospital by mothers participating in the Mother's Choice programme, but most of the babies are born in hospital and are transferred to MC later on. One little girl, Natalie, a three-year-old, has spent her first years in life in the hospital and was only recently transferred to MC. She has not had as much interaction - some of the staff believe she had been confined or strapped to a hospital bed most of her short life - so she has lots of development catching up to do. When she first arrived, staff members told us, she didn't smile. Now she can scootch herself to a corner, stand, sort of, leaning against the wall, and will clap her hands and smile. She has a great personality, but because she doesn't really know what to do with human touch, she usually leans away from it. If you say her name, talking soothingly to her, she will usually let you hold her hands and will walk about 5 steps before leaning back and sitting down hard. It took some time to get used to her rhythm, but I really enjoy working with her. 

One thing that struck me right away was how homey the facility is. There are four main rooms that we work in, and other than the fact that there are 13 babies around and at least that many staff, plus a cook and a cleaner, it sort of feels like a giant preschool or day care. The babies mostly have one on one contact with a caretaker, and we are with the children constantly. There are also physical therapists, speech therapists, and occupational therapists around. They take children individually for special training.  I think those babies get more one-on-one than many "normal" babies at home. I know that I would probably set my kids up in a play room and run around the house cleaning or something at times. Then again, I don't really know, because I don't have kids. Moms out there, do you constantly play with your kids? 

After the IEP play and Random Play times, we usually feed the kids lunch. This often takes the longest, because some of the kids eat slowly. I fed Tanya the other day, a little one-year-old with mild Down's Syndrome. She is learning to eat with a spoon, but she usually requires elbow support. If you support her hand too much, she drops the spoon and waits for you to feed her. Clever lazy girl. 

Cyrus, another boy with DS, has a harder time with lateral movement of his tongue. It takes a much longer time to feed him, because you place the food in his mouth (whenever he's looking straight on and not distracted by sounds) and have to wait til he can work all of the food to the back of his mouth. He has a healthy appetite and can usually eat about 6 oz of food. It's usually a pureed meal of some sort. 

After feeding, we usually change the kids, play a little, and then suddenly it's milk time. This time you feed them 4 to 6 oz of milk or formula and sometimes water. After this, which is a very wet experience for all involved, we usually bathe the kids. And by bathe I mean shower them while they sit on little stools. I have gotten fairly wet, despite wearing huge galoshes and a rubber apron. Heh. We also sing "This is the Way You Wash Your Hair" to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus." I've already gotten tired of that song. Do you think we could sing some other songs?

After baths, which take some time, we start putting the kids down for naps. Sometime in there a few people get to eat lunch in shifts. I'm usually so hungry by that point that I'm a little slow when the babies try throwing toys. I have no idea how moms do it. 

We finish our day around 4 in the afternoon. Sometimes it's a little later, depending on what we were doing at that moment. We usually stagger back to our flat- about 10 mins away - and collapse on the couches for a few minutes. I've taken to quick naps out of pure exhaustion. HAH. 

Our night shifts are different, but that's for a different story.

We don't have pictures, because we can't take pictures of the kids. We'll try get some shots of the building and the play yard.

Xing Nian Kuai Le!

Happy New Year! That phrase was in Mandarin, but I'm not sure what the Cantonese version is.

Last Wednesday, Chinese New Year's Eve, we did a Lai See or Hong Bau exchange at Wee Care. These red envelopes or packets are often filled with money or candy and are given to children or singles by their elders and by married folks. I remember getting red packets as a kid and being really excited. I think Chris and I made 200HK one year with all the red packets. Pretty exciting. For the Wee Care kids, the packets had little candies or chocolates, and we passed around the packets like Hot Potato. We (the staff, really) sang a New Year's song, Gong Xi Gong Xi (pronounced Gung She), and Josh found a version of it online. So for Chinese New Year, get some red packets, fill them with candy, and then pass them around while you sing this New Year's Song.

The original post of this song was found on mumsgather.blogspot.com and the PinYin had been posted on Tok3Tok4.blogspot.com.

Gong Xi Gong Xi

mei tiao da jie siao siang
mei geh ren di zhui lee
jien mien di yi ju hua
jiu si gong xi gong xi
gong xi gong xi gong xi ni ah
gong xi gong xi gong xi ni

dung tian yi dao jing tou
zhen shi hao di siao xi
wen nuan di chuen feng
jiu yao chui sing da di
gong xi gong xi gong xi ni ah
gong xi gong xi gong xi ni

hao hao bing xue rong jie
yan kan mei hua tu rei
man man chang yeh guo chu
ting dao yi shen ji ti
gong xi gong xi gong xi ni ah
gong xi gong xi gong xi ni

jing guo duo sao kuen nan
li jing duo sao muo lian
duo sao xin er pan wang
pan wang chuen de xiao xi
gong xi gong xi gong xi ni ah
gong xi gong xi gong xi ni

Navigating Hong Kong

When we prepared for our trip to Hong Kong. my mom mailed me some older maps that she had used and collected. We actually skyped (if that can be a verb) about the different places we can go and things to see. It was helpful, but when we arrived, I realized that it wasn't quite as convenient to get around as we'd thought. This is due to the fact that we are staying in the Mid-levels, homes, flats, and buildings that are placed along the hillside of the Peak of Hong Kong. 

As a result, streets zigzag down towards Central and Admiralty, two adjacent districts in the city. If you head down one stair case, which sits just west of where we are staying (down a cemented slope and through a few parking areas and through the Hong Kong Park), you end up in the south part of Central, just west of the Bank of China. If you head down a more easterly staircase, you end up walking down Kennedy Rd. We haven't figured out which staircase takes us to Admiralty, so we always end up in Wan Chai when we walk east. Wan Chai is further east than Admiralty. It takes about 15 minutes to get down, and it probably takes longer to get up. We haven't really timed it.

One other thing that should have been obvious to me is that people here would assume I speak Cantonese. I don't look like some random Chinese ethnicity out for a visit, because, doy, I was born here. Sadly, I don't remember much cantonese -- I can count to ten, mumble my address, and ask where the toilet is -- and I don't know enough "questions" to ask purveyors to explain their menus. I do just a hair better in Mandarin (Potonghua) but it's less commonly spoken in the market streets to which I am addicted but can't really communicate. My recommendation: Get a Lonely Planet phrase book and muddle through some of the phrases. I've been looking for one since I found it at the HK Central Library in Causeway Bay (10 stories of books, mostly in Chinese). It will be very helpful. 

The best advice we have been given is to purchase an Octopus Card. These cards are accepted at the MTR (the subway), the buses, the ding ding trams, some taxis, and some grocers. You can purchase the cards at the customer service or information desks in the MTR stations (just look for the signs). Then you can refill them at the 7-elevens and automated machines that are spaced all over the MTRs and the 7-elevens all over the city. All you have to do is beep them on the reader panels, which look like Octopus cards glued to the people gates and machines. The cards even work through the wallets and purses, so you don't have to dig out your card every time you need it. 

Finally, study the map of Hong Kong and develop a plan of where you'd like to go. Don't be shame (thanks Hawaiian friends for that idiom) about carrying a map around, and go into hotels and ask for directions. If you go to a hotel that clearly caters to foreigners, you'll have an easy time navigating. If you're braver, just ask someone you hope speaks English. :)  We have found some cool coffee shops, restaurants, and stores as a result of asking questions.

Oh, and don't be afraid of wandering and getting lost. Hong Kong isn't that big. You run up to the hillside and the South China Sea pretty quickly, and you'll see that many streets and signs are written in both Chinese and English. I don't like getting a map out on the street, so I go inside to a cafe and sit down to stare at my map. You can also go down to the MTRs and look at their maps and compare them to your map. It really is easy to navigate, you just have to have a goal and then understand that the map makes things look far apart, but as long as you're comfortable walking ten or more blocks, then HK is easy. If not, you can always hop in a taxi - several of the drivers we've had speak some English - or jump on the MTR.

Travel costs, approximate, in HKD:

Taxi - $18 for the first mile or so; about $25 to go from Central to the Mid-Levels
Bus - Minibus - $5 to $10, depending on the route
MTR - $5-10 depending on how far you travel
Ferries - $2 and up
Walking - $0 but you have to explore where you're going :)

With the exchange rate of about 7HKD to $1, transportation is very affordable and easy to use.

Travel tips: Remember that traffic is opposite to that in the States, so remember to look the Right then Left, for the most part. Several of the more heavily-trafficked areas have signs on the ground that tell you which direction to look. Don't try to run any "don't walk" signs, which tick slowly for the visually impaired, and wait for the "walk" signs, which are signaled by rapid ticking. Or you can wait for a mob of people to cross, even on a red, and hope that the taxis slow down (they usually do and will honk like crazy).
Take your time to walk from place to place. There is so much to see!

First Day in Hong Kong

On the first morning, Josh and I woke up around 8 and got ready for the day. Our water heater was broken, so we took sponge baths. Later, Stuart returned and gave us access to another flat to access that washroom while the staff works to fix ours. Always an adventure, right? 

We walked down the hills towards Admiralty in the most circuitous manner I could imagine. Rather than taking the staircases that turned out to be directly below us, we walked about a mile west and then headed north to the Admiralty area. We saw one Maserati and one Lotus while we walked, and we also saw several BMWs, Mercedes, and Hondas zoom by us. All through our walk, we were surrounded by tall apartment buildings that rose from the hillside. These apartments usually had 15 or more levels, and they were not all new. Some of them looked like they'd been around for thirty or forty years. 

 We eventually found Admiralty, after we found the Tram's track and wandered down some step-hill climbs that zig zagged between the apartment buildings. We also found the Pacific Place mall. It's similar to a western mall - trendy stores, glitzy advertising, security guards, shoppers - but there was a distinctively Chinese feel to it. The canned music being piped over the PA system sounded like traditional Chinese instrumental music, and some of the advertising was definitely directed towards Asian fashion and styling. The mall was very sleek and looked nothing like I remembered it. I actually don't really remember it.

We also found Starbucks and McDonalds. I really don't want to eat there, but I am also curious about the slight differences between the menus. Starbucks here is apparently run by a third party as a franchise, rather than the American corporate-run businesses. McDonalds is already franchised, and the menu is updated to incorporate more Asian cuisine. The double Fish Filet comes with a side of wasabi, and the McRib is covered in teriyaki sauce. We haven't examined Starbucks' menu yet. 

We went to the main offices at lunchtime and met the CEO, David Youtz. He's friendly and animated. He has lived in Hong Kong for the past four years and has a long history with China and Hong Kong, because he and his wife have adopted four children from Mother's Love, in Nanning, China, and he had taught in China years ago. 

Wenda, our main contact here at Mother's Choice, walked us to Wan Chai, which is a local's shopping district composed mostly of small shops and open air stalls. We had to purchase white shoes for the Wee Care facility, and we wanted to buy some groceries for our flat. I'll detail Wan Chai and downtown walking soon. Eventually, we hauled our bags back to the Hopewell Tower and then caught a taxi to take us the rest of the way to Mother's Choice. 

We have had a full first day in Hong Kong, and it has been great to see Hong Kong from a different perspective. It is so different and so much the same, and certain memories awaken in my mind wherever I look. I remember vaguely the walking we did around the downtown (or Central) area, and I remember sensations and friendships when I wander around the Mid-Levels area. 

We have the next two days free to continue acclimating to Hong Kong. We'll soon be getting local mobile phone sim cards so that we'll have local phone numbers, and we'll start getting familiar with street names.