Recently...

Ain't easy to find the motivation to update my blog very frequent. But here is another update :)

Recently my neighbours have moved out :'(. So life around here has become a lot more boring... It always was nice to arrive back home and see these kids running around. Now the house next door is being renovated, so no kids to play with these days...

There is a chance that Big Rice and Marc (who recently got married; should post some pics of that soon as well....) will be renting the place next door. Which would be quite nice.

Further my teaching job is going quite well these days, the girl quite enjoys to play with me in general. The girl is really interesting, very different from most other kids.
It is quite interesting to see how others raise a child, in many ways quite different from how I would prefer to raise mine.

Here some pics of her being pregnant:

As you can see, being pregnant/giving birth ain't that enjoyable....she wasn't on any painkillers here....

Happy Birthday!!

Instead of on Monday I had to visit the girl on Tuesday. Was a little bit nervous before visiting this time as the last time I went there wasn't that enjoyable. And I do really like the job and to be around children so really hoping it will work out between me and the girl (Jung Tseng).

In the morning before going there I received a call informing me that today would be her birthday! So before heading there still had to buy her something. Her mum told me that she really loves the cookies I gave her for chinese new year. So just quickly went to Park 'N Shop's Taste to get another box of these cookies.

When arriving at the home of Jung Tseng I expected there would be balloons and other bday decorations but there were non... And didn't see any other gifts so got a bit doubtful if I would have misunderstood. I did ask the kid but she also told me it wasn't her bday...was quite confused so did wait to give her the cookies.

She wasn't really in a mood to play yet, so I used the Noddy hand doll to talk to her and then she and Noddy started drawing together. She really liked Noddy and talked quite a bit with him :).

A while later she asked me if we could watch a DVD of Beyond (her favourite group) so we played several songs of Beyond. Later I asked her again if today was her bday. She was a bit hesitative, but when I told her if it was her bday I had something for her it made it quite easy for her to say yes :). When I asked how old she was now she answered me "three" while sticking her hand up with the 3 fingers pointing up like they did at the Beyond concert. So I gave her the cookies and she indeed really loved it. She opened the box and we counted the cookies together in English :). From then she carried the box with her all the time.

Work and things

I was supposed to be on my way to "work" at the moment but returned home after I got a call from my girlfriend informing me the girl I am teaching had to visit the doctor today. So instead of today will be going over there tomorrow.

I have been there for 4 times now, the first 2 times I was there the girl started crying loudly for the first 30 minutes or so. Luckily after that she calmed down and we were even able to do some drawing together and did some puzzles. Was quite nice that during the drawing from time to time she even asked me to say the colours in English and then she followed what I said :).

The 3rd time I came I was a bit surprised that she didn't start crying at all. But ofcourse a pretty good sign, we did play some games, and watched some English cartoons on TV, and at the end we played a karaoke CD with some English children songs. Was really nice to find out that she could sing along very well with all those songs.

The 4rd time the girl was quite restless. We didn't really do anything productive, she seemed in a quite destructive mood, ripping up drawings she made before, throwing with her toys and cd's etc. After this time I really felt a bit frustrated, not really sure if I will be able to really teach her English....

But all in all, I really do think the girl is very cute. She does have an interesting attitude and really hope tomorrow will be a fun day again, where hopefully we can talk a little bit in English again! (do think it is quite hard for children to be mainly raised by a maid; in this case even 2 maids; think this can make children quite confused, e.g. strickt parents, a maid that doesn't really care too much in my opinion.)

My new job

One of the workmates of my girlfriend asked her if she would be interested in teaching her nearly 3 years old daughter English. But my girlfriend had already accepted a job in a different department of the same company she is currently working for. Fortunately she recommended me for the job, as she explained I would be free after the 31st of January and love to play with kids :). So now my new job is teaching this very cute nearly 3 years old girl English. Below are some pictures of her, can't really call it work can I? ;) The picture in the middle is with her 3 months old sister. Will be working on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, it is pretty far away from our place, but think it will be fun and worth the travel. Will start on the 4th of February.

Happy New Year!!

We celebrated the New Year in our home. Was good fun to play games together and enjoy some Champaign, Wine and Pizzahut food.
Hope everyone will have a great 2008! (Strange to be typing this while we already just entered another New Year (the chinese year of the rat).

Bicycle activity

On the 25th of November we went to (....euhmm...always have such a hard time remembering these kinds of things) to go bicycle riding. Me and my girlfriend had been there before, so it was a quite familair track.

I always quite enjoy riding bicycle, quite a dutch thing to do ;). Mabel and Big Rice don't know how to ride a bicycle so they shared a tandem bike with Matt and Marc.

As before by the time we had arrived the destination it was already getting quite late, we had to return the bikes at 6 so it was quite a race back.

I was the first one to arrive back at the bicycle renting place. And shortly after the others started to arrive, except for Matt. Everyone thought he was driving the last part together with me, but I had not seen him for quite a while already. It appeared that he took some wrong turns earlier on and had gotten quite lost. Quite a relief for everyone to finally see him make it to the rental place as well....

It has been a while....

It has been a while since my last update of this blog....

But will try to catch up over the next few days as quite a lot has happened recently.

At the beginning of November I finally decided to quite my job. After a little over 2 years working in this company work was still not challanging at all and also often didn't have much to do; that on top of a bad atmosphere in the office finally made me decide to leave. It was really boring to go to work every day and also often quite annoying to be there, thinking back I probably should have left a lot earlier. But it ain't that easy to make such decision when in the end my right to stay in Hong Kong depends on having a job. Fortunately not too long ago I did get my working visa extended, so will still be allowed to remain in HK for another 1,5 year or so.

On the 24th of November we went to visit Louis and Tracy to see their baby. At that time they still had not decided on the name for the boy but by now we know he is called Isaac. Very cute baby :).