Today was one of those days that started out heading to the left, then took a sharp turn to the right, but was all good in the end.

The kids’ cousins from Montreal happen to be in Hong Kong right now and Kelly is 26 and Carmen 15, so Emily and Stephanie have been bugging to see them.  The plan for today was Ocean Park, so we got up, showered and dressed reasonably early to meet them, then catch the bus out there.

Unfortunately, when we woke up, it was POURING rain!!  Really pouring rain.  Like monsoon pouring rain.  Danny was all about it stopping really quickly and being fine for the rest of the day, so he insisted that we would still be able to go.  We went to Admiralty MTR station where we were meeting Kelly and Carmen, but the rain was still coming down in buckets!  We went to the ticket booth, and they were warning people off going, telling everyone that your ticket is non-refundable and that they were expecting heavy rain and thunderstorms all day.  I actually admired the honesty in that.  So, we decided that today wasn’t going to work for Ocean Park.

It’s funny, because most of the time, rain storms are really heavy here, but also short-lived.  Not so much today, though.

We decided that since we’d all kept today clear, we’d go shopping together, so we headed into Pacific Place (a very high end expensive mall).  The kids realized this is where the AMC theatre is located and within minutes had convinced Kelly and Carmen to take them to see Toy Story 3 in 3D.  Actually it didn’t take much convincing.  The cool thing was, the girls offered to take them without Danny or I needing to go!! 

We had lunch in the American style restaurant Dan Ryan’s before it was time for the movie.  The food is very American, in huge portions, but the kids were happy with it, so all was good.  Then it was time for them to go to the movie anyway.

Danny opted to go do his own thing, including a stop at the hotel, and I headed over to Sogo Department store in Causeway Bay. Nothing in particular that I wanted to buy, I mostly just wanted to browse, without kids!!! 

All I ended up buying was some more ground coffee, ‘cause in the basement level at Sogo, they have an amazing food hall, with all kinds of imports, etc.  I was able to get a good brand of coffee, so I left happy.

Got a text that the kids were done at the movies, and were heading to Sogo to meet me, so that ended my peace and quiet.  By the time they met me, both kids were hyper as hell (not sure why) and really naughty.  It was funny, ‘cause Kelly just kept asking “are kids always like this??”.  Oh yes, dear Kelly, they are when they are that excited to see you.  Best birth control ever, I think!!!

We shopped around some more, with only a few major meltdowns by Stephanie, who wanted one of everything in the Hello Kitty store.  Now, I’m good with shopping, I’ll even get suckered into toy shopping, but I can NOT stand Hello Kitty and refuse to spend money on that stuff.  Kelly is very into it, so Stephanie started quite a performance trying to convince me.  I’m proud to say that I won, and didn’t buy anything Hello Kitty!!!!

Next stop was a DVD/VCD store.  We can buy the VCD’s but the DVD’s aren’t regionally correct, so we spent some time searching out a couple of movies the kids could watch here at the hotel.  We were successful, and both Emily and Stephanie had two movies.  Then it was like you flipped a switch and they turned naughty and used really nasty tone on me.  That was it.  I told them to put the movies back, and I left the store.  They kind of stood looking at me, and a few other shoppers gave me a funny look (probably thinking that I was the nasty nanny, not buying her poor charges their movies) but again I held my ground.  We bought no movies.  Great afternoon so far, eh?

It was late by the time that fiasco ended so we decided to walk somewhere close to have some dinner, before parting ways with Kelly and Carmen.  We went into a Shanghai style restaurant and had nice dumplings.  Stephanie and Emily both ate really well, and Stephanie even drank the glass of brown ugly stuff they served her (it was actually freshly squeezed real apple juice, but it looked nasty, even though she said it tasted great!).  I was really pleased that she tried it to find out she liked it.