Home Sweet High Rise

 Time for a tour of our Hong Kong home!  That way you can see where you'll be staying when you all come to visit us.  We'll start from a distance and zoom in to give you some perspective.  This first picture is of our neighborhood from the water (found this on the internet, not sure who to credit other than Google images), on the southwest corner of the Kowloon Peninsula.  We live in that super tall building.  Just kidding, but it would be fun.  That building is the ICC (International Commerce Center) and is the fifth tallest building in the world.  If you look just to the right of it, you'll see our building looking squatty short behind it because it's further back.  All of these buildings (most of them residential apartment buildings) are built on top of a mall called Elements Mall, though you can't really tell that in this picture.

Here is the Mall and you can see how all the towers (15 total) are on top of it.  In this corner behind those windows is the ice skating rink that we haven't taken a spin on yet.  The mall is pretty fancy.  We like some of the restaurants and shop at the grocery store, but other than H&M and Zara, the shopping is out of my price range.  Every luxury brand you can think of.

This picture of our building is taken from standing on the roof of the mall, the common outdoor space all the buildings share.  There are roads on the roof and a playground and open space for the kids to run around, doesn't feel like a mall roof.  Our apartment is on the very top two floors (45 & 46).  If you look at the top row of windows all the way over to the left hand side, that's us. 

When you enter our apartment, the first room you come to is the kitchen.  It's kind of closed off from the rest of the apartment, not open concept like American-style.  The kitchen contains the washer/dryer (all in one) and while it seems smaller than our kitchen at home, the configuration has more cabinet space and counter top space. 

Off the kitchen (to the right of the fridge, not shown here) is the "maid's quarters", very common in Hong Kong.  It is the norm here for families to have domestic helpers, and since there is no such thing as daycare here (because everyone has helpers), we, too had to get a live-in helper to mind the kids while Paul and I are working.  Her name is Jelyn and she is from the Philippines.  The kids love her and so do I as she also does the cleaning and laundry for us.  I think we should build another room in our Minneapolis house and bring her home with us.

After passing the kitchen, you enter the dining/living room.  The square footage of this place is similar to our home in Minneapolis, but is more open and the huge windows bring in a ton of light.  That door straight ahead by the TV leads to your guest quarters.

If you took a look out our windows, you would have this view.  We have the sea and some cargo container lifting rigs, and the ferries park out there at the end of the day.  If we had lived here a few years ago, the view would have been unobstructed as those two towers are the newest on top of the mall.  The land masses in the distance are other islands that contain the airport and Disneyland.  We recently discovered that on a clear night at 8pm, we can see the Disney evening fireworks in the distance.

If you look to the left out the windows, you can see the ICC

Looking down and zooming in, here is the playground the kids run around in.

And here is some of the open space where the kids tool around on their scooters.  I zoomed in to catch a morning Tai Chi group.

 Now continuing on through the first floor, here is the guest room/Paul's office.  Don't worry, the bed pulls out to a king and we're told it's quite comfortable, due to master IKEA craftsman Paul. 

And you get your own guest bathroom!  When you come and stay, I'll remove the kids' step stool.

Next we'll go upstairs.  One of my favorite parts of this apartment is the bonus space at the top of the steps that the kids use as their playroom.  So now the toys can be contained up here instead of our living room (though now the living room furniture is often turned into a fort).  The bottom left hand corner is one of our two dehumidifiers that run non-stop so the house doesn't succumb to mold.

To the left of the playroom is the master bedroom and the best part is that we have our own master bathroom.  With two sinks!  And a lock on the door!  Our 1917 south Minneapolis home does not include these features, but will after we move home...

To the right of the playroom is the kids' rooms and bathroom.  Not a very exciting picture, just a bathroom, there is a tub behind the door not shown in the picture.  Dora potty seat, very important (thanks, Rena!)

Esme's room with the cool old twin bed I snagged from Craigslist in Minneapolis right before we moved.

Onto PE's room.  He loves his room, and the built in desk, even though he doesn't really use it yet.  The big windows and early sunrises here mean that the kids get out of bed too early, even with blackout linings for the curtains.  You'll notice PE has windows on both sides of his room.  The apartment building isn't a square, but a funny shape such that each unit only shares a common wall by the front door wall and the rest sticks out on its own.  I'm not describing it very well, you'd have to see it. 

Both PE's room and the guest room directly below it have the two sets of windows, and the small back windows look out onto a huge construction project.  They are building a big train station for the super fast train to China, a multi-year project that will not be completed by the time we leave.  PE loves looking at the construction view.  The downside is the construction noise.... which may wake up guests early in the mornings (all except Sunday).  But we can supply ear plugs, and it's really more like white noise, just like the airplanes over our Minneapolis house, right?  You'll also notice that our entire 46 floor building is tiled.  Who did all that grouting?!?

That's it for the house tour.  You all are welcome to come visit us.  Print out this blog entry and bring it with you to redeem it for a free "I heart Hong Kong" t-shirt!