And How Was Your Back To School Weekend?

Back to school weekend can be both very busy and…. anti-climactic. Depending. Meaning, as I have at least 2 mum friends who are currently pregnant and at least 1 who is not quite out of confinement, so I’m gonna go with “depending” 😀

Oh, wait – you should probably take a cue from the insane number of Back To School Sales they wave in your face at department stores during this time. BTS is not just a weekend in HK btw, where there are so many different school systems and timings. Maybe that’s better, because not everyone goes back to school at the same time. On the other hand, when not everyone goes back to school at the same time, all the department stores have a real field day with the whole BTS season in terms of marketing stuff. BTS is a season. 

So, caught up by BTS season, we were on excursion to Citygate Outlets in Tung Chung for school shoes among others, when Cantonese noodles happened. Yums.

They had elephants here too, and so we browsed…

And then the Miss broke hers. Not once, but twice. As in, first she threw it while we were shopping and the wing broke off. Then she threw the entire tin down the escalator, which broke the leg off, and so we lost the wing we were planning to superglue back. Somewhere in an escalator belt in Large Outlet Mall In Tung Chung is the Miss’ elephant wing. It’s amazing what this blog sees me typing.

Was soooo heartsick when I first saw her break it 🙁 then went for the parenting opportunity (may as well right, she just broke her elephant…) especially as she’s been in this whole phase of feeling nuthin’ when she breaks stuff – my iPhone screen has been cracked and shattered and chipped countless times (thank God for insurance)… So we kept reminding her that this is what has happened to her elephant because she threw it…

Then the next day we were again mall crawling and lo and behold, yet another Elephant Parade booth (so now we’ve been to all 3 in Hong Kong!) and I meet my former CJ Hostel-mate to boot (Hi Sharon!), with her two daughters in tow. I tell her the story of the Miss’ elephant, and her reaction is “WHY does she get a new elephant when she broke her own by deliberately throwing it?! Oh, how old is she?” (The Miss is…. not quite as short as Rockstar, and people have been mistaking her for a bit older than she is… Until say, she walks right up to their kids and they realize she isn’t quite as big as they thought…)

Anyway we felt mildly obliged cos Rockstar got a lotta BTS gear (stationery, shoes) and in the end the Miss didn’t want anything else except another little winged elephant. And she furnished a solemn nod when we told her the lesson was to not throw any more elephants. <feel so proud>

Then she threw her (rubber band) bracelet and we lost that. And when I freaked she simply looked at me nonplussed and said……………………………..

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“Not. Elephant.”

And then we went and got the dog to get on a boat and feed fish and a few turtles.

And Random Stick-Up-Butt Guy With Wife And Daughter In Next Boat saw us picking up one of the turtles that came to feed* and had to come up to our boat and say, “You cannot take those. The HK government puts them here.”

And then Kings replied, “We’re not taking them,” and the guy still had to say, “You can still hurt them if you play with them.”

To which I really wanted to say………

NOT. ELEPHANT. 😀

The ends.

*ps: No turtles were harmed in any way. Someone might shoot me an email and say we are upsetting turtles, to which I would like to clarify the potentially upset turtles were still tearing at bread from our fingers while we were holding them. Not say, hiding in their shells. Yes we communicated to the kids that you have to be really careful not to hurt the animals or get bitten and they are not to do this on their own. Last time we did it one of the feeding turtles simultaneously peed on us so Rockstar is especially wary anyways. The Miss… we are not letting out of our sight 😀 

At least she doesn’t throw elephants now?