Hokkaido

It has been a fantastic trip in our first stop, Hokkaido. JoJomami, however, finds it difficult to find time to keep up with her blog... Joaquin enjoyed the flowers, the blue sky, the clean air and the delicious milk (and food)!

Skipping Beijing

Our first stop of the grand world tour was supposed to be Beijing. We were planning to visit our good friends and their kids and also to process some papers in Beijing. Joaquin was supposed to stay in Beijing with our friends and our helper while Jaime and I attend a wedding celebration in the Inner Mongolia.
Joaquin's prolonged sickness changed all these. Today we went to see the doctor. He says he can fly but he may be contagious to other kids. We decided then to skip Beijing and made the revision to our itinerary (before our grand tour even began!). The total detour ended up quite costly: we voided the original round trip tickets to the Inner Mongolia; needed to buy a new round trip; and rerouted our RTW tickets! I spent my entire day rebooking and replanning our trip and nearly drove our travel agent crazy!
Fortunately, Joaquin felt a lot better in the afternoon already (maybe we didn't need to change our plan at all). He is eating better both at lunch and dinner and is now still running around at midnight refusing to go to sleep... I guess he will be fully recovered when we finally embark our journey (first stop Hokkaido) next Tuesday...

Comprende?!

Joaquin amazed his Dadu today: we were having dinner at a Thai restaurant and I pointed out to him a large wooden elephant saying "Mira el elefante". A few minutes later, without any prompting or practice I asked him "Donde esta el elefante?" ("Where is the elephant?") and he looked around me to then point at where the elephant was! So not only does he know what an elephant is now, but he understands when you ask him where something is! (and it wasn't a fluke, it worked again later in the evening).

One more day in Hong Kong

Joaquin is feeling a little bit better today. He is a strong and a well-behaved sick boy. He does not whine. He takes his medicine even though he does not like it. He does not moan even though his nose is all plugged up and he has to breathe from his mouth. He does not laugh as much but does not cry unnecessarily.
At dinner today, we finally got convinced to stay in Hong Kong one more day. I think it's the right move. Even though that means we are cutting our Beijing and Hokkaido trip short and that I need to readjust our reservation in Hokkaido.
I half jokingly complained that I wouldn't know what to do with ourselves tomorrow since our days have been so busy non-stop for the last few weeks given our move. But I think, we can take a small break and enjoy our slow, relaxing day in Hong Kong. Maybe we will finally have time to go through the 600 some pictures and video that we haven't uploaded since more than one month ago...

Slight Delay to the World Tour

Joaquin has been down with a flu since 10 days ago. We were hoping that his body can just fight it out himself without having to give him too much medicine. We took him to the doctors twice and made sure that it was nothing more serious than a flu. Today, after we returned from Macau, he started having fever, constant running nose and teary eyes. He has also been coughing for a while. All these moving in the last week didn't help. Dadu also is feeling a bit sick after getting minimum sleep most of this week. We had to take Joaquin to the hospital to get anti-biotics. Our doctor advised that we delay our trip until Joaquin feels better. He also wouldn't pass the temperature screening at the airport (he didn't pass it at the hospital). So right now we are delaying our trip by one day to see if he will feel good enough by Tuesday. If not, we may need to cut our trip to the Inner Mongolia short (or out completely).

Counting down to being homeless

Two more days and we will officially be homeless and living out of two suitcases.  We will be staying with our good friends for a few days after the movers come to pack up our place in Hong Kong. Mamu and Dadu will have a mini-getaway to Macau over the weekend for a wedding (looking forward to it).  After that, we will say goodbay to Hong Kong and head up to Beijing!  Our apartment right now is in completely chaos.  Never in my life I have realized how much junk one (or three) can accumulate.  We are putting most our stuff in storage, sending part of our belongings to foster families (thank you for hosting them), and donating some to charity.  Our failed-attempt of trying to get our helper a visa to Europe means that Mamu and Dadu will need to live like real parents for the next eight months (except for those days grandparents coming to rescue). We went for a late-night movie (probably won't have another one until we are settled back in HK) and stayed at our party until 4am last Saturday.  In two weeks, we will be up at sunrise and home at sundown like all parents do...

Handsome Boy

Joaquin is Walking!