A feeling of de-ja vu....

Just how fast can a year go by?


In September, as I walked to our local "wet market" through the local housing estate, the offerings of food were out again to appease the hungry ghosts, along with the incense sticks. Along with the offerings were old oil drums placed where people could use them to burn the special "paper money" for their ancestors in Heaven and Hell. This is so they can pay their fines in Hell for their wrong doings in life and get to Heaven, or simply to have funds in Heaven. It seems that even in Heaven, there is no such things as a free lunch.




I can't believe it was a year ago that we witnessed this all for the first time and went to the annual lantern display at the Chinese Gardens. For the lantern festival, our condo again had a party. As last year, they held, amongst other things, a national costume competition for the children.



Hannah had wanted to join in last year but, being British, we don't really have a national costume (and we don't even have a kilt here to pretend to be Scottish). But then we had a brainwave - there was nothing in the rules that stated you had to wear your own national costume and Hannah has a lovely flamenco dress we bought on our last visit to Spain.




So that was it - we changed nationality for the night and Hannah put on her dress and we pinned her hair into a bun and put a flower in it too. She looked very pretty, but did have some tough competition from lovely kimonos, chinese dresses and a couple of very pretty Indian costumes. Each child paraded one by one down a ramp by the pool (a sort of catwalk). She didn't win but many people complimented her outfit. Here she is by the pool with her lantern.




All the children were given prizes though - and those (mostly under 10) who were in the national costume got a soft toy desktop mobile phone holder. Just what ever 7 year old needs! However, we found a use for it and it now holds her aircon remote control for her bedroom.



Another year and another UN Day at school too. The lack of an English national costume reared its head again, so it was necessary to find a theme. This year, the parents who kindly organised the England kids came up with the theme of the British seaside. The children were asked to dress in shorts and T-shirts or swim stuff with a as much red and white as possible, to go with the St Georges flags they would all be carrying.



At our condo, waiting for the school bus, our two looked very undressed as the two Japanese girls were in gorgeous kimonos and the young Indian twins were in very colourful punjabi suits. The other family who are British Indian had decided to be Indian as well this year rather than English, so again, they looked much more dressed up. But when the parade started, the English group looked very colourful and, fortunately, far better than we'd anticipated.




Then it was the whirl around the classrooms visiting as many "countries" as possible and tasting lots of traditional foods followed by the concert. This year, there were some chairs for adults and I was pretty pleased to have gone into the hall early enough to ensure I had one. This was a huge improvement on last year during which the concert was lovely but we all had very numb bums from sitting on the floor for so long by the end of it.



I can't believe that our original plan had us returning to the UK around now. It's gone by in a flash and we're far from ready to leave. Somehow, I have a feeling that before we know it, we'll be doing all this again and that feeling of de-ja vu will return in no time.