There’s no place like home

Movies often contain little nuggets of wisdom. Dorothy’s words from The Wizard of Oz could not have rung more true. After months of debating whether to leave HK for the summer, I finally bit the bullet and braved a solo 16 hour flight with 3 kiddies to go home (and I live to tell the tale!). Now, having lived across continents, being a citizen of multiple countries and moved several houses over the last ten years, the word ‘home’ is hard to define. Especially since my parents no longer live in the house I grew up in and have so many memories of. But there is truly nothing, at least for me, like setting foot in your parents house, eating mummy cooked meals and spending time with family. It’s my true safe zone and feeling of ‘home’. I realize ‘home’ isn’t really defined by a place, but rather by the people. Hubby shared the same sentiment after joining us following business trips in Singapore and London. While I miss London and yearn to call it ’home’ again, hubby said that, without us, London did not feel like home at all.

We spent a blissful month and half mostly mask free (hubby will beg to differ since I insisted on me and kids masking indoors), basking in the love and attention of family. We visited the zoo, the aquarium, Diggerland (a construction theme park which was heaven for our wheel obsessed boy), the movies (even a movie in the patk!) and a countless number of playgrounds. The memories created truly made the pain of travel, and the aftermath of returning from travel to HK, truly worth it.

After a summer where Covid was in the backdrop, it was a bit of a shock to enter HK again where Covid is still front, right, center and everywhere else. We went from a world that has moved on, to being back in 2020.

As soon as we stepped off the plane in HK, it was like entering a twilight zone. Masks, face shields, people in hazmat suits and walking to various checkpoints and taking numerous Covid tests. After we got through that, our luggage was disinfected (literally sprayed with a huge machine) and placed in a taxi to take us to our quarentine hotel, where over the course of a few days, we also had to do several more tests (and back to the dreaded poo poo test - no easy feat for a nearly potty trained toddler 🙄).

Originally, we were supposed to do a 7 days quarantine, but just as we got on the plane it was changed to 3 nights and 4 days of ‘surveillance’, which thankfully could be done at home. But this wasn’t going into effect until a few days later so we sat in suspense during our first few days to see if they would let us out early. Being back locked in a hotel room with no sunlight and 3 jetlagged kids truly felt like dejavu to last year. Thankfully, we passed all our tests and got out on Day 4. The kids were thrilled to be reunited with al their toys, and like kids do, have fallen back into their old routines. Adults, like most other things in life will take a bit longer to readjust to masks, the constant threat of being placed in quarantine and needing to do RAT tests daily on kids in order to attend school. But cooler weather will hopefully be on the horizon soon and with the reduced quarantine, we seem to be moving in the right direction. Here’s to hoping I will never have to use the word quarantine other than on a kids spelling list by year end!