last week when our friends the debocks were able to physically remove themselves from the four children trying to show them their favourite dolls and plush toys, or attempting to brush their hair, choose their accessories and wear their glasses, they made an observation about my city.
naturally, i was waiting to hear it.
and to my immense pleasure, it was a comment i had never heard before.
"hong kong" they proclaimed, "might be the most international city in the world."
it's like telling halle berry's mum that her child is beautiful. you can't deny it, but you can try to point out the beauty in others. and so i did. quite valiantly.
"what about vancouver?"
"no, vancouver is half ESL, but it doesn't have the australian populatation that hong kong does."
"toronto or new york?"
"No, again, not the same number of australians, although granted, new york would be better what with the banks."
"what about london?" i came up with.
london, we had to agree would be close, if not, possibly, the most international city. but does it have the high number of americans? canadians? kiwis? an excellent question. both locations got points for south africans and africans, and for europeans.
it might be london.
then again, it might be hong kong.
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on a side note – sela is sick. fever of 103. poor little dot. she is very quiet and every four hours i need to give her drugs or else her fever spikes. her joints aren't sore, but she is miserable. last night she woke up crying because she had misplaced her packet of tissue and her nose was streaming. and it was too dark. amazingly and impressively, "the others" slept through it.
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5 Replies to “another flower for her hat”
You forgot to mention Los Angeles. We have our fair shares of Aussies.
there we go! los angeles is another contender…
while not on the scale of the big cities, many smallish university towns like mine have quite the international population. we students from all over the world. one of my best friends is from suriname. her husband is canadian. i have known people from taiwan, india, indonesia, an afghan refugee who left the country as a child on a donkey, nigeria (i think), hungary, several hispanic nationalities, and a first generation japanese american. my sister once dated a boy from israel (i never cared for him, he was a jerk, but his brother was nice). wandering around campus one can hear accents and languages from all over the world (yes, aussies included), although probably china and india are the most represented non-american nationalities.
i assume most medium and larger university towns are pretty much the same.
Well, not so sure where else you would have a large number of Australians than the already mentioned cities. However, we can be sure that with the global village getting smaller and smaller, they will be in many more places, no?
Love
Odila
We’re finally home & settling in. The internet was connected today so I”m looking forward to blogging about our Hong Kong visit. It might take a day or two though as our wee grandson arrived today & we’re busy getting to know him! What a delight!
Say hello to the children for us & tell the girls it’s not as much fun when I have to choose my own earrings.