ALUMNI PERSPECTIVES


HKA changed our perspective...


BY JILL GOEBEL


Our family of 5 (kids aged 6, 8 and 11 at the time) made what seemed to us a big move from Brisbane, Australia, to Hong Kong in January 2008. We are perhaps not a typical expat family, and though we had lived in various different cities and countries as both kids and adults (sans kids), to take on the HK move as a family was a whole new ballgame.


More by good luck than good management (it was tricky to get all 3 kids school places at that time at short notice) we ended up at HKA, which really MADE the whole HK experience for us. Even though it was a mid- year start for the kids (darn Southern hemisphere!) they all settled in well, made friends readily and were very quickly no longer the “new kids”. Our time at the old Stubbs Rd campus will always be unforgettable. In fact, a recent visit back to Hong Kong had all the kids asking why we can’t come back and go to HKA again!


We had an amazing two and a half years. Again, unlike many expats, we were on our way “home”, back to the same house and neighbourhood, same school and classmates, but boy we were not the same. We chose to complete the school year at HKA in 2010, rather than head back to a southern hemisphere start of school year at the beginning of 2011. It made the wrench of leaving a little easier, being a part of the many end of year activities somehow tied up a few loose ends, sad as it was.


12


So it was back to Brisbane, and back to the “old” school for the younger 2 kids. Murray was now of high school age, so an entirely new school and group of friends, and also another mid-year entry, rather more uncommon here than in the expat world. We think though, that a totally new school experience in Murray’s case made it easier than it was for Dorothy and Eddie. It was pretty odd and not always easy for them going back to the same cohort, years older. Friendships had of course changed, but what felt most unusual was that we felt “WE” had changed, but somehow the old school and everything else seemed exactly the same. Those school newsletters seemed completely unchanged!


In selecting a high school for the children on our return, we really valued diversity, inclusiveness and freedom of thought, core values we feel were instilled in our time at HKA. This was a key in making the transition home all the more “tolerable”.


However, 5 years later, life moves on of course. We now have a University student (Murray is doing an IT degree at the University of Queensland) and 2 high schoolers — 3 teenagers in one house! In retrospect, it was (almost) a little sad for the parents to see how quickly our kids settled back into school and a broader life here in Brisbane. As much as the memories of HK and HKA in particular were always there, the familiarity of home was readily accepted by our children, but as we had always hoped, with a very different perspective on the world.


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