the road to somewhere

Today I spent most of my time waiting. I probably needed that lesson.

I woke up this morning with a few thoughts in my head, "How is it already time to get up," "Yay for the orphanage day," and "I hope I can find this place..." I headed out about an hour early to give myself time to get to this orphanage that was supposed to be nearby. It took me ages to find an empty cab, and then the cab I finally got didn't understand Portuguese (which is what I had the address in). One issue in Macau is that the street names in Portuguese are different from those in Chinese--so you can't directly translate them--and the taxi drivers don't know Portuguese (even though street signs have Portuguese on them).

My next attempt was to take the bus. The contact at the orphanage had given me a few buses that came to the area--great. The next problem was I had no idea where to get off. He had mentioned it was near the border, so I thought I'd just wing it. At the end of the bus route, I got off and proceeded to look like a lost person looking every which way. It was about this time I said a prayer of "God, please help me find this place." Then behind me came a voice saying, "Are you looking for someone?"...and the angel to answer my prayer had arrive. I turned around to find Anna, my boss's secretary who speaks fluent Cantonese and English. I then explained to her my dilemma, and she called the orphanage to talk to them in Cantonese. The lady at the orphanage agreed to come meet me at the pharmacy I was at, and Anna was on her way. Great! ...then a half hour passed.

I called Anna, who didn't hear the phone ring. I called the orphanage--the only English speaking contact was out of town. Then I walked across the street to get some water and decided I'd go back to the apartment and set out from square one. Anna then called me back--then called the lady--then called me. The story was that the lady at the orphanage had been waiting for me for about a half hour, going to all the pharmacies in the area around the orphanage. Apparently it's a chain. Anna told me to find somewhere to sit because it would take Anna an hour to walk back to show me where it was...how dedicated of an angel I had today!! Sure enough, she showed up, walked to meet the lady, and then went with me to translate when we first arrived at the orphanage. Success.

Turns out that they had one 19 year old girl that was there today I could help, as many others seemed to be gone. She had pretty good English as far as being able to understand, but her speaking was more limited. They invited me to eat lunch. I felt bad eating at an orphanage, but it would have been more impolite to refuse. We had white rice, bok choy, pork salami like thing, some chopped up pork parts that tasted like the less desirable parts of the animal, and fresh fish. The Chinese have this thing where they keep putting food on your plate as you eat--it's a courtesy--and I was like AHHH I can't eat anymore! I eventually made my point successfully and politely.

I talked with the 19 year old, Annie, for a while. I would tell her stories and listen to hers--all basic introduction and interest stuff mostly. When I told her what my dad did, her eyes got very big and said, "he must be very smart." I won't lie, I swelled up inside, grinned really big, and agreed my dad is pretty super duper. Turns out, as I learned from a response email I coincidentally got from the Rotary Club Macau today, that there aren't really orphanages in Macau. They are called residential homes, and they are more for children whose parents have abandoned them or if they are prone to abuse. The parents may come get them on weekends or not...it's all very interesting. I think it must be similar to the Home for the Innocents. My new friend Annie's father abandoned her and her mother, and her mother remarried and now lives in Hong Kong with a new family. Annie goes to her grandparents on holidays, but she lives here at this home.

After spending a lot of the day waiting or lost and then spending time at the orphanage, dinner came rather quickly. One of the ETAs at USJ, Kyle, has a birthday in a few days. We all had this master plan to surprise him and buy him dinner at this Portuguese restaurant in Coloanne. The bad news is that this is the very nice looking restaurant that Lauren ate the day she got mild food poisoning...oh buddy. I haven't had anything yet, but we will see. It looked clean and it was super popular, so hopefully it was something else last time. We had lamb with cumin, garlic broccoli, shrimp, crab fried rice, and spicy chicken we all split. It was all delicious.

Cafe Nga Tim that we ate at tonight. It's a good thing we live in a tropical area with mostly outdoor seating!

My experience with seafood in Asia is that they bring it to the table alive to show you how fresh it is. This time the prawns showed up in a hot vat of water with a lid on it, essentially suffocating to death slowly. We were a bit confused by the container the dish was in and thought this slowly dying display was the meal. Thankfully, we were wrong. Although we had to see them suffer for a bit, they came back and threw them in some portable little grill set up they brought to our table. This time we knew they were completely cooked--otherwise I guess we would have just waited for them to stop kicking? I know this display would have disturbed many of you reading this compared to comforting you about how fresh the seafood was.

We took a long bus route home that ventured through a different part of the city. I bought 2 plums (USA grown. woot! woot!) at a fruit stand on the way back because there wasn't nearly as much food to split as we thought there would be when we ordered. What a treat!

Next up is sweeping and mopping the apartment. Unfortunately, I will be working early tomorrow morning keeping score in a speech contest. Thus, sleep may come early tonight as well.