the zOOm zOOm slide

When it rains, it pours, or at least it did today. What's more interesting about this natural waterfall from the sky is that the Grand Prix is in Macau this weekend, so those suckers were slipping around the roads. A lot of roads were shut down today, so I was rerouted on a different walking path. All those tourists are probably not so happy with the weather.

I learned today from the Dept. of State website that there are an estimated 4,000 U.S. residents in Macau. Wow, I certainly haven't seen that many. Lauren suggested maybe some of them are from Macau but have dual citizenship because of their parents or something. It's possible. The site also reports that there are over 30 U.S. companies here. I'm wondering how many of them are connected with the hotel and casino industries as Las Vegas Sands owns several of the casinos and I've seen a Holiday Inn, Four Seasons, and Sheraton.

I helped Poppy with English today, and we talked about a wide range of topics. Somehow a discussion about her friend going to Japan led to the earthquake led to a discussion about how some Chinese think salt can protect you from nuclear radiation. She then was breaking down chemical compounds to explain to me why they believed it would help, but how you'd actually have to consume a whole ton for it to work. The supermarkets apparently cleared out of salt because of the demand after the earthquake and nuclear power plant issues. She said there's also a joke about people that believe that though, that they have to make themselves like a salty fish (which is a type of salt preserved fish popular in parts of China).

I also helped Cora with her English today. Shakespeare was cancelled because they are doing special classes in Hong Kong this week. Cora asked me a lot about American culture and English, and it was really enjoyable to share with her. She asked me to explain soccer to her and I feel I failed horribly. I told her I haven't played in 5 years now. Wow, I can't believe time has flown....but indeed it has. I've been out of the U.S. for nearly 3 months now. My adventure is about 1/3 done.

My most exciting moment of the day was when we got the call that Cantonese class was cancelled. I know, it sounds bad, but I didn't want to go and wouldn't let myself skip. Italian from my kitchen was dinner again tonight...it was even better this time (and more veggies because I have to eat them up). HK is this weekend, so no blogs while I'm gone FYI.

Picture of the day: I was in the middle of a conversation when the power went out. I realized I still had internet, which meant that Ray's power was still on. We have a girl from Germany who's working in China and a girl from Canada staying with us tonight, and the German attempted to plug her non-Macau phone into the plug, causing a breaker to flip. After Lauren went and talked to the maintenance guy in Mandarin, we got our electricity back on and I gave her an adapted to plug into Lauren's Macau adapter. Turns out that it fit loosely, so she had to hold it it for it to charge. Rather than hold it all night, we rigged this up with our fantastic multinational minds and resources. So, voila (notice the books are in French holding up a German phone charger plugged into a Northern Europe adapter from the U.S. plugged into a Macau adapter). We are the champions.