what Ralph said

This last early morning of this week I successfully began with teaching nursing students on the topic of resumes and interviews. Fortunately, I had plenty of materials from the IEBF sessions to pull from for these classes and was prepared for today with my own powerpoints and handouts.

After work, I came home and ventured out again. On my way back out, a nice Chinese lady got all excited in the elevator trying to tell me how she'd gotten off on the wrong floor (my floor) and that the elevator was going up when she wanted to go down. I didn't understand a word of what she said, and I only responded with a smile. This conversation I just explained was my interpretation of circumstances and actions rather than words. It was an awkward 21 flights down as I think it registered to her that she'd just rambled on to me and I hadn't understood a word--or if I had, it would translate that I was ignoring her.

I rounded the corner on the way to Senado to hear my first name. It caught me off guard until I realized it was one of the teachers from one of the primary schools I teach at. That was one of those 'we're both walking in the same direction and neither have anything to talk about besides work and the weather conversations.' Those conversations are so unfortunate, but we just didn't have time or awareness of common interests to dig into conversations about the origins of time zones or how the first tea leaf was brewed.

Tonight, the weather was quite lovely--it's 70s in the evening and I'm quite content in shorts and a t-shirt. I took some time sketching and people watching in Largo de Senado--that is, Senado Square. When the sun is out, it is packed with tourists and cameras. When the sun goes down, there are likely still tourists, but it seems more full of locals, specifically Filipinos. Since the weather is warm, the area around the fountain is ideal for sitting and hanging for cheap. The guys sitting next to where I was sketching were from Nepal, and they'd bought a Tsingtao beer and some potato chips for their Friday night entertainment. A woman walked up to them offering them a bag of peanuts for their beer for 5MOP (about $.60). She gave them some story I overheard about not being able to pay some bill...I'm not sure. The guy was nice and bought peanuts from her though he said he didn't like them. About 10 minutes later, a man walked up and asked if the guys were Filipino, to which they responded that they were Nepali. He told them he was a missionary and offered peanuts to them. I'm not sure if/which story was true. What's interesting is that neither the man nor the woman came up to me, and I think I look like I understand English. Whatever the story, there were lots of ethnicities represented in Senado tonight, as always. Even the businesses are multi-national. Pacific Coffee Company (Hong Kong), Starbucks/McDonalds (U.S.), Macau bakeries, Haagen-Dazs (wait, that's American?!...Scandinavian-American, specifically)...etc.

Here's the sketch of random things seen in Senado tonight:

Enjoy the start of your weekend! And make this Friday the 13th better than expected.

--"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."-Ralph Waldo Emerson--