Expecting a lot as an ETA

I was going to blog today, but now it's 2am. We went out to Vietnamese with Ray for dinner. And because he was so courteous to take us to dinner and then hang out with us in our apartment after...and because he makes me laugh...and because I found this on Athena's camera, today's blog will consist of this picture from our tour of MPI 10 months ago:

'Nuff said :)

Strokes...of genius

The best part of today was quite possibly the local breakfast.  I have pictures, but my SD card is away at the moment so look for those perhaps coming tomorrow.

I packed and cleaned and packed and cleaned. I killed a roach--a grown one--right next to me in my room. Clearly he's not a very intelligent roach since he waited until I had eaten most all my stash of food from the past 10 months to show up...

I watched babies, toddlers and children with their mothers feeding fish in Taipa while waiting for Athena to meet me for dinner. I breathed deeply. I enjoyed my moments.

Spicy cucumbers and spicy noodles were for dinner. My sinuses are clear now.

Swimming with Athena came this evening. I wore a swim cap for perhaps the first time. I don't think I prefer them. Mmm water surrounding me.

I found something like a miniature plum at the grocery when picking up soy milk tonight for breakfast. I'm not sure what they are (but that rarely stops me from eating something).

Last of the day: job applications! Come see me at Jeff Ruby's next month...

Oh, and I ran into Hugh again momentarily.

Just keep swimming

My lovely friends at the orphanage I've taught at this past 10 months treated me to lunch today. It's a good thing I've been on an E.S.Kimo kick recently because this was the third day in a row I've had it (though I've had different dishes each time). Here are the lovely ladies I had lunch with: Annie, Lily and Jeanne.

Later today, I ventured the direction of Coloanne and Cheoc Van Beach...only with the recent Typhoon level 1 we had, the beach was covered in trash the sea had pushed up and the waves were still quite brutally hard. There's a public pool right next to the beach, so for 15MOP I was on my way to swimming. Wow, the water was Ah-mazing.

Tonight was Bible Study with lots of fruit, cookies and chocolate! The short term mission trip group from Texas was there with us. After the study, I decided to walk around Taipa and wander back home the long way since the weather was nice. Well, that changed quick...the rains came down and the floods came up (and the house on the sand went *splat*...but the house on the Rock stood firm).

I took the pictures, cards, decorations, etc. down off my closet doors today. That was basically the only color in my room. Now, it really feels like I'm moving...or in transitional housing. 

Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high...on Reading Rainbow

This morning I dropped some books off at one of my primary schools. I guess that's the last time I'll be there. Not so sad about that. I saw one of my 5th grade boys in Taipa last night. It is nice having a little fan club that shouts your name when you're walking the streets, I'm not going to lie.

I went to drop some things in Senado this afternoon and, as it has been consistently doing here, the rain began. I didn't fuss, but decided to go into Starbucks and read my Bible a bit...but perhaps God had a different plan. I crossed paths with Hugh--a guy I'd met on the bus probably 6 months ago who's married to a VP at the Venetian. It turned into a conversation about life, business and entrepreneurship that was very encouraging and lasted over an hour. I love when God has those domino events that lead you to just the right place at the right time. So be aware of where your storms might be trying to lead you today--there's more to it than just the downpour. Someone to meet or something to learn/gain is on the other side of that cloud, I guarantee it.

This evening Athena and I went out to dinner, walked around Taipa and went to a butterfly exhibit.  We walked past the Taipa Houses Museums after dinner and saw about 5 frogs. This reminded me of youth camp (which is going on this week). We also saw several slugs. Athena said, "welcome to the subtropics," to which I responded, "no, welcome to somewhere that's not New York City." haha. It's been interesting this past year for a country girl to watch a city girl experience bugs and the outdoors. Funny girl.

Butterflies!

I drank my last Ale8 today on a Skype call with Mike (who sent me the box with them in it months ago). This and my fight against grocery store shopping--which you know is one of my weaknesses--is one more sign that I'm coming home soon!

Catch up, no mustard

So catching up--here's what you missed:

Friday was my last day teaching. The helper was different that the one I normally have--this one is the one that rushes me out early, so no picture. The class went well. After class, I took my friend Cristiana out to dinner. We went to a Portuguese restaurant and had a traditional rice with duck and  lamb stew with potatoes. Mmm do I love lamb. I'm wondering if I already blogged about that...

Saturday I went to Hong Kong to go hiking. It was raining as I left Macau, but I knew this was my last weekend to go to Hong Kong, so I just hoped that it would stop or that I'd get to a place where it wasn't raining. None of the above. And this wasn't a drizzle, it was a torrential downpour. My sneakers got SOAKED. When I took my socks off, I could wring them out. I ended up taking the bus to Sai Kung Town near where I was going to hike and chilling out at Starbucks waiting for a rain break. I had some really great time with God reading Genesis and learning all kinds of fascinating things I can't believe I've missed all these years. A man came up and commented on my reading and invited me to his church--sweet guy from South Africa who had previously lived in Ireland and was teaching in HK. I had to decline since Sunday would be my last day at Oasis--my home church in Macau. 

I took the bus back to Central and had a beautiful, rainy day tour of more of Hong Kong on a double decker public bus that cost me 9HKD (about $1.12) for an hour. Who can beat that? When I arrived in Central, the rain had finally taken a break and I was able to take a few photos, walk around and grab some dinner. 

Pretty building

Taiwanese fast food: soybean milk, pan fried dumplings with leek, and Taiwanese rice noodles

I'm pretty sure this was intestine. I ate it, it was fine. 

This is the Hong Kong Pancake as they call it. It's basically waffle batter in bubbles.

Sunday--This morning they prayed farewell over me after the Father's Day service at Oasis. I'm one of many leaving this year--Macau is a place of transition. There's a team here from Baylor College in Wako, Texas, this week doing Bible distribution at St. Paul's Ruins. They've handed out thousands already.

This was some traditional Portuguese/Macanese dancing I ran across in Taipa. I love how happy this man looks. I love dancing. Also, there was a guy playing the accordion, and the lady in the far left is playing some traditional percussion instrument I do not know.

Before heading to the Brazilian church for one last time, I had an eggplant rice dish at Cafe E.S.Kimo with rose gelatin (and yes, there was a rose in my jello) and ginger lemon tea. I then ventured down to the Taipa Houses Museum. There is some Lotus celebration display of sorts set up. Here are some of the displays with the Venetian, City of Dreams and CoTai in the background.

A day late and a Pataca short

Alrighty, here's the blog from yesterday this morning. I love having people over, but you often have no say when people leave. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I didn't feel like blogging at 1am this time. 

Last night, 7 of the ETAs got together for one last time. Mazen is leaving tomorrow and I'm not sure how much more we'll see of each other. Also, I'm moving in 2 weekends and needed to get rid of baking stuff. Here are the bulk of my oats, all of my flour, brown sugar and a package of chocolate chip muffin mix that I brought from home at Christmas.

From left to right, top to bottom: salted chocolate oatmeal cookies, coconut oatmeal cookies, cinnamon/original oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip muffin cake, coffee caramel oatmeal cookies, chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies, regular/cinnamon oatmeal cookies and the other half of the chocolate chip muffin mix. I made one big batch of oatmeal cookie batter from scratch and then added extra ingredients. The coffee ones were the biggest hit, though my favorite was a tie between my original oatmeal cookies and the coconut ones. And apart from the food, the gathering was also very good.

It took me 3 hours yesterday morning to make this spread (remember I'm working with pans that cook 3 at a time and a toaster over). After that, I cleaned and rearranged furniture. When I ventured out to the grocery for some fruit, I saw one of my 1st graders who I no longer teach. He got really excited, yelled my name and waved really big. It made me smile. I also always love the look on the parents' face when a kid recognizes me. Their faces seem to always have the expression of 'how you know my child, lady?" They're probably also confused because whatever their child may say would be in English, and most of the parents do not speak English.

Today (Friday) is my last day of teaching!

Spiderman and Ms. Hall

What you missed today:

Breakfast was oatmeal and these little fruits--lychees. You can get them in the U.S., so perhaps you've had them, but they are far more common in this part of the world. You peel the skin off for the grape-like inside underneath.

Today was the last Wednesday class with my 1st graders. Look at their adorable excited faces.

-We have about 2 inches of water on our balcony from how much and how hard it's rained the past few days. Today was no different, though I'm grateful that I don't have to go into the office and can work remotely, and my walk to and from school was one of the few sprinkling parts of the day.

-When I ventured out to the grocery, there was a gathering of apparent social importance. That is--something had everyone's attention. It ended up that everyone was watching a stray dog get caught by animal control. The saddest part was his yelping when his leg accidentally got stuck in the cage flipped backward. I couldn't help but think we've all probably been like that dog at some point. God was trying to move us from one point in our lives to the next, and we wouldn't accept the change and made things worse for ourselves by getting hung up in some less literal way in the transition. I hope I take this next life translation peacefully. Sheesh, I'm unemployed in less than a month.
-Dinner was at home, and Athena and I had a bit of time to catch up. We're having all the ETAs in town over tomorrow night for a dessert party/one final gathering. Most of USJ is leaving before we do. Mazen leaves this weekend. I'm not sure if I'll have the energy to blog after hosting the best get together of the year ;) I am interested to see how my day of baking goes tomorrow. I have lots of things to use/get rid of. I'm making oatmeal cookies. Some will have Hershey's syrup in them, others will have extra cinnamon, some coconut, others sweetened condensed milk, and so on and so forth. Though I will not experiment with the mayonnaise--I suppose it will be wasted.

-It appears I have a minor baby roach infestation in my room. The good news is I'm not here much longer. The bad news is I am surround by roaches..that are growing. I kill them as I see them, but the thought of not seeing them also disgusts me. Eh, I'll manage. I am woman, hear me roar.

Tile...oh, did you mean sand?

So I know the past 24 hours you've been sitting in suspense about how the weather was today and whether or not I had incredible adventures. Well, I will tell you this--I laid out. . . in my living room. After a promising morning and early afternoon in the office, the gray settled in. I actually did lay out in my swimsuit in my living room, but that was because A/C costs money and a swimsuit makes it a bit more bearable in this weather. So I laid in the living room and read after applying for more jobs. A job I applied for today had a questionnaire that took me 1.5 hours...I better get that job.

Here was the most profound thing I read today in Stormie Omartian's Just Enough Light for the Step I'm On, "Every relationship requires a sacrifice. Every sacrifice has a reward. If we knew the rewards, we wouldn't hesitate to make the sacrifices. Part of the sacrifice we must pay in a relationship is laying down our pride and our needs. We need to be loved, cared for, valued, respected, but we never get those needs met when we demand them. We get them met when we give them up. Humbling ourselves and putting the other person's needs before our own can resurrect a relationship that has suffered mortal wounds." (Italics hers).

Since I was not out and about, this was the adventure of the day: learning how to peel and eat a pomelo, and trying one for the first time.

 Pomelo=giant citrus fruit the size of your face.

 See how thick that skin is?! I used a knife, effort and far too much time to get those puppies off.

Alas, a fruit similar to grapefruit, though a bit sweeter I think--though less sweet than an orange.

Tonight, we discussed the fruit of the Spirit at Bible Study. Lots of people are leaving Macau from church this year. I guess we're trend setters ;)

Tomorrow I actually teach!

26 days

The countdown has begun (well for my grandfather, it's been going on since Christmas). After many different adjustments and kinks in the system, changes in plan, etc., etc., I am set to be stateside in 26 days. Wowza, how did we get here? This is proof that time flies and that 10 months is nothing. [I'm saying this to remind myself in the future when I'm facing a year of whatever mountain.]

There's honestly not much going on here in Macau. Lauren is on vacation until the last few days we're here in Macau. I made her strawberry cheesecake muffins the morning she left. Sad day. Ray is on vacation until mid-week, and I have no idea when Athena is to return. It could be any day. Work has cut back once again, and this Friday marks my last day teaching.

The last few days have consisted of a Hong Kong packed Saturday, a nap and church packed Sunday (taught Sunday School for the last time), and today I did a variety of productive things--read, mop, dishes, cook, organize, paperwork, sketch, apply for jobs, exercise. The weather these past few days has consisted of random bursts of extremely hard rain.

Here are a few pictures to catch you up:

This was the beach I laid out at and read on Saturday--Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong.

This is the giant Buddha at Ngong Ping. I took a beautiful cable car ride and 200 stairs to get to it. 

Dinner for the last two evenings (it was so good I made it twice!) Chinese broccoli, hard boiled egg, red bell peppers and garlic. Yummmmmy and healthy :)

I'm hoping the weather is a bit better tomorrow so that I can spend more time outside. We shall see what the day holds!