I am thankful that, of my father's many amazing gifts and talents, I was at least blessed with the gift of direction (either that or the mailman/milkman has a sense of direction too...). Macau is a very tiny place compared to the U.S. and we walk most everywhere, but that doesn't mean you can't get lost/take a really long route. One nice thing about all the flashy pretty casinos in Macau too is that they are fabulous landmarks. The people who set up the streets and made maps here obviously were on holiday or something because they did a less than par kind of job (that is to say the Portuguese and Chinese names for the street are often not exact translations, the maps don't have every street listed, and the streets don't always have street signs.) Still somehow (gambling) Macau attracts 25 million visitors a year to their population of about 0.5 million (that's 50x their population!!!!). I'm guessing, probably safely, that the visitors don't leave the casinos much and thus do not need street signs. Macau is much smaller than Vegas with 1/3 of the shows, but brings in 4 times the revenues. Wow. Just last quarter, the economy grew by 22%. This all is coming via Lauren, my colleague that looks this stuff up.lol. No official sources directly from me. ...the point I originally intended for that paragraph (which didn't happen?) is that I am navigating well here, catching on quickly, and helping my friends not get lost too.
Today, we started our morning with the most adorable little kids. Fine, I take it back, each of your children and grandchildren are the most adorable, these were second best (and if my grandparents are reading this, I just complimented myself. score!) We are contracted out through the university to work at an elementary school once a week teaching English. Tomorrow we see if we pick up a second school.
Anyway, these little boys and girls (mostly boys because girls only come if their brothers are there) were dressed in little white oxfords with gray pants or shorts and cheeks that just begged you to hug them up. I have a thing for Asian children--I think they are absolutely beautiful. Most children are beautiful. Maybe it's just that I have spent a lot of time with Asian young'ens recently.
After deciding I will be teaching three 5th grade classes, we were whisked back to MPI for a seminar on motivating student in Macau. The professor was AMAZING and interesting...and he even gave us Macau Walnut Cookies (apparently their cookies here are quite the specialty). At 1:00 we grabbed something to eat from the bookstore before going to immigration. I had gingerbread toast. You may be thinking, "oh goody, gum drop buttons and warm hot cocoa," but you are so wrong. It was GINGER bread. Remember, ginger is very popular (at least in my experience) in Asian cuisine. It wasn't bad, but it was different. Actually, today was the perfect day for ginger (good for your stomach) considering that McDonalds $3.50 Big Mac Meal last night meant waking up with my stomach yelling the equivalent of a mumbled version of, 'death by octopus tentacles' this morning. What? Exactly.
Immigration only took a little over 2 hours (yay for not 3 or 4 hours!). We have to go back 2 more times though. The nice thing about going to immigration was that it was our first time to Taipa, another of the 3 islands that make up Macau. Taipa is much nicer (think East End, apartment and high rise style) and more Portuguese style than Macau, Macau. I didn't stutter.
We ate at one of our new favorite restaurants in Macau for dinner, Cafe E.S.Kimo. It has nothing to do with Eskimos, it's just more affordable and a variety of options on food types. Then we came home via the Venetian bus. Thank you casinos for providing free transportation between casinos which you don't have to actually even go into the casino to use. :) Hey, we're on a budget.
Well, I had to lock my bag in the locker (which cost me like 12 cents! ...ok, not bad lol.) to use this library computer, so I don't have any of the little reminders I wrote down to blog about today. This is long enough, though I think. Tomorrow we get to finally see our apartments.Yay! I pray they are good. Our friends at the other university got theirs the first day. We got to see them last night, and they are better than I expected. We'll see what we end up with (luxury, luxury, luxury, luxury...okay, that's changing nothing).
Enjoy you're last work day of the week!...well, when it shows up tomorrow. Lol. It's 8pm here for the sake of computer hardware!
