Trip to Macau

Linda:
I am busy getting ready for school and studying Chinese, but have to write some on the blog to keep you guys updated on what we have been up to. I enjoy telling you about it, too. It's a way to connect and share. If I was there I would for sure be blabbing about this. We arrived in Macau on Saturday evening after a taxi ride to the bus, a bus ride from Tianjin to Beijing, a plane ride to Zhuhai, a bus ride to the portof entry into Macau through customs, a bus ride to Coloane, the island we stayed on and a taxi ride to the youth center that we stayed at. All of our friends were there when we arrived. It was about 8 pm. Next time we will fly from Tianjin to Macau - a little more expensive, but much easier. The trip home was the same only backwards and we ended up taking a taxi to the Zhuhai airport instead of a bus because we couldn't find the bus station. We were both about at our wits end so we gave in. When you don't know the language it is difficult especially if they point down the street and you take off not knowing really what you are looking for.


So, we stayed in the dormitory type rooms, guys on one side and girls on the other. We had no heat but hot showers. It was quite cold the first 2 days and nights but the long underwear all day helped. It normally is warmer, around 70 during the day there at this time. We all ate voraciously, probably because we burned so much energy trying to keep our body temp up. The food was thin oats or a noodle dish, white bread with peanut butter and honey or jelly, and bananas for breakfast. Once there were some walnuts to put in the oatmeal. There was also instant coffee and hot chocolate mix which I mixed in the morning. James was a bit disturbed about the instant coffee but got over it.......... The food was served family style on the tables. We all helped to get the dishes and chopsticks for the table and each did our own dishes. Lunch and dinner were always white rice and a couple meat/veg dishes and some plain veggie ones. The food was really good except one night when they served little hotdogs in a sauce and a meat/veggie dish. You have to be really hungry to put the juice from the dogs on your rice and eat away with your chopsticks! We were so hungry we didn't really care. We had snacks at night of some crispy thin cookies (good) and some small peanuts in the shell and apples sometimes. There were also those noodle dishes that you add water to. We went into town on the bus on our afternoon off, Sunday, and walked around and bought an egg pastry which are a specialty in that area. They are like a very flakey small pastry shell with an egg custard inside. Delicious! We sat and ate 2 each right away. The village was settled by Portugese so the architecture was Southwestern and reminded me of California.

James:
Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking when I came here without better language skills. The Chinese people are, for the most part, very friendly and helpful, but when they can't understand us and we can't understand them and what we want is sometimes pretty sophisticated to communicate, well it gets pretty tough. Even if I learn the questions, will I be able to understand the answers? One thing I learned this weekend that I am going to try to put into practice when I learn Mandarin, is that when people learn to communicate their feelings and their deepest thoughts in a language, they learn the language faster. I just want to learn something. I finally noticed a few days ago that the China Daily (English Language) has a Chinese character in it every day with how to write it and what it means and several examples of how it is used. So I am beginning to at least practice making the character and I'm trying to learn the word. One word a day is not very fast vocabulart building but I'm sure I'll increase that when we begin taking lessons. Right now we're looking for popcorn (not microwave). A guy had some at a store yesterday but we couldn't get across that we wanted to buy some and we wanted to know what it was called. I'm also looking for coffee that isn't instant. I am almost our of beans, the time has become critical. But how do I ask for coffee that is ground and not instant. It's easy to ask for coffee (it's essentially coffee in Mandarin), but I don't know how to make the distinction between the different kinds of coffee.

So back to Macau, we met people from all over the world. People from Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, England, Austria, Canada, the US, the Phillipines, India, other parts of China, many Persian friends. There was a lot of musical and artistic talent present, some of you would have been in 7th heaven. There was also some dramatic talent and a couple of very funny people.

School starts in a few days and its time to get busy. This part of the journey has been a fun adventure. I am confident that the rest will be great. I'm anxious to meet some Chinese people that I will have contact with regularly.