Day 0-1 Living in Macau

Yesterday we spent the day saying all of our goodbyes. Heather was a complete mess. You would think the body could only produce so many tears but apparently that's not the case. Even though we were sad to be leaving our friends behind we were also exited to be starting our new adventure. We boarded the plane in San Francisco and took the 1:30 flight to Taiwan. The 12 1/2 hours was somewhat uneventful and actually went by fairly quickly since we managed to sleep through half of it. However the landing into Tawain was VERY bumping due to us landing in a little weather system known as a typhoon. Yes I said typhoon. The wind and rain was incredible and coming down horizontally. However this part of the world must be used to it because people carried on normally as if there wasn't anything happening outside. In fact our second flight was only delayed 10 minutes and we arrived in Macau without incident until....

Lesson # 1 Never enter a foreign country with your pockets empty of any currency at all.
We figured we would get money out of an ATM machine for our taxi ride to the hotel as soon as we arrived to the Macau airport. We thought we would take out $ 100 US which equals $8000 Macau patacas. One card.. Declined. Second card... Declined. Third card... Declined. Damn you wells fargo, we told you we were leaving the country. That's ok, we'll Skype the bank and tell them we need money from our iPad. Dang it, no wifi at the airport. Okay, okay. What to do... Cash advance from a credit card! One try, two try, oh man... We never set up pins. Okay, use a credit card to call collect from the pay phone to the bank tell them the issue. One pay phone, two pay phones, three pay phone, holy cow what the heck! Nothing works! Back to payphone #1. Finally! Yes! The credit card gave us a pin! Phew! Us oh, declined again. Were pushing an hour here, we're so tired!!! Okay, let's find another ATM... Did we say we needed to take out $8000? Oh shoot, we suck! We did e conversion wrong! We only Need $800 pacatas. $8000 is more than three times the amount of our daily ATM withdrawal limit! Okay, so our cards work fine. Yikes.

Lesson #2
If you have 6 huge bags because you're moving across the world, taxi drivers will ignore you at the airport because a) they don't have enough space for all of your worldly possessions and b) they don't speak English to tell you that. So figure out something else, because an hour later, you will still be standing at the curb.

Adam and I have continually high fived our way through Taipa today. Taipa is the island that we work and will live on. It's mostly residential with restaurants and shops supporting the towers of apartments. So far, we're pleased with the greenery and foliage. It's not just a concrete city! It's very tropical with lotus ponds, hibiscus, beautiful flowers, and a couple of nice hills known as Taipa pequenia and Taipa grande. Our high fives are deserved whenever we complete a "task" outside our comfort zone. For example, we're starving. So we walk into a restaurant, not realizing that not only are the menus in Chinese, but they also have no pictures. the women asks us something, I'm assuming, but it's only in Chinese. We have no clue, so we point to our menu and she writes down our order. Then she comes back and says "yum yum". I know, what we ordered must be good! Ahh, but no, I know from my 15 word vocabulary of the Cantonese language that yum, means drink!!! Yes! Except when she realizes I know what's she said, she starts talking to me like I know Cantonese! Then, a
L I do is smile and shake my head. Adam points to a coke and our mission is complete! Food ordered, drink in hand, here comes the high five! Now, how do we pay?

In only 24 hours we realize how different life is in other countries. In the US, we know how to enter a restaurant, how we will be seated, the order in which to order, and how to get the check and pay. Here, as in most countries, it varies a bit. We seat ourself, wave down a waitress, point at the menu, and watch others to figure out how to pay. In time, this will become our normal, but for now, it's totally foreign, along within being the foreigners. We saw two people with blonde hair today, one of those being Heather.
One last thing about Macau. It is freaking HOT! It feels like you locked yourself in a bathroom, turned on the hot shower and wrapped yourself in a wet towel. The air is so heavy and moist. We have never felt anything like this. As soon as you walk outside you are soaking wet. The locals say it is because of the typhoon in Taiwan and is unusually humid. The sky looks overcast and heavy. Hopefully we will get used to this. Everyone says that The weather in October is much nicer so we will be counting down the days. Here are a few pics from our first day.







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Location:沙維斯街,Taipa,Macau