Learning the ropes

Wow, time has been flying by. We have been crazy productive the last few days and high fiving our way through Macau. So where do we begin? First the most exciting part, we found a place to live. Yahhh! It's on the 29th floor and is two bedrooms for all those who want to visit us. We met with a real estate agent who took us around to places, as all rentals are done through agents. Our building is called Kinglight Garden. There's a supermarket, a couple restaurants, a dry cleaners, and a pharmacy on the bottom floor and its only two blocks from our school. We get the keys tomorrow and we will post some pics soon. We plan on making an Ikea run in Hong Kong on tuesday to make it more homey since they deliver. Oh darn, an excuse to visit!

Yesterday we walked around old Taipa village. Taipa reminds us of an old European town with winding small streets and shops on every corner, except with an Asian flair. This is also a foodies paradise with every kind of food imaginable and we cant wait to spend some more time there. There are sate stands, coffee and pastry shops, Portuguese and Chinese restaurants. As we were exploring Adam also discovered Jerky heaven. Thick slabs of every kind of sweet meat you could imagine (sorry vegetarians), but it was truly some of the best jerky in the world.

































For lunch today we decided to try the Chinese restaurant down the street again. The menu is in
Chinese characters and no one speaks English. Before we went we google translated some words to arm ourselves for hopeful success. Adam learned coca cola (hoe-low) and heather looked up the Chinese characters for noodles and rice. We walked, smiled and said Hello (nay-hoe), we were greeted with good morning (joe-san). So far so good. We sat down, grabbed the menu and then the lady walked up. Adam said hoe-low and the lady held up two fingers. He nodded and she brought us two cokes! Yay!!!! Then she stood there waiting for us to order, we felt rushed, heather grabbed her iPhone and pointed at the Chinese characters for noodle soup and rice. The lady waved someone else over. And they were talking trying to point to the menu. They showed us the sections, and we quickly "eeny meany miny moed" it and pointed randomly at the characters. Ok... Let's see what we get! As luck would have it, heather got ox tail noodle soup with cabbage and Adam got steamed rice with chicken and cabbage! You would not believe how happy we were! We did it!
We bought Macau passes today, which are basically electronic cards that you put money on and they allow you to ride the bus. Every time you get on it automatically deducts the 25-50 cents. Way cool. Armed with our passes, we took our first bus ride over to the Venetian hotel. The Venetian is the largest casino and hotel in the world and it was truly massive. Basically it was like Vegas but on steroids. A little bit of sensory overload, however the trip was completely worth it because we got to check off something from our list...eat an egg tart from Lord Stow's Bakery. (1 top 50 down, 49 to go!) These little bundles of joy are like warm cream brûlée in a flakey pastry shell. They are famous here and really live up to the hype. They were delicious! Again if you haven't figured it out,we love food :) As an added bonus, we even got on the right bus, there and back!


































Some things we've noticed about living here so far:

1. Macau is definitely not China. It has it's own unique and vibrant culture that is east meets west.

2. People in Macau love dogs. They come in every size shape and color, we've seen a few Belly dogs too (sniffle). It's really funny to watch them try and catch theirs dogs poop on a piece of paper before it hits the ground!

3. People in Macau love their pastries and desserts. There are pastry shops on every corner. Thank the Portuguese!

4. We haven't seen any overweight people in Macau. Not one! Everyone is active and old people are always working out in the parks. Also the food portion sizes are smaller. We need to take a lesson from this America!

5. Everything is at your finger tips, even peanut butter. We thought we would have a hard time finding certain things, but Macau has everything.

6. There are Buddhist offerings throughout the streets burning incense throughout the day. It reminds of us of Bali... Ahhh.


7. Smiling and trying to speak the language goes a long ways.

So far, so good! We're really looking forward to starting work this Thursday, so we can meet the other teachers and feel like we're part of the community. With all this excitement, it's easy to forget we're actually here to work! We definitely have higher expectations of ourselves to figure out how the world works over here, since this is our permanent home and not just a short vacation. Although, with such a vibrant atmosphere, we think there will always be a little vacation feeling in the air!




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Location:布拉干薩街,Taipa,Macau